Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Which right is righter?




The Republican party has been trying to recast their war on women as a "fight over religious freedom". Despite the spate of anti-women legislation and rhetoric to the contrary, the Republicans are merely defending the First Amendment rights of religious institutions. And that's commendable. But maybe they should take a look at that Bill of Rights that they are now using to hide their efforts to control women.

See fellas, that document actually protects the individuals' rights over institutional rights. In other words, my right to privacy as secured by the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments trumps your institutional right to free speech. In fact the entire Bill of Rights was created to protect the individual from government and other institutions. So they cannot use the First Amendment to attack a women's right to privacy.

This isn't a constitutional "Hunger Games". The Bill of Rights are not written in descending order. All rights are equal. And in a country that was founded on personal liberty, the idea that any institution would use the Bill of Rights as a cover to restrict personal freedom contradicts the very essence of our Constitution.

Friday, March 2, 2012

No Birth Control? No Viagra!


The Republicans have declared an all out war on women. But in their assault on our reproductive rights, they have overlooked something. A little blue something. They have forgotten that many of them are on the pill...just a different pill.

But unlike the Pill, their pill is medically unnecessary. Erectile dysfunction is not a disease, it is symptom. And it doesn't kill you. Granted, it may cause some men to lose the will to live, but it will not kill them.

Aging men and women alike are obsessed with retaining their youth. Women want to look like they are in their early twenties, men just want to fuck like they are. The male penis shares the same mission as the Starship Enterprise; to boldly go where no man has gone before. But as the "starship" ages, it goes on fewer and shorter missions. And sometimes may not leave the dock.

But while a docked "starship" is sad, it isn't dangerous, and it poses no medical threat to its' captain. Pregnancy, however, is another story. Over 340,000 women lost their lives while giving birth in 2008. I couldn't a single erectile dysfunctional fatality for the same year.

So I am sure the same religious institutions, right-wing politicians, and Faux News commentators that condemn the use of contraceptives hold the same dim view of erectile dysfunction medicines. And if they don't want their insurance paying for women's promiscuity, then it shouldn't be paying for men's either.

And if Rush Limbaugh is calling for women who use birth control to post their sexual liaisons online; it is only fair to call on men who use erectile dysfunction drugs do the same. But no one wants to see old men pretending to be virile. We get enough of that on C span.