{"id":668,"date":"2012-02-08T14:43:12","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T22:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/blog\/?p=668"},"modified":"2012-02-08T14:43:12","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T22:43:12","slug":"do-republicans-have-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/?p=668","title":{"rendered":"Do Republicans Have Sex?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ok let’s get down to brass tacks.\u00a0 We know the Republicans are mostly just playing politics with women’s health. If we stop them from bashing birth control they’ll find something else. But now that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled the California ban on gay marriage unconstitutional, it seems appropriate to out the opponents of birth control. For being straight.
\n\u00a0
\nMost heterosexually active Americans, including most Catholics<\/a>, use birth control, as do many others who use hormones to treat a medical condition.\u00a0 The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops <\/a>opposes birth control. The Catholic Church operates a large chunk of the nation’s hospitals and universities, and provides health insurance to its millions of employees, many of whom are not Catholic.\u00a0 The Affordable Care Act proposes that these institutions will have to continue offering coverage for contraception without co-pays or deductibles<\/a>, like any other employer, or start doing so, as of 2013. Actual churches are excluded from this requirement.\u00a0 The Bishops are riled up about this. Congressional Republicans, and some in the “liberal” media<\/a>, are echoing distress at the law’s incursion on the church’s right to impose its religious views on its employees and students.
\n\u00a0
\nSo, do the critics walk the walk?\u00a0 We’ll take the Bishops at their word that they don’t have kids. But members of Congress love to talk about their families.\u00a0 So we should be able to tell whether or not members who say they don’t believe that contraception is an essential aspect of health care, especially for women, are likely users of contraception.
\n\u00a0
\nThe websites for the 16 Republican members of the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee describe all but two as having children.\u00a0 The breakdown:
\n\u00a0
\nOne child: 2 members: Leonard Lance, Tim Murphy (Rep. Murphy, from a hearing on this subject: “It is not our job as Catholics to tell God what he should do. It is our job to learn and follow his teachings.”)
\n\u00a0
\nTwo children: 5 members: Mike Rogers, Marsha Blackburn, Bob Latta, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Fred Upton
\n\u00a0
\nThree children: 5 members: Joe Pitts, Michael Burgess, John Shimkus, Bill Cassidy, Brett Guthrie
\n\u00a0
\nFour children: 2 members: Phil Gingrey, Joe Barton<\/p>\n

Their family size suggests that these right wing opponents of medical contraception are in fact ardent practitioners of what they want to deny to the rest of us.\u00a0 There are other possible (though unlikely) explanations: Despite being married, among them for collectively more than a century, perhaps they rarely consummate their relationships.\u00a0 This may explain their often public irritability.\u00a0 Alternatively, these uncommonly blessed couples might have beaten the statistical odds for success with the rhythm method of birth control.
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0Next time they decide to spout off about it in public, maybe we should ask them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0*** Take Action: Sign at the White House petition website to save contraception coverage!<\/a><\/p>\n

Online on Huffington Post:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/ellen-r-shaffer\/republicans-contraception-birth-control_b_1263156.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ok let’s get down to brass tacks.\u00a0 We know the Republicans are mostly just playing politics with women’s health. If we stop them from bashing birth control they’ll find something else. But now that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oursilverribbon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}