By Lee Cole–

What more can really be said about Rush Limbaugh, after his illustrious career of saying stupid things and then facing the inevitable backlash? When it comes to the man who said “The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them,” nothing should come as a surprise. But yet that bloated, Vicodin-popping bastion of so-called conservative, Christian ideals has managed to gain the national spotlight once more with a series of recent, hateful statements on his radio show. While discussing President Obama’s insistence that all employers, including religious organizations, should be required to provide free contraception, Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown who testified before Congress on the matter, a “slut” and a “prostitute.” His explanation was that if taxpayers are required to pay for her contraception, then that makes us johns, because we are paying her to have sex. He suggested facetiously that her parents must be so proud of her, having so much sex, and later said that if she was going to have so much sex, she should at least “post the videos on line so we can all watch.”

How these two sentiments – that she is both sexually promiscuous and immoral and that her sexual promiscuity should be filmed for Rush and his male fans to enjoy — coincide within Rush’s cranium is a mystery. But these statements are only one aspect of a much larger issue, one that I certainly didn’t see on the radar for the 2012 election: the issue of contraception.

Frankly, it should be absurd to any rational person that the issue of contraception is being debated at all. It’s the 21st century but for some reason we’re treating contraception and sexuality more generally as though we were living in the Victorian era. To claim that contraception doesn’t fall under the category of preventative care is ridiculous, and the overwhelming majority of Americans have used some form of contraception at some point. At first glance, it seems like a non-issue, even for conservatives who’ve made it their sole mission in recent years to manufacture criticism of Obama. But then Rick Santorum entered the picture, and suddenly it became a viable topic for debate. Santorum and Limbaugh seem to think that increased access to birth control will mean increased promiscuity, various forms of sexual debauchery and more babies born out of wedlock. As Stephen Colbert aptly pointed out, that’s rather like saying that increased access to fire extinguishers will result in more fires. Flawed logic aside, one might well ask what it says about Santorum, Limbaugh and their like-minded cronies when they’re willing to engage in this kind of rhetoric.

Many conservatives who are anti-contraception insist that they hold this position for religious reasons. I’m sure Rush asked himself “What would Jesus do?” before bringing up Sandra Fluke’s testimony. Evidently, he had never heard “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” and decided that Jesus would call Fluke a slut. Whatever the case, Santorum and Limbaugh’s argument can be boiled down to one simple slogan: sex is bad. Perhaps it’s a vestige of our puritan founding, but there seems to be a strain of American conservatism that is particularly squeamish about sexuality. Santorum and his wife seem to have gotten over their aversion at least seven times, but I’m sure it was just horrible for them.

Support for Obama’s contraception policy is strong, and 27 companies have dropped their advertisements from Rush’s show. The anti-contraception stance, though it captured national attention briefly, appears to be backfiring. It was only ever one more attempt to sully Obama’s reputation and legacy out of many, and Santorum would be wise to drop the issue altogether. The problem with this line of attack was framed nicely by Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, who said “Republicans being against sex is not good. Sex is popular.” The real crux of the matter is that people like Santorum have the gall to pretend that most Americans (whether married or unmarried) aren’t having sex and that they aren’t using contraceptives.

The Catholic Church’s position on contraception is profoundly backwards and dangerous, and that’s putting it mildly. Santorum has no right to impose Catholic doctrine on women who happen to work for a Catholic organization and women (whether Catholic or not) should not be required to go without birth control or to pay exorbitant amounts of money for it when everyone else gets it for free. Whatever laws are made concerning healthcare coverage, they should be universal. Any attempt to make Catholic organizations exempt would be undermining the law itself. Imagine what Santorum would say about the government respecting the right of a Christian Science organization or hospital to abstain from providing adequate medication for easily preventable diseases. Something tells me that he and his conservative pals would be up in arms. But for someone like Santorum, who would have America be something akin to a Christian theocracy, the separation of church and state only applies to religions other than mainstream Christianity.

All in all, Rush is a joke, and his statements came as a direct result of Santorum’s recent rhetoric on birth control. It comes across as a desperate attempt to make Obama look bad, finding any available mole hill to turn into a mountain. Any way you look at it, Rush and Rick are wrong, and as long as sex is popular, their position will remain highly unpopular.

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Cartoon by Michael Laymen/The Louisville Cardinal