Saturday 31 July 2010

Welfare Mom Redeemed!

If you hang around the darker parts of the toobz as I do, you'll probably run into the name Linda Gibbons.

Ms Gibbons is frequently arrested for hanging around in places she is not wanted. Abortion clinics. Her name comes up on fetus fetishist sites as a 'martyr for life'.

Well, she's back in jail again for refusing to abide by the conditions of bail -- which is to stay the hell away from abortion clinics.

There's a weepy piece in yesterday's Notional Pest. Full of details both interesting and irrevelent (viz. she has spent more time in jail than Karla Homolka. Yep. They went there.).

So, while I've read about her martyrdom a few times, I didn't know anything about her personally.

I found this bit very interesting (emphasis mine):
Ms. Gibbons eventually married, had a daughter but she and her husband split up. A couple of years after the end of her marriage, in 1971, she became pregnant again. She had an abortion.

“I was living on social assistance and I was going to school. I didn’t see any way that I could have another baby. I wanted to become self sufficient, but I wished now someone would have counseled me out of doing it.”

A year after the abortion she went to a doctor and asked to be sterilized. The doctor advised her not to do it and suggested she was suffering guilt from the aftermath of her abortion.

Though she never married again, she eventually had a son and another daughter. She worked a number of different jobs keeping her family afloat. At one point, Ms. Gibbons said, around 1977, she began to think about God again and decided to go back to church. She thought of going to the liberal United Church but inadvertently walked through the door of much more conservative Protestant denomination.

'Eventually married' in a sympathetic piece is odd, doncha think? 'Nuff said there.

She and hub split. Oh dear. One wonders. . .

Then another pregnancy. While on social assistance. . .

Finding herself in a tough situation, as many, many women do, she made the choice to terminate the pregnancy.

Never married again. Two more children.

Then, beginning a career of being in the wrong place, she winds up among the fundies.

And voilà! Creepy fetus fetishist is er, born!

A single welfare mother with serial ooopsie! pregnancies without the responsibility to, you know, try to avoid those ooopsie! bits. Just the type that fetus fetishists and conservatards of all descriptions love to demonize.

But now redeemed! Reborn! Commanded to do Gord's work of harassing women just like she was.

Or, lounging around in jail talking about it.

So, these days, Ms Gibbons gets her martyrgasms living at our expense, while harassing the most captive audience an attention-seeking nutbar could wish for.
She talks about how much she loves “her girls,” referring to her much younger fellow inmates, who she gets to counsel against drug use and life on the streets. She glows when she says that she has saved three babies from abortion while on the inside.

And the serially pregnant welfare mom meme continues:
The bright light for her in all of this is that her 15-year-old granddaughter was recently pregnant and decided to have the baby, making Ms. Gibbons a great-grandmother. She is very proud that her granddaughter decided to have the baby.

Awwwww, isn't that special?

6 comments:

Alison said...

Wow, just wow! Not too bright is she? Why one might even be justified in calling her a slut, not that I ever would.

Anonymous said...

What Charles Lewis misses is that she is repeatedly breaking a court order. The fact that her issue is abortion is irrelevant. So what if she is persistent and has carried it to the absurd? Is the court supposed to say, "Oh never mind then." That would unleash all the jerks with restraining orders against them - just be persistent and the law will give it up and let you carry on. And if they did allow her to stand there and do what she does, why not 100 others? The woman is mentally ill. It's unfortunate she is getting this much attention. On the other hand, she couldn't have been made to look more sick and pathetic, even if the writer/publication was pro-choice.

deBeauxOs said...

Oh dear, Alison. Now Blob Blogging Wingnut will shrieeek that evul feminists are calling 'fallen women' nasty names.

Not that there's anything wrong with that - just remember to fall on your feet and keep running.

The mistake Ms Gibbons made was to fall for the religious scam of an organization that despises and vilifies women unless they grovel for redemption.

croghan27 said...

I have two comment about this:

1) what happens to her little darlings when she is in the crowbar hotel?

2) unlike those falsely arrested in Toronto for trespassing upon some imposed and mythical line, this one, for her, is well delineated. If she is making a conscious decision to break the law (sometime that needs to be done) she must also make the decision to live with the consequences.

Niles said...

IOKIYAFF.

I'd wager that her fellow travellers have no problem with her apparent incorrectly lived past because she gives them what they want to hear. She's learned to exploit life experience these folks degrade and presents herself in the role of 'redemptive whore', their rescued soul. The Magdalene.

Seems to me it doesn't matter how people 'sin' in the past or the present, so long as they are part of the Chosen. It seems to come out in a variation of "oh isn't that swweeeeeet, they're repenting...and we, being the generous loving souls we are, will accept their groveling with all magnaminity and will feel post-orgasmic the rest of the day, because we are right and righteous."

It's a bit of a grifting technique, no wonder how sincere she might be in her new religious beliefs. She's getting life reward from catering to this mindset. The more powerful leaders in the Fetus fetishists can't exploit the life stories of the perfect. They need pain to advance their cause. They're masochists and sadists.

Anonymous said...

Linda says “Wherever I am, I am free to do God’s work,” I'm just wondering what other laws of God she follows. Didn't god want animal and human sacrifice? Stone non-virgins? Rape and murder women rather than be gay? These fundies have put us in Afghanistan...doesn't god say "As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you"
Hey, that's what God says in the bible....and those fundies say...that you can't pick and choose what part of the Bible to follow.

BarbP

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