Related Links

Gay “conversion therapy”

Phil Robertson at CPAC

STI rates generally falling

Sean Hannity’s joke

Laura Ingraham is really against Jeb Bush

Chris Christie brags about cutting family planning funds

Carly Fiorina at CPAC

Uh, no

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, a researcher will explain the relationship of religious belief and political support for the contraception mandate. Also, CPAC happened again and women’s rights were yet again a punching bag.

Vice did a three part investigation into the continuing practice of so-called gay conversion therapy, which is so harmful it’s being banned for minors in some parts of the country.

• conversion *

Check out the whole documentary in show links!

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Is it just me, or is CPAC, short for the Conservative Political Action Conference, something that they have like every couple of weeks these days? Going through the archives at Rewire, I realize that no, it just feels that way. Well, kids, it’s another year and another round of conservatives lining up to compete over who can say weird, inappropriate things on a variety of topics ranging from the president’s birth place to whether or not we should be alarmed by the continuing existence of the birth control pill. I could not even begin to cover it all, but luckily, this podcast is limited to the topics of sex and gender. And even then, we got ourselves a doozy this year.

As Emily Crockett at Rewire noted, Phil Robertson of that show Duck Dynasty made an entire speech that was rambling idiocy. He got a free speech award, even though no one has ever threatened his right to free speech, suggesting that the best that conservatives can say about Robertson’s views is that they are not technically illegal. Well, good for him, I guess. But they are certainly very, very silly. He is all bent out of shape because over 100 million Americans have contracted a sexually transmitted disease.

• CPAC 1 *

He claims that simply by getting married and staying faithful, you can prevent STIs, which would be news to all those states in the mid-century that passed laws requiring blood tests to get married because they were so overwhelmed with men giving syphilis to their virgin brides. Indeed, his overall notion that somehow the “hippies” and the “beatniks” invented STIs or made them common is almost laughably naïve. STI transmission rates did spike during the 60s and 70s, but many of them are actually down, even though, if anything, people are more likely to have premarital sex. That’s because that sexual openness he denounces prevents disease. It causes people to be open about talking about condoms. It causes them to go to the doctor when they show symptoms instead of putting it off for fear of being seen as dirty. Indeed, the one STI that has an increased rate, chlamydia, only has that increased rate because of improves screening not because people are getting it more.

Fun fact: You know how they put eye drops in every baby’s eyes within minutes of it being born, a practice that has gone on for decades? That’s because chlamydia and gonorrhea are so common and have been for decades that it’s easier for doctors to assume you have it and take preventive measures. They did it for your grandmother when she gave birth, believe me. The prevalence of STIs is not a new thing because people have always had sex with multiple partners.

I wonder what Roberston would say about Sean Hannity’s joke, by the way.

• CPAC 2 *

A lot of people found his joke garbled and confusing, but I got his point. He was suggesting that because the crowd there was young and good-looking, there was going to be a lot of hooking up. I speak fluent Dad joke, y’all. I got a whole bunch of golf jokes, if you’re ever curious. Really, the garbled mess that is the conservative movement is captured in those two clips right there. Lots of intoning about how sex is the great evil downfall of our society followed up by a few jokes about how much screwing conservatives are up to and how unfair it is for liberals to suggest that they’re a bunch of prigs. He also blamed Bill Clinton for the supposed pregnancies, which doesn’t make sense if you remember what sex act the right always acts like Clinton invented. Hint, not the kind that makes babies, though, at this point, I would not be surprised to hear a conservative argue you can get pregnant from a blow job.

Most Republicans are desperate to close the voting gender gap that leaves their party with far fewer women’s votes than men. Laura Ingraham, however, decided to double down and make a bunch of sexist jokes that suggest she thinks having a huge gender gap is a good thing.

• CPAC 3 *

The joke was really supposed to be more of a swipe at Bush and his spending habits than at women, but it’s telling that Ingraham can’t make even a basic joke about rich politicians without being wildly sexist. After the interview, I’ll have even more from CPAC, this time just the stuff about reproductive rights. Hint: The speakers and most attendees are against them.

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Interview

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As I’ve said before, when I first started this podcast, not that long ago, attacks on contraception were considered really marginal even within anti-choice circles. Sure, most anti-choice organizations were opposed to birth control, but their opposition was kept very quiet. Most conservatives were careful to be seen as not opposing contraception use for grown women, treating it like a settled issue. But at this year’s CPAC, you really see how this has changed. In conservative circles, contraception use amongst low income women has become as dimly viewed, dare I say, as abortion, and efforts to make what used to be considered routine medical care seem instead like it should be a luxury good only for well-off women have become normal. Indeed, would-be presidential candidates were crawling all over themselves to show off how much contraception access they had taken away from low-income women.

• conservative 1 *

There’s no reason to dance around this: That $7.5 million he cut from funding was for birth control. Oh sure, it also covered STI testing and Pap smears and all these other things that get mentioned in this debate. But the reason that these cuts get hoots is because of birth control and the increasing conservative openness to the idea that low income women should not have access to birth control. The funds in question didn’t cover abortion. Do they ever? The word “pro-life” means anti-contraception and the anti-choice crowd is increasingly open about this and the crowd’s reaction to his cuts to contraception show how true that is.

Looking over the speeches at CPAC, it became clear that there were only two routes when it came to the issue of contraception: Either tout your efforts to make it harder for women to get contraception or accuse people who care about the issue of being sex-obsessed sluts. Or that’s how I interpret it when I hear comments like this from Carly Fiorina.

• conservative 2 *

You see this accusation a lot: If you bring up reproductive rights, you’re accused of trying to turn women into “single issue” voters. But why? If I ask a question about your policy on building road infrastructure, no politician would accuse me of trying to say that Americans have no interests outside of driving. If I ask about unemployment, you don’t accuse me of saying that all Americans are out of work. This is just a way of implying that women who care about this issue care too much about it, which is to say that it’s implying we’re all a bunch of sluts. It’s a derailing tactic that relies on sexual shaming.

Of course, one of the interesting things about CPAC was how conservative politicians that were pretending to barely know what abortion is during the election suddenly became rabidly anti-choice now that they’re firmly ensconced back in office. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker ran misleading ads during the campaign implying that he’s pro-choice by highlighting that he supported a bill that didn’t technically ban abortion.

• conservative 3 *

What he failed to mention in the ad is the bill was aimed at shutting down clinics, so while a woman technically had an abstract right to choose, she would not have access to a doctor to work with. But he’s given up even pretending to support that abstract right to choose now that he’s been safely re-elected. Right after CPAC, where he was highlighting his efforts to cut birth control funding in the state, Walker wrote an open letter signaling his eagerness to sign a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks. So much for leaving the final decision to a woman and her doctor, I guess.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, using prison as if it were some kind of microcosm of society edition. I don’t even know how to introduce this nutty statement about homosexuality from Ben Carson.

• Carson *

People do not go into prison straight and come out gay. Yes, there are some same-sex encounters and even relationships that happen in prison that might not happen out of it. All that proves is that people can perform sexual behaviors outside of their preference under duress, something we already knew from all the thousands of gay people who have heterosexual relations while trying to stay in the closet. Carson seems to be operating under the touch-one-penis-and-you’re-gay mentality. Which, I must point out, takes the entire question out of the realm of choice if things actually operated that way.