Strange Animals by Chad Kultgen Read Free Book Online Page B

would notice. At lunch she was able to get to the nurse’s office, where her mother was called and she was allowed to go home. She never told anyone about her encounter with Mr. Forman, and for a few years she assumed this was the way all men thought of women: as the reason humanity was cast out of paradise, as inconsiderate children who must be punished regularly, as the objects of men’s disappointment.
    As she gained reason with age, she grew to understand that only the most devout Christians felt this way about women, and it was on this topic that she focused her academic mind. She was curious to find out why Christian men had such an innate disdain for women, beyond the simple explanation that it was written into the Bible, and she became anxious to end that mode of thinking if at all possible. She began to study every Christian and conservative sect and mode of thought she could find, believing they were all simply new ways to hate women. Pro-life activism, the drive to defund Planned Parenthood, to protect the supposed sanctity of heterosexual marriage, to enact stricter voter identification requirements, and several other movements were all simply ways for men to maintain control over women, in Karen’s mind.
    As she sat at her computer, considering ways she could use her pregnancy to draw attention to the double standard that existed in Christianity, she began to think that what she was doing was much bigger than just a dissertation. For the first time in her life, she began to feel that she could do something that changed the way people thought, something that could have impact beyond the insulated world of academia.
    Her initial idea, as she’d told Tanya, was to have the child and publicly give it to a gay couple who was seeking to adopt. This would very clearly outrage the religious right, and she was more than happy to be the cause of that outrage, but she realized that the idea wouldn’t uncover any new hypocrisy in the church. It was already widely known that Christians viewed homosexuality as an abomination, and although they sought to protect every unborn child, they condemned those same children if they grew into anything other than heterosexual Christians. Her first plan would shed no new light on this subject.
    She searched the Internet for statistics about percentages of gay and straight couples who were actively trying to adopt a child as compared to percentages of couples who were granted the ability to adopt on a per capita basis. There was clearly a double standard, but again this felt like old news. Karen understood that one more log on that fire wouldn’t make it burn bright enough to draw much new attention.
    Searching for other statistics, she found that of the 314 million citizens of the United States, 51 percent described themselves as pro-life. The number was shocking to Karen, who assumed it would have been much lower, but it began to give her an idea. If there were 157 million Americans who would honestly claim that saving a child’s life was a moral imperative for them, then there had to be some way she could force them to prove this claim or be revealed as hypocrites.
    After teaching a class later that afternoon, an idea came to Karen as she was driving home. It might be the best idea she would ever have, the idea she would be known for academically for the rest of her life. If executed properly, she knew, it would garner attention far beyond her supervisor and the PhD board. It could make national news, maybe even global. After thinking through some possible outcomes of her plan, she realized that some of them frightened her. The outcome that frightened her most was the one she most hoped for. For that reason, sheknew she had to carry it out—and that she would have to remain anonymous in her efforts.
    So, without consulting Paul, the father of her unborn child, Karen turned her car around and drove back to campus. She entered one of the public computer labs