It’s really amazing that in 2014 Americans are still fighting over birth control. As in whether or not contraception makes Jesus cry, and whether or not health-insurance policies should be beholden to His tears.
It’s also amazing that in 2014 gay and lesbian couples still don’t have the legal right to marry across the country.
But hey, at least same-sex couples don’t have to worry about birth control, right?
Wrong.
Granted, same-sex couples can’t exactly make each other pregnant by accident. But there is a very clear link between the anti-contraception and the antigay movements. In fact, there always has been. It’s an argument I’ve been making for years (and I’m not the only one).
For far too long, LGBT civil rights have been fought for primarily by LGBT people. That has changed over the years in that more and more heteros are actively supporting equality. But let’s face it, privilege — in this case heterosexual privilege — makes it pretty easy to say, “Hey, that’s not my fight,” even for folks who believe in the cause.
But the antigay movement has always been an anti-sex movement. And to those of us who have followed it closely, it wasn’t hard to see that the antigay right wouldn’t be satisfied until they were able to legislate all sex, gay or straight, and that heterosexual women were especially high-value targets.
And now here we are in 2014 and major players in the Republican Party have enthusiastically taken up the anti-birth-control rallying cry, and the United States Supreme Court just heard a case brought by Hobby Lobby, a store that sells glue guns and puffy paint, claiming that they shouldn’t have to provide health insurance that includes contraceptive coverage to their employees. Because Jesus.
The best part? Just like so many anti-LGBT arguments are based on completely inaccurate and distorted ideas of LGBT people, Hobby Lobby’s legal temper tantrum is based on completely inaccurate and distorted ideas about how IUDs and the morning-after pill work. In Hobby Lobby land, these types of birth control kill babies. In the real world, you can say they do, and you can believe they do, but they do not.
But Hobby Lobby has argued that being forced to offer IUDs and emergency contraception is against their religious beliefs. And that they, a corporation, should have their religious beliefs trump the health care of their employees. Even though what they believe about these particular methods of contraception is completely wrong.
Granted, the Supreme Court allowed corporations free-speech rights in the Citizens United case, a decision that has already had disastrous consequences for democracy in America. After all, if money is speech, as the court ruled, then whoever has the most money (corporations) has the most speech. And whoever has the least money (the vast majority of Americans) has little to no voice at all. Granting corporations freedom of religion would give corporations even more power based on whatever the fuck they claim to believe, so long as they claim they believe it for God.
According to Salon, Hobby Lobby founder and CEO David Green’s money has been tied to anti-gay marriage initiatives as well as the odious “religious freedom” bill in Arizona that would have made it totally OK to discriminate against LGBT people so long as you claimed that you did it for God.
This should surprise no one.
There are plenty of other places to buy foam board, tempura paints, rainbow-patterned duct tape and yard sticks (which could be used to make some fabulous protest signs). And, so, as they say in the crafting business, fuck Hobby Lobby. Seriously, fuck that place.
D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world, she reviews rock ’n’ roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister.