 Today, the House of Representatives passed a bill codifying the right to contraception. This comes after Justice Clarence Thomas in his concurring opinion in Dobbs cited interest in overturning the precedent established in Griswold, which claimed that there was a constitutional right to contraception. Now I love these votes because it is forcing Republicans to demonstrate to the entire country how extreme they are. Now I'll give them credit where it's due. I was actually pleasantly surprised when 47 Republicans yesterday voted to codify the right to same-sex marriages. Now sure, it is the case that the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party voted against same-sex marriages, but still 47, even though it's 2022. That's pretty surprising to me, so good on those 47 Republicans for doing the bare minimum. But when it comes to contraception, not much has changed for Republicans apparently. So this is the tally here. This was a vote on whether or not to advance the right to contraception act, and as you can see, the overwhelming majority of Republicans voted to send this legislation back to committee, meaning that they were against it. They were against the right to contraception. In 2022, 190 Republicans voted against the right to contraception. I think that most people watching this weren't alive when contraception was a controversial issue. From my age, don't view this as controversial at all. It doesn't matter what your political affiliation is. I can only recall my mom talking about how when she was younger and she needed birth control, that was controversial, and church officials and her parents gave her shit. But nobody who is my age can recall a time when, among our peers, we were debating this issue because it's just not controversial. But to Republicans in 2022, the right to contraception is apparently a no-go. Now here's what was so controversial about this bill. As HuffPost reports, the right to contraception act introduced by Representative Kathy Manning codifies the right to birth control into federal law by creating a statutory right for people to obtain and use contraceptives as well as codifying protections for physicians who provide contraceptives. The bill protects a range of contraceptives approved by the Food and Drug Administration and defines contraception as any action taken to prevent pregnancy, including the use of contraceptives or fertility awareness-based methods and sterilization procedures. The bill authorizes the Department of Justice to take civil action against any federal or state official who attempts to restrict birth control access, and it allows those affected to also take civil action against anyone who attempts to enforce any restriction on contraception. But still, 190 Republicans said no to that. More of them came out in favor of same-sex marriages. So this is really, I don't know what the right word is for it. It's not necessarily surprising. It's just really stupid. I'm glad that 47 Republicans came out in favor of marriage equality, but I would have expected more to come out in favor of contraception, especially considering so many of them are against abortion because the number one way to stop abortions is to provide people with access to contraception. When you expand access to contraception, you reduce the need for abortion, but here we are. Now, I've got to say, we talked about same-sex marriage yesterday and how Republicans are really apprehensive about vocalizing their position on this because times have changed. 71% of Americans now agree that same-sex marriage should be the law of the land, and that includes a majority of Republicans. But now, so-called moderate GOP senators like Mitt Romney and so-called populist GOP senators like Josh Hawley are forced to show their true colors. They have to tell their entire base, we don't support this really popular thing that you want. Now, they could just do what their base wants, but at the same time, they have to walk this fine line between appeasing extremists within their party and appeasing what most Republicans who are just normie Republicans rank and follow GOP voters want, which is marriage equality, which is access to contraception. So they're in this really awkward position where now they have to put their names on something and it's not just same-sex marriage and contraception. The GOP and the Senate is going to be forced to show their cards on the issue of marijuana legalization as well because that too is coming up for a vote. And as I stated yesterday, they are not happy that they are forced to take public positions on these things. And it's creating this situation where they're doing this tap dance where they're pretending to not know about it or haven't read it. They're trying to come up with some focus group tested way to appease everyone, but there's really no getting around it. If you are against same-sex marriage, contraception, cannabis legalization, you're against what the majority of Americans want. But here we are. So I think that this political headline put it best. The GOP freezes up on same-sex marriage. Senate Democrats won't have assurances of the 10 Republican votes they need to break a filibuster on the issue. They're moving ahead anyway. So in other words, oh, you don't want to take a stand on this? And they're screaming right now and you love to see it. So let's get into the article. As Politico explains, Mitt Romney doesn't think it's necessary. Richard Burr hasn't read it and Todd Young is fixated on microchips, okay? Those are some of the answers Republicans gave Wednesday on whether they'd back legislation writing same-sex marriage into law. I'm keeping a very open mind, said Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, one of many Republicans who said Wednesday they are either undecided or haven't looked at the bill that would enshrine the Supreme Court's or Bergfelde Hodge's decision as law. She added, I have a good number of very close friends that are same-sex married. Senators like Burr, Romney Ernst and Young aren't giving hard no's by any means, but they aren't racing to provide the 10 ironclad commitments Democrats would need to make same-sex marriage a law either. Even retiring senators were keeping their views to themselves about the four-page bill. Burr merely said, I haven't looked at the legislation. Is that too much to ask for? I'm aware of this bill, I haven't looked at it, said Pat Toomey, who many Democrats think is open to voting for same-sex marriage and backed the non-discrimination bill in 2013. But other than a handful of hard no's from the likes of Senators John Cornyn and Lindsey Graham, most Republicans refuse to tip their hands. Senator Chuck Grassley said he's waiting for his staff to review the legislation. Senator Ron Johnson said he needed to review it and Senator Mike Braun said he's not committing on it yet. I'm sorry, but are we still pretending that Lindsey Graham is a heterosexual male? Does anyone think this? I mean, you can drop the charade, Lindsey Graham. We know that you are probably a six on the Kinsey scale, so stop pretending. But no, his response to this was, well, I support the Defense of Marriage Act, which was the 1996 law that was signed by Bill Clinton that banned marriages at the federal level. So even if a state were to legalize marriage equality like Massachusetts did before the federal government had, well, the marriage wouldn't be recognized federally. So that's what Lindsey Graham is saying he supports. Lindsey, you're gay. Stop pretending. I don't know if that's politically incorrect to say, but we all know it. Sorry, we're all thinking it. You're gay. You're not fooling anyone. Stop pretending. Now, I love Joni Ernst's comment here because she's keeping an open mind, but yet she knows people in same sex marriages. OK, so even though you know them and they're lovely people and your friends with them, you're still like, well, I don't know if they should have the same right that I have. I mean, I love this so much. Because even if they express their open mindedness to voting in favor of legalizing marriage equality, they still are showing how out of touch and tone deaf they are. Now, in a follow up to what we learned yesterday about Marco Rubio saying it's a stupid waste of time, turns out he was actually confronted by one of his colleagues who happens to be gay. As CNN's Manu Raju explains, as he was walking on an elevator yesterday, GOP Senator Marco Rubio told me that a vote on a bill to codify gay marriage was a stupid waste of time. But when he said that, there was another senator on the elevator who heard him, Tammy Baldwin, who is gay, quote, you probably would have loved to be on the elevator to see the exchange after Baldwin told me today, adding, of course, I did speak to him about the remark I said that the recent Supreme Court decision eroded a constitutional right to privacy. She said she told him there's a whole bunch of cases that have been decided based on a constitutional right to privacy that are in jeopardy, which she disagrees with. And anyways, I said, we'll be talking some more. Baldwin would not say if she was offended by his remark, we're not going to get into that Baldwin said, I'm counting votes. She predicted there would be 10 GOP votes to break the filibuster. Yeah, well, I'm not so optimistic. Now, at this point in time, there's only four GOP senators who have committed to supporting same sex marriage that includes Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman and Tom Tillis. Now, the no's include Bill Cassidy, John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, Jim Inhofe, Marco Rubio and Roger Wicker. Now, when it comes to the undecided for so-called moderates desperately avoiding questions about this, that includes Rand Paul, a so-called libertarian hilarious that this is so difficult for him. Mitt Romney, who, of course, is not going to support this. He's a Mormon. Mormons are some of the most disgustingly homophobic people in the country. So not a surprise there. Mitch McConnell, Rick Scott, Pat Toomey, among others. So I said it yesterday, but I think it's worth restating. I think that Democrats should force every single Republican to go on the record on a number of really popular issues. This is the way that you expose them for the extremists that they are. I mean, a hundred and ninety House Republicans said, we don't believe Americans should have the right to contraception. That is extreme. That's an antiquated view that most of them have that I didn't even expect them to have. I thought that most Republicans would be in favor of this, even if they're personally against it. But just for optic optics sake, but no, most Republicans, the overwhelming majority of House Republicans are against the right to contraception. Now, we'll see where they fall on issues in the Senate. But you can see they really feel uncomfortable vocalizing their views on this issue. Good. Make them uncomfortable. Make them vote on everything where they are going to be forced to tell their base they don't support something that they strongly believe in. Up yours. Up yours. Up yours. Son of bitches, bitches, bitches. Whoop, moralists. Moralists, moralists, moralists. The dream I saw my maternal grandmother, she was stroking herself absentmindedly. I let her have her way. The genital rage in was exposed. I let her have her way.