WINGNUTS' ANTI-GAY IMPLOSION

[DonViejo]

Rightwing nuts’ anti-gay implosion: How a new ploy can doom the party

What began as opposition to a contraception mandate, on religious grounds, is now a real can of worms. Oops!

BRIAN BEUTLER

An anti-gay bill that may become law in Kansas could test the consistency of conservatives who oppose the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employer sponsored insurance include birth control coverage.

What does being gay have to do with birth control, other than that religious conservatives regard both as sinful forms of contraception? I’ll get to that in a minute.

First, the backdrop. Obamacare’s contraception mandate faces a number of challenges, including from devout business owners, who argue that complying with it — and, thus, facilitating employee access to birth control — would violate their religious beliefs.

Elite conservatives and Congressional Republicans have rallied to their defense. Not, they insist, because they personally share with the owners’ uneasiness about birth control per se, but because the mandate tramples religious liberty. There has revealingly been no similar condemnation of other Obamacare benefit mandates that would presumably require entrepreneurial Christian Scientists to facilitate all manner of medical care that their religion forbids. Perhaps that’ll change if a Christian Scientist takes the Obama administration to court. Maybe there’ll be a conservative outcry against the Affordable Care Act’s preventive service requirements (nothing tramples religious liberties like colorectal cancer screenings). But they would be taking a first step on a slope I doubt they want to slide down on their backsides.

Which brings us to Kansas.

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http://www.salon.com/2014/02/14/rightwing_nuts_anti_gay_implosion_how_a_new_ploy_can_doom_the_party/