The maps that someone (*ahem*) posted earlier, had nothing to do with individuals. It had to do with political leanings in two groups of states which seem to have very different dominant influences. How this matters is in the political pressure on lawmakers in those states to pass certain laws, and in the ability of grassroots organizations to have any effect on them. And very much, in how individual rights can be curtailed and minorities can be arbitrarily criminalized.

For example, I cited the article below as a response to your in-line response-comment attached to "Price to Pay". While the Supreme Court has struck down anti-sodomy laws as they affect homosexuals, state laws that seek to deny access to strap-on phallic devices to lesbian couples are still perfectly legal.

Alabama's law on the subject is either a laughing-stock or a horror-show in some people's minds of the abuse of one particular flavor of "religion" in shaping public morality laws.

This doesn't just affect lesbians. The majority of sex toys and devices are purchased by straight people. With these laws, as I understand it, a woman giving a gift of a vibrator at a bachelorette party, could in some of those states not only be a criminal, but upon conviction, a sex-offender (on a par with a rapist or child-molester) required to register with the state and restricted from moving out of the state or living within miles of a school.

The cartoon map is, by nature, an oversimplification. That's the way cartoons make their point. But the political dynamic represented by that cartoon is very real.

Wyrm tried to raise a very good point about the two maps, one showing the areas of legality of slavery in pre-Civil-War North America and the other (and resulting cartoon map) of the results of the 2004 Presidential election being so far separated in time and populations that it was difficult to show a continuity or causal relationship. I didn't try to rebut that point. That the maps are so similar in area could just be a coincidence I'm sure, but analyzed statistically alone, the concurrence is astoundingly high. So, how come? That's a valid question. All we can do is point to, and question culture. Culture is one of the things that cross generations and populations. That the "Bible Belt" has had a strong fundamentalist evangelical influence for well over a century is a fact that I think is fairly well accepted. That slaveholding landowners in the South could find biblical passages to support the separation of the races and the rights for some people to literally own other people, goes without saying. You can find vestiges of that in the legislative arguments that were recorded.

(So, too, did Abolitionists point to the Bible to demonstrate the evils of slavery and the equality of all men under God. Many who took part in running the Underground Railroad which ferried escaped slaves to freedom in the north did so from churches and other religious aegis. So, you can't blame the Bible or religion in general for slavery. And, there were plenty of good people in the South who opposed slavery, too. After all, that was where the bulk of the Underground Railroad was.)

What is this culture of the mapped area that discounts individual rights, and judges morality here on earth and seeks to justify telling people how to live and only doles out conditional "love" if you live exactly the way they think you should? Whatever it is, it's been around a while, and seems pretty well entrenched in certain parts of the country. Some day, in Martin Luther King's words, people may indeed "Rise up and throw off their chains," and the old style authoritarian public morality will fall away in favor of an age of peace, freedom, tolerance and protecting the minority from the majority. But until then, hypocrisy and the politics of fear will rule the day.

Stan, I think you need to read this article. It's about the ban in Alabama and other states on sex toys ("marital aids," as they are euphemistically known).

Sweet Home, Alabama Dildos [click here]

The map isn't about condemning individuals. Far from it. It shows an area where individual rights may be being repressed by the political strength and laws of a large population of people who think a certain way and think everyone else should think the same way. In noting that Alabama is one of the epicenters of that trend, I have nothing but sympathy and condolences for those decent individuals who must suffer at the hands of those who rule the place.