…and then there was “skank.”

Georgetown University’s president, John J. DeGioia, repudiated Rush Limbaugh’s slut/prostitute/sex tape diatribe  today by not exactly endorsing Sandra Fluke’s message, but noting that her testimony had been respectful and sincere while condemning speech such as Limbaugh’s as “misogynistic, vitriolic, and a misrepresentation of the position of our student.”

He did this in an email sent to everyone on campus, but it apparently fell on deaf ears blind eyes for fellow Georgetown student Angela Morabito, who published a charming editorial in The College Conservative today declaring that a) Sandra Fluke does not speak for her, and certainly not for Georgetown in general, b) the effort to make birth control covered by insurance is a plot of Nancy Pelosi and the Liberal Media (I capitalize all of that because she did, and also because it amuses me to think of it as a band, which presumably plays jazz or soft rock) and c) Fluke does speak for “skanks who don’t want to take responsibility for their own choices.”

Also, Morabito apparently shares Limbaugh’s mistaken belief that the number of pills you need to take is dependent on how much sex you’re having, because she advises Fluke to consider not having so much sex that it puts her in financial peril.

Now, something important to remember– technically speaking, both condoms and the pill are methods of birth control which are used by men and women, assuming they’re using them to have sex with each other and neither party has an interest in transmitting disease or creating a pregnancy. Using condoms and the pill when you have those interests is having sex responsibly, as is using a condom in addition to some other pregnancy prevention device such as an IUD. The condom can prevent both disease and pregnancy, but it’s safer to have backup and, as discussed in the previous post, there are all kinds of reasons why women might want to be on the pill apart from that.

So ultimately, both Limbaugh and Morabito are saying that women and men having the kind of sex they want, with the kind of protection they want, with added benefits to a health of a lot of the women in this particular equation is not valuable because it could allow for women to have as much sex as they want. With men, presumably, who get no epithets thrown at them.

Hmmm.

I’ve taken the pill since I was 16, originally and still for medical reasons though I appreciate the birth control aspect as well, and never once realized that it constitutes grounds for Viagra-popping pundits and moralizing college students to make pronouncements on my sexual habits. The more you know!

ETA: Adam Serwer wrote the following in a piece today titled Dear Rush Limbaugh: Birth Control Doesn’t Work Like Viagra:

The “subsidizing-your-sex-life” argument Limbaugh is making is related to, but nevertheless distinct from the religious objection to birth control. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has opposed even allowing insurance companies to foot the bill for contraception for employees of Catholic institutions. However, it has no objection in principle to prescription drug coverage that includes Viagra. Neither, one assumes, does Rush Limbaugh. So if he wants to contend that covering birth control is akin to paying women for sex, let’s hear him explain why men who want their insurance to cover their erectile dysfunction pills are not “sluts” or “prostitutes.”