The Freedom Bulletin

…is the Obama administration’s decision to force health insurance companies to provide free birth control and preventative services for women, as well as this editorial in support of it by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

The new policy requires insurance companies to cover, with no co-pays, co-insurance, or deductibles, a variety of services including contraception, sterilization, checkups, domestic violence screenings, STD and contraception counseling, HPV testing, gestational diabetes screening, breastfeeding counseling, and breastfeeding equipment. The reasoning behind this, Sebelius writes, is that women “have unique healthcare needs” and “are more likely to need preventive healthcare services.”

Feminism is the belief that men and women should be treated equally. Although many people extol how good the new policy is for women, it is anti-feminist to give women special attention and care and to make generalizations about how many health services they need. It is sexist to cover gender-specific health services for women but not men. It is also sexist to cover gender-neutral health services – including checkups, STD counseling, sterilization, contraception, and domestic violence screening (men can be abused too) – when women use them but not when men use them, as the new policy seems to do.

This brings me to another reason why “free” birth control is wrong: as I explained earlier and will repeat only briefly, it is unfair. The purpose of health insurance is to cover catastrophic medical expenses that cannot be prevented. Using birth control, becoming pregnant, and even going for a checkup are choices that people can make, and are therefore inappropriate for insurance. There is a completely free way of preventing pregnancy; it is called abstinence. Sex is important to many people, but that is not a good reason for everyone to be forced to subsidize it. After all, guns are important to many people (and protected by the Second Amendment), but I have never heard anyone suggest that every American be provided with a free gun. News articles and scholarly research are important, but the Obama administration has not announced any plans to force websites to provide these for free. Why is sex considered worthy of subsidizing, while research and the right to bear arms are not? Birth control, STD testing, and breastfeeding equipment are all goods that people should be free to purchase if they would like, but there is no right to get them for free.

Fairness demands that people have the option of purchasing health insurance plans that do not cover services related to contraception, STDs, or pregnancy, and gender equality demands equal insurance coverage for both genders. Despite what so-called advocates for women think, providing “free” birth control (and all the other free services included in the Obama administration’s policy) is both anti-feminist and unjust.

Presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum both signed a pledge created by an organization called the Family Leader, called “The Marriage Vow: A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family” (PDF). The pledge is controversial because it is anti-gay-marriage and cites (possibly false) statistics showing that African-Americans born into slavery had a greater chance of living in a two-parent family than African-Americans born today. But the main impression that I get after reading the pledge, which I find more offensive and wrong, is its disrespect for single people. Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, to their credit, declined to sign.

Among the requirements of the pledge:

“Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.”

Maybe there are statistics indicating these things, but this doesn’t have anything to do with the president’s job. Laws should not be made based on statistics but should treat people as individuals.

“Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended ‘second chance’ or ‘cooling off periods for those seeking a ‘quickie divorce.’”

Welfare and tax policy should treat married and single people equally, and if someone decides that marriage is not right for them, there is no reason why they should be forced to stay in that marriage for any length of time.

“Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children – from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.”

This statement lumps a bunch of different things together and seems to assume that they are all things that men coerce women and children into doing. In addition to ignoring the fact that people can freely choose to do (most of) these things, this is incredibly sexist. It’s just as possible for women to force men to do things as the other way around.

“Prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.”

I’m guessing this statement means opposing allowing women to serve in combat. This is wrong, in my opinion, because the law (and the rules of the military) should treat men and women equally in all respects. Also, men can be victims of rape, sexual harassment, torture, enslavement, and sexual leveraging, too.

“Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.”

This might sound harsh, but more childbearing is the last thing America (and the world) needs. The Earth’s population already uses far more energy than is sustainable, and open spaces are rapidly filling up with condominiums and suburban sprawl. In order to save the planet, the population needs to shrink.

In short, the purpose of the government is to protect peoples’ rights and liberties, not to promote one way of living (getting married and having children) over another way of living (being single). I don’t know if I would want to vote for a candidate who signed this pledge.

The Milwaukee teachers’ union is suing for health insurance plans that cover Viagra. This is happening as the district is in the middle of a budget crisis and has laid off 482 teachers. Taxpayer-funded Viagra would cost $786,000 or enough for 12 teachers to keep their jobs.

The lawsuit claims that excluding Viagra from insurance coverage discriminates against men. According to MSNBC…

“In recent years, several lawsuits have claimed that employer health plans discriminate against women when they cover Viagra but not contraceptives or infertility treatment.

But the Milwaukee union says males are treated unfairly here. In one brief, its lawyers argued that vaginal cream, anti-bacterial medicine and estrogen replacement medication for female sexual dysfunction are covered. Other options such as penile pumps and implants included in the plans “are far less desirable than oral medication,” the filing said.

District spokesman Philip Harris said school officials won’t comment because “we just want to leave it alone.” But Miriam Horwitz, an attorney representing the board, argued in court filings the drugs weren’t necessary to treat life-threatening disease or have children.”

I have an idea – none of these things should be covered! The only things that should be covered by health insurance are things that people need in order to be healthy. This is especially true of plans that are taxpayer-funded.

You don’t need to have sex or have children to be healthy, so contrary to the opinion of the school board’s lawyer, neither Viagra nor infertility treatments (or maternity care, for that matter) should be covered. Whether to have sex or have children is a choice, and it is unfair for people who choose not to do these things to subsidize the decisions and preferences of those who do.

No Viagra, no infertility treatments, no penis pumps, no contraceptives, no maternity care, and no estrogen replacements. Discretionary procedures and medications should never be covered by health insurance, no matter what the person’s gender. Paying only for things that are medically necessary is the fairest policy for everyone.

Check out this great letter to the editor in today’s Boston Globe. It’s possibly the best letter I have ever read, and I agree with every word of it!

“Just because I am a single woman who didn’t make a life choice to pop out babies and throw myself on the mercy (and taxpayers’ backs!) of the state of Massachusetts doesn’t mean my situation is any less important to the reading public or any less dire.”

P.S. The other letter on that page isn’t bad either.

Yay! Alison Lobron in the Boston Globe wrote exactly what I’ve been saying! Rewarding married people with health insurance and other benefits from their spouses’ jobs is discriminatory to single people:

“Our country’s habit of passing out financial perks based on marital status is hardly a time-honored tradition. According to marriage historian Stephanie Coontz, it wasn’t until the early 20th century that US governments and corporations began using marital status as a way to decide who got which benefits. ‘The development of the welfare state here was more attached to marriage than to individual rights,’ she says.

Extending the privileges of one spouse to the other might have made sense back when women were often required to leave the workforce upon marriage. But now it’s hopelessly dated. ‘Why should my access to health care depend on whom I’m sleeping with?’ Coontz says. ‘It’s a good reason to argue for the state to develop other ways to extend health insurance and benefits.’”

Proponents of gay marriage should heed this, since they often argue that allowing gays to marry is the only way to have equality. Actually, they just want to join with married straight people to discriminate against singles. True equality will only happen when married people no longer get benefits that single people don’t get. The best way to do that is for the government to get out of the marriage business altogether.

Since Proposition 8 was passed, outlawing gay marriage in California, liberals have been complaining almost nonstop that gay people’s rights are being violated. First of all, this irks me because the liberals creamed conservatives on election day, taking control of the presidency and Congress and killing Question 1 in Massachusetts. You’d think this would be enough to make them happy. But you’d be wrong.

Gay marriage supporters like to compare their struggle with African Americans’ struggle for civil rights. This is a completely inaccurate analogy. At various times in our history, blacks were subjected to slavery, were unable to vote, were lynched, and their property was vandalized.  All people have a fundamental right to vote, own property, make their own decisions, and of course own themselves, so the treatment of blacks described above violated their rights.

On the other hand, gay rights activists are arguing that their rights are being violated because they cannot get married. This isn’t true, because marriage is not a right. Gay people, just like everyone else, have the rights to own property, own themselves, make choices, and live without interference, but they don’t have a right to marriage.

By arguing that they have a fundamental right to marriage, gay people are themselves being discriminatory, because marriage is an inherently discriminatory institution. It discriminates against people who choose not to get married. Basically, marriage is when the government gives people benefits (such as tax breaks) for deciding to form a lifelong partnership with another person. By giving benefits to married people that it does not give to single people, the government sends the message that married people are superior to single people. This is simply wrong. There are many reasons why individuals would rahter be single than married: maybe they are asexual, maybe they would like to live alone and be in control of their own house, maybe they would rather date lots of different people instead of committing to one. Whatever the reason, single people are just as good as married people, and being single is just as desirable a state as being married.

When people claim that gays have a right to marry people of the same gender, they are actually saying that gays have a right to be treated in a way that discriminates against single people. It makes sense to argue that gay people have a right to form any consensual relationship they want. It does not make sense to argue that gay people have a right to form a lifelong partnership with someone of the same gender and get government benefits for it.

I am not being anti-gay, since I don’t think straight people have a right to marriage either. Instead, the government shouldn’t be in the business of granting recognition to relationships in the first place. People should be able to form whatever relationships they want and call them whatever they want to.

Owning property, making one’s own decisions about medicine, and bearing arms are all examples of fundamental rights. These rights are currently being violated due to the 16th Amendment, the Durham-Humphrey Amendment to the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Brady Bill, respectively, acts which, interestingly enough, are predominantly supported by liberals. It’s awfully hypocritical to oppose the rights to own property, make decisions autonomously, and bear arms, while claiming that there is a fundamental right to marriage.