by Ira Chernus
Religion Dispatches<\/p>\n
When the Obama administration declared that employees of Catholic institutions must have contraception covered in their health plans (before the president\u2019s deft backtracking compromise), one group of religious Americans stood firmly opposed to Obama\u2019s original position.<\/p>\n
No, it wasn\u2019t Catholics. Despite the bishops\u2019 howls of protest, poll after poll showed Catholics supporting the administration\u2019s new rule. The opposition came from white evangelical Protestants, who stood against Obama by a whopping margin of 56 to 38. <\/p>\n
Protestants take a stronger stand than Catholics against birth control? Curious, to say the least. <\/p>\n
Rachel Maddow explains it by suggesting that birth control isn\u2019t really the issue here. It\u2019s just another convenient excuse\u2014like controversies over Planned Parenthood and the morning-after pill\u2014for conservatives to tar Obama as the commander-in-chief of a \u201cwar on religion.\u201d \u201cThe right has picked a fight on this issue,\u201d says Maddow, \u201cbecause religiosity is a convenient partisan cudgel to use against Democrats in an election year.\u201d <\/p>\n
Okay, Rachel. But what makes religiosity convenient? If it\u2019s all about politics, \u201cconvenient\u201d means effective in moving voters from one column to the other. <\/p>\n