It's not about contraception, it's about over (but it'll be back!)

Noting Minority Leader McConnell's plans to push the Roy Blunt bill to permit any employer to deny family planning coverage in their employees' health insurance plans, John Cole is reduced to sputtering:

I’m simply speechless. I honestly can not believe that in this day and age, the GOP is going to go all out and wage this war. This has nothing to do with religious liberty, and this is just a war on women. They are just done pretending they are anything but religious zealots and fanatics.

With all respect and affection for this great blog artist, I don't think so—not "just" a war on women, though women are clearly the primary targets.  I think [jump]

Bishops are very concerned about blogs. From Abbey Roads.

there's a clue in this little eruption to what this war is really "about", which is not what any of us has been thinking, though many have groped in the right direction.

"It's not about contraception, it's about freedom."

Have you been tempted to think this slogan doesn't actually mean anything at all? That it's just dog whistle nonsense meant to rouse the listeners' emotions? How on earth is it not about contraception? How is it about the freedom of conscience of a few dozen bishops but not about the freedom of choice of many thousands of women?

Well, one thing is—if it's about contraception, why do you suppose Mitch McConnell, or Willard Mitt Romney, would be getting excited about it? Do you think they care about contraception? Do think Episcopalian atheist Karl Rove cares about contraception, for goodness' sake? Of course these people could be using the issue, the way they have traditionally used abortion, as a decoy for attracting all those poor what's-the-matter-with-Kansas voters, but they hardly need any more of those, and this one is especially weak, given that virtually all sexually active straight women practice family planning, and few of their menfolk are crazy enough to object.

No, look at the text of Blunt's current proposal: it is written to allow any plan that

declines to provide coverage of specific items or services because —

“(i) providing coverage (or, in the case of a sponsor of a group health plan, paying for coverage) of such specific items or services is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan; or
“(ii) such coverage (in the case of individual coverage) is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the purchaser or beneficiary of the coverage.

It really isn't about contraception—that is, it could be contraception but it could equally be anything else that a sponsor, issuer, or other entity might object or claim to object to; and it's not about bishops, either, but any sponsor, issuer, or other entity (do corporations have religious beliefs and moral convictions?)—it's about freedom, but not freedom for everybody: freedom for the 1%, for the haute bourgeoisie, for the so-called "job creators". (Ignore that second clause about the employee—do you think they'd really let you demand a policy that doesn't cover blood transfusions, or vaccinations, or HIV screening?)

It's about the retroactionary redefinition of freedom as something that means something different to people of different classes. The working stiff is free to choose between ABC and Fox,  PlayStation and WII, Disneyland and Universal Studios, quitting the job or carrying on (but don't expect any assistance when you quit), give me a transfusion or let me die. The CEO is free to have an exquisitely precise sense of what his conscience requires in his relationships with the members of the proletariat. Maybe he'll find he has grave moral concerns with paid maternity leave, or accessibility for the handicapped, or paying the minimum wage!

And the Karl Roves play for the long term, you know. They know the whole so-called controversy is a joke and the Blunt bill has no chance of getting signed. What they want is to get this language into the discourse, to make it start seeming like a normal way of looking at things; and then one day it might be part of a congressional deal, as with school vouchers, or drilling in ANWR, or hanging unfeasible work requirements on the welfare recipient. It's about restoring the ancien régime, and let's not forget that the Bishops were one of the three estates.

Awakening of the Third Estate. From website La Révolution Française by Martine Lopez.