Straight Rights Watch: Wisconsin

Dan Savage—author of the nationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column "Savage Love", founder of the "It Gets Better" project created in response to bullied LGBT youth committing suicide, architect of the Rick Santorum Google bomb "Spreading Santorum"(potentially NSFW) and all around good guy—reintroduces the "Straight Rights Watch" in his latest column.

Straight Rights Watch, you ask?

We used to have a regular feature at Savage Love called “Straight Rights Watch.” It lapsed when the Democrats took the House in 2006 and political attacks on the sexual freedoms of straight people decreased. But the GOP is back in charge of the House and state houses across the country, and attacks on the sexual freedoms of heterosexuals—attempts to ban abortion, restrict access to birth control, destroy Planned Parenthood (which doesn’t just serve straight people), even make it legal to kill abortion providers (!!!)—are back, and so, sadly, is Straight Rights Watch.

That's all fine and good, but why bring this up for Wisconsin, you ask?

Gov. Scott Walker wants to again give insurance companies discretion over whether they will cover contraception. 

His budget, released Tuesday, proposes the elimination of a recently passed law that requires insurance plans that cover prescription drugs to also include coverage for prescription birth control. Walker’s budget summary says the requirement is an “unacceptable government mandate on employers with moral objections to these services,” and that it “increases the cost of health insurance for all payers.”

Oh.  That's why.

The Capital Times asked Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie for data that backs up the governor’s claim that the contraceptive equity law increases the cost of health insurance for all payers. Werwie responded, but the link he provided to a portion of the governor's budget gives no further information on that point.

That's our Wormtongue!  "When asked if A is true, the subject directed the questioner to read A again."  Brilliant!  By doing that, one can justify literally anything able to be put into any means of communication—that could come in handy for Governor Walker's spokesman!  But, absent any given evidence, I suppose he could still be proven correct by other sources... right?

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, however, cites statistics from The National Business Group on Health, an organization representing more than 160 large national and multi-national employers, which estimates that failing to provide contraception coverage actually costs employers 15 to 17 percent more than providing it.

Nah, he's just dropping more disinformation on the public.  At least he's consistent.

Even with the recursive logic and the potential burdens and problems, I don't see that much of a problem here: the pull out method -- or "pulling out", or, as Arrested Development fans call it, "The Gob Bluth special" -- works as well as any other pregnancy prevention solution.  But I will say this:

If the Koch Brothers own Trojan, I'm going to riot.