From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/story/154211/why_is_rick_santorum_obsessed_with_your_sex_life/
Most Republicans like to talk about contraception and sexuality without actually talking about sex. Santorum seems to revel in it--and it freaks the GOP out.
February 19, 2012
Instead of writing this column, I should just be able to turn in a picture of the witness table at Thursday's congressional hearing (convened by showy California Republican Representative Darrell Issa) on Obama's birth control policy: five middle-aged men. When Democrats tried to put a female college student on the witness list, Issa rejected the appeal, saying:
"As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception, but instead about the administration's actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms Fluke is not an appropriate witness."
I watched an hour or so of the hearing and I'll give Issa partial credit: the hearing was definitely about the administration, and it was definitely not about reproductive rights. It was about the opposite of reproductive rights.
Republican congressmen used their time on the C-Span stage to rail against the administration supposedly overstepping its bounds, a weird formulation when you consider that providing birth control is a way of offering people more choices, more freedom. There was a lot of hand-wringing about Obama's lack of respect for the first amendment, a topic guaranteed to generate so much echo-chamber energy that it propelled some representatives to eyebrow-raising rhetorical excess. Rep Trey Gowdy (Republican, South Carolina), veering off the whole "religious freedom" script, questioned government involvement in birth control access on any level: "What," he sputtered, "is the compelling state interest in providing free contraception?"
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