The Supreme Court docket’s decision to listen to cases which challenge the Inexpensive Care Act’s contraception mandate has already resulted in copious handwringing and predictable debate, but if lawyer and reproductive freedom hero Sandra Fluke‘s debate with Washington Examiner‘s Tim Carney is any indication, this will probably be a very easy struggle. On Tuesday night time’s All In, Fluke, together with host Chris Hayes, tossed the difficulty around with Carney, and in short order had him evaluating contraceptive coverage with Alec 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley calling a photographer a “cocksucking faggot.”

The controversy over the contraception mandate on a regular basis boils right down to both sides making the identical declare, that their non secular liberty is being infringed, and retorting to each other “No, it’s no longer.” That’s how Carney began, arguing that “Barack Obama has his own sexual morality, I’ve my own, they apply the Catholic teaching. That’s great, this can be a free us of a. I don’t assume Barack Obama will have to get to impose his morality on me the second I am going into business.”

Hayes mentioned that “The agency right here is pronouncing their freedom is being impinged because the Inexpensive Care Act requires them to pay for insurance coverage that gives start keep watch over with out a co-pay,” adding that “not giving that, proper, has some encroachment on the freedom of the worker.”

“I don’t see that as having any encroachment on the employee, for the reason that employee is perfectly free to move out and with the aid of his or her own birth regulate one at a time,” Carney responded, then made his strange comparability with Alec Baldwin’s anti-homosexual slurs. “You at MSNBC, you infringe to your hosts’ proper to go out and make anti-gay comments in their non-public lives, and I believe it’s great that you make these selections.”

After some wrangling with Carney, Hayes tossed to Fluke, who provided that the difficulty “goes even past health care. It’s an organization choosing and selecting which kinds of laws they need to comply with. And our perception on this society has at all times been that we offer protection to the non secular liberty of individuals of their non-public lives, but that when you move that line and go into the public sphere and come to a decision you need to operate as a company, make a profit off of the general public, you wish to abide by means of the public’s laws.”

That’s a devastating point to Carney’s premise that a industry is identical as the person trade proprietor, as evidenced via Carney’s desperate rejoinder. “That’s not in reality proper, Chris, at this time you and I are placing our opinions out on tv. You make cash on this, I’m not. Would it not be k for the federal executive to claim ‘Chris is in industry on TV, so we’re going to infringe on his First Amendment rights, but Tim and Sandra, they’re just doing this non-industry…”

Hayes used to be so flummoxed through Carney’s building that he hardly ever knew the place to start, but the fundamental weak spot (of many) in that argument is that Chris Hayes isn’t a industry (and even the owner of the business), just as NBC/Universal is just not a person. All of the rhetorical acrobatics on this planet received’t exchange that, and as Fluke stated, companies don’t have the same rights of expression as folks.

What is so steadily missing from the contraception debate is the idea of equal safety beneath the regulation, the selective denial of essential medical coverage to just one gender, and the truth that these businesses aren’t deciding to buy contraception, the employees are. Medical insurance is just not some present given out of benevolence, it is a component of an employee’s compensation, so all Sandra Fluke is inquiring for is that the insurance she has earned is equal to that of every other American’s.

Tim Carney is an extraordinarily smart conservative, so the truth that his argument used to be so easily derailed is an excellent sign for reproductive freedom, and for the spiritual freedom of ladies within the administrative center.

Here’s the clip, from All In: