Contraceptives and confusion

— The content of contemporary liberalism has apparently deteriorated to the point where it consists of little more than “free stuff, paid for by others.”

If, for instance, some law-school students at Georgetown University claim (however implausibly) difficulty in paying for birth control, then the new liberalism dictates that Georgetown should be forced to provide it to them for free, with any resistance on religious-liberty grounds subsequently denounced as a “war” on women or contraception.

Left unanswered are several obvious questions, including why the birth-control arrangements of Georgetown coeds should be the business of anyone other than Georgetown coeds, and thus a matter of public policy, or why the usual stratagems that routinely apply to the rest of us when manipulating the monthly budget-skipping the morning latte at Starbucks or raiding the pizza and beer fund, for instance-somehow don’t apply when it comes to financing the cost of consequence-free sex at one of our nation’s most prestigious (and expensive) law schools.

The most obvious solution of all when it comes to the presumed financial burdens of sexual activity, one that might even free up a bit more time to focus on the contracts and torts at Georgetown Law, is skipped over entirely (hint: it starts with an “A”).

But that would apparently be asking too much in the age of Barack Obama, where the once-crucial companion principle to individual freedom-personal responsibility (what the Founders called “virtue”)-has been casually jettisoned.

The mind reels that anyone could be so stupid as to claim a universal “right” to have the cost of their sexual activity put on other people’s tab.

Last time we looked, there was no hint in the Constitution, not even in those liberal-friendly “emanations” and “penumbras,” of any right to engage in consequence-free sex, let alone one that trumped the freedomof religion specifically guaranteed by the document’s First Amendment.

It is difficult to recall a more obvious case of how the inexorable logic of the entitlement society and the fake rights (to free stuff) it produces undermines the unalienable rights (the real ones) upon which the American system of liberty was originally based, or a more vivid illustration of the intellectual dishonesty of liberals when pursuing the liberal agenda.

The thought also occurs that, since some of us are probably at least as addicted to good scotch and handrolled cigars as Georgetown law students are to sex, President Obama should wave his magic wand and guarantee free scotch and cigars in the same way he provides Georgetown women with free birth control.

Indeed, if oppressionis henceforth to be defined as the refusal of others to pay for our pleasures, then can we not all consider ourselves sufficiently oppressed?

So for those logically challenged folks on the left side of our political spectrum, let’s go over it again, necessarily slowly, step by step, beginning with the fact that opposition to a birth-control mandate doesn’t amount to a war on either women or contraceptives.

No one is trying to prevent anyone from obtaining or using contraceptives-indeed, the issue doesn’t even involve contraceptives per se; rather, it concerns the power of the federal government to require religious institutions to provide a product in violation of their beliefs.

One is thus left to reluctantly conclude that the logical faculties of liberals have declined to the extent thatthey can no longer tell the difference between preventing someone from getting something and resisting the idea that others be required to pay for it.

The only party seeking to impose its values in this particular fray is the Obama administration.

And if there is a “war” of any kind being waged, it is being waged not by dogmatic Catholic bishops or women-hating right-wingers but by the president and his liberal supporters against religious liberty.

Rather than being part of a war on contraception, the Blunt Amendment recently defeated in the Senate on a near-party-line vote would merely have restored the arrangements regarding access to contraceptives that prevailed throughout the land just two months ago.

If there was a war on women andcontraceptives raging in America back in January, I somehow missed it. If women were having difficulty obtaining birth control prior to the Obama mandate, I missed that one too.

So let’s stop with the distortions and efforts tochange the subject-the contraceptive mandate has nothing whatsoever to do with women’s rights and resistance to it doesn’t have anything to do with a war on women.

And whether insurance companies decide to cover Viagra or other products for men has nothing to do with whether religious institutions should be required to dispense free birth control in violation of their convictions.

Sorry, but this isn’t an issue about which reasonable people can disagree; it’s closer to a red dye marker that effectively separates those who have brains that work from those who don’t.

-

———◊-

———

Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Editorial, Pages 13 on 03/12/2012

Upcoming Events