When you ask if President Obama might be losing the Catholic vote because certain religious non-profits, excluding churches, will have to provide health insurance that covers – gasp! – contraception, it is probably good to keep a key distinction in mind.
To wit, there’s a difference between the Catholic Church – as in the group of mostly celibate older men who make policy for the institution, including some real doozies with respect to, you know, their priests raping underage parishioners – and Catholics, as in the millions of people who worship in a Catholic church with some degree of regularity and, who for the most part, completely ignore and disagree with the Catholic Church’s decrees on contraception.
Obama might have lost some of the Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops in the American Catholic hierarchy. And neither Newt Gingrich nor Rick Santorum were ever going to vote for him.
But I’m guessing that catholic parishioners aren’t going to be flipped by a controversy over contraception when roughly 75% of them have no issue with it in the first place.
I live in Southern California, grew up in New York and Minneapolis, and have family scattered in three countries. I am a liberal, and woe be to anyone who says that with any sort of moronic disclaimer (i.e. “I’m a liberal but I’m not crazy” or “I’m a liberal but I still believe terrorism is bad”). I’m a liberal, OK? No apologies. However, I do think, when I hear the word uttered by some people, of Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
