Actually, I would think that psychological science is well-enough advanced to give us some pretty good working definitions of personal degradation. The problem is that both sides of, say, the abortion debate can use that to their benefit.
Otherwise (and that was nitpicking) you’re right: “Natural Law” means nothing. There are no “inalienable” rights.
And…if someone here declares, yes, there are, then tell me which side of the abortion debate is “inalienable”: the right of a fetus to life, or the right of a woman to personal control over her own body? You can’t have both…but both are, to many people, “natural” and “inalienable.”
At least the approach of the U.S. Bill of Rights is pretty clear: it defines “rights” as activities the government cannot legitimately curtail, and sets limits on the government’s power to make laws. At least we all have something there we can point to and say, “There! That thing, there is a right.”
In the lawsuit to which you have repeatedly alluded (ACLU vs the bishops), the whole point of the lawsuit was that the woman showed up at the only hospital in her county, in the middle of a medical emergency, and was discharged without ever being told that the reason that the hospital was not treating her condition or easing her pain was because they considered the medically appropriate treatment constituted an abortion as defined by the bishops.
If you are not ever even told what the choices are at the local hospital, how do you know that you need to go elsewhere? How “voluntary” was the lady’s decision under the specific circumstances of that case?
(Yes, I am aware that you have failed to address every other comment about this case I’ve made in the thread, but I’m going to keep bringing it up in counterpoint to your arguments anyway.)
I don’t agree that the lawmakers needed to have considered this particular aspect of the law, nor that they needed to have acted out of malice toward a particular group, for the result of the law to constitute a substantive attack.
I guess it boils down to what you mean by attack. If I see an ant crawling on my floor, and I stomp it, I’m attacking that ant. If I happen to step on an ant outside, without knowing it, I don’t think I’m attacking that ant - though it is all the same to the ant.
When the Christians claim they are being attacked, they are claiming that this attack is deliberate. Since people sympathize with those being attacked, this stance makes their actions easier to defend than if they had to defend the bigotry of anti-SSM laws. Specifically, why do all those Christians who do support SSM not feel they are being attacked?
Maybe this is an outgrowth of identity politics. They escalate from “your attack on my position is wrong” (and that is an actual attack) to “your attack on my position is actually an attack on my group” as if everyone in the group held the same belief.
They are kind of like the people who can’t take criticism. “You said that sentence was ungrammatical? Why do you hate me so much!”
Yes, that’s what the ACLU claims. The judge looked at the facts and threw out their lawsuit.
If the woman believes that she was given medically incorrect treatment, the correct legal path would have been a malpractice lawsuit against the hospital.
I’m pro-choice, but I can see why that argument doesn’t fly with abortion. Civil marriage for same-sex couples may somehow be a violation of religious law, but people say abortion is murder; you don’t have to be religious to object to murder, and if the Supreme Court struck down all laws against murder I doubt many people would shrug and say “well, you don’t have to kill anyone if you don’t want to”
But I don’t want to start yet another derail.
Yes, but it has the effect of punishing people for practicing Christianity, and whether that was the intended effect is of limited relevance. I don’t find “it’s my religious duty to break this law” all that compelling a defense, frankly, but these laws in particular are cruel to begin with, and I’m totally going to support kindness over cruelty.
That said, I agree with those who say “attack on Christianity” implies intent. These laws may punish Christians for doing what they view as their religious duty, but they aren’t motivated by antipathy towards Christianity.
[QUOTE=Larry Borgia]
Anyone who violates these laws–and good on them for doing so–will be arrested, whether their motivation is because they feel God compels them to do so, or whether they are just acting out of compassion for their less fortunate fellow humans.
[/QUOTE]
I like the distinction you’ve drawn. Did you intend to?
Hm. Is the question whether people who think Christian values are under attack are correct, or is it what actions they see as attacks on Christian values? If it’s the second, you’re right, there’s no point arguing they don’t consider something an attack when they actually do. If it’s the first, defining our terms isn’t irrelevant.
Like kenobi, I have a feeling that the Christian values people are saying are being attacked aren’t primarily those relating to charity.
Indeed. As an atheist, I would totally have signed the card. But I would endorse the sentiment (“your mom died, that sucks”) even if I didn’t endorse the presentation. Just as Davis is being asked to certify that the couples meet the legal requirements for a civil marriage licence, not to express personal or even official (let alone divine) approval of the marriage.
As a Jew, I find the idea that a life-saving medical procedure is against someone’s religion alien
Does this mean that you’ve abandoned the whole eternal law/moral law/natural law justification? Or are you now saying that natural law is that a person has the rights and liberties that their employer endows upon them?
Doesn’t your “you can always go someplace else if you don’t like our rules” apply to government as well? Your argument is that if you don’t like your boss’s rules you can quit and find another place to work. But if you don’t like the laws, can’t you just move and find another place to live?
I realize the two situations aren’t identical. In a democratic society, the people who make the rules are chosen by the people who live under the rules - so people are essentially ruling themselves. This of course is not the case in a workplace.
The judge threw out the lawsuit on the grounds that even if everything the ACLU said was true, it didn’t matter, because the bishops weren’t the ones on duty in the hospital that day.
How does that fact in any way answer the questions posed to you?
Is there any evidence that the version of events presented by the ACLU is true? I have yet to see any. Given the ACLU’s history of anti-Catholic bigotry, it would certainly be foolish to blindly believe a story they were using to smear Catholics without a trace of evidence.
Again, as I pointed out, if the woman in this case received bad or incorrect medical treatment, the right response would have been to sue the hospital for malpractice, not to sue a Catholic organization that was never involved in her treatment. Yet neither the woman nor the ACLU is suing the hospital for malpractice, implying that they don’t have any legal grounds for saying that the treatment was incorrect.
I’m curious about this. Has the ACLU been taking positions that the Catholic Church is bad? Have they been refusing to defend the religious freedom of Catholics while defending the religious freedom of other groups in parallel situations? I Googled, but found (aside from obviously biased* essays and blog posts by the ACLU itself and various chapters thereof refuting the claim) only articles about the ACLU working for the freedom of non-Catholics to not have to follow Catholic doctrine or restrictions, or otherwise not going along with assertions that the Church position per se should be deferred to.
*Not sarcasm. Just because I agree with it doesn’t mean it isn’t a bias
This is a bizarre claim. If you actually read the complaint, you’ll see that it sets forth in great detail why what the hospital did was malpractice. Paragraph 52 sets out exactly what the standard of care requires. The fact that Ms. Means chose to sue the people who force multiple hospitals to follow that policy, and not the doctors in an individual hospital who had no choice but to carry it out, does not reflect on whether they had medical grounds for saying the treatment was incorrect.
I’m glad you realize that the two situation aren’t identical. I’m pretty sure everyone else realizes why the two situations aren’t identical as well. But just to be sure, let’s explore why the two situations aren’t identical.
Let’s say I’m employed by McDonald’s. Then I decide that I don’t like something about the terms of my employment–I don’t like the uniform I’m required to wear, or the health insurance that McDonald’s is selling, or the greasy smell in the building. I can leave McDonald’s at any time I want, and once I choose to terminate my employment with McDonald’s, the McDonald’s corporation won’t inflict any punishment on me. They won’t impose fines, put me in jail, or kill me.
But now let’s say I live in the United States, and make a similar decision that I don’t like some law of the United Sates–I don’t like giving 25% of my income to the government as taxes, or I don’t like being banned from smoking marijuana. If I disobey the laws of the government, the government will come and punish me. They’ll send some big guys with guns to either take my money, or kill me, or arrest me.
That’s the difference between an employer that I’m voluntarily entering into agreement with, and a government that I don’t have any choice about obeying. The same argument that applies to employers does not apply to the government, because the government sends big guys with guns to force everybody to obey it, while my employer does not. Is this really that difficult to understand?
They’ve certain been refusing to defend the religious freedom of Catholics, since as we’ve already seen, they’ve been suing to try to get the religious freedom of Catholics taken away. The lawsuit I mentioned in this thread is far from the only case in which the ACLU has legally harassed Catholic organizations. For instance, you may recall last year that there was a wave of immigrant children attempting to cross the border into the United States. Catholic charities along with others arrived on the scene, determined to help the children by providing food, housing, and other necessities.
The ACLU, naturally, filed a harassing lawsuit aiming to cut off federal funding for this charitable effort, because the Catholic Charity groups weren’t providing abortions.
I do not know whether the ACLU has similarly harassed members of other religious groups in parallel situations, or whether any other group has even been in a parallel situation, but obviously attempting to force Catholic charities to perform abortions is anti-Catholic bigotry.
Bullshit. That only works if you define “religious freedom” as the ability to prevent someone else from exercising their own rights.
Are there Catholic Churches being seized under eminent domain? Are Catholics prohibited from holding public office? Is teaching Trinitarianism or Transubstantiation illegal? Was the Pope prohibited from speaking publicly?
The ACLU is one of the reasons Catholics aren’t as oppressed in this country as they were in 1925.
Actually no, it does not. I’ve already linked to two lawsuits filed by the ACLU, one in which the ACLU seeks to force Catholic hospitals to change policy on abortions, and one in which the ACLU seeks to force Catholic charities to perform abortions and distribute birth control. To state the obvious, neither of these cases involves Catholics preventing someone else from exercising their rights. Both involve the ACLU trying to prevent Catholics from exercising their First Amendment rights. Other cases where the ACLU has tried to prevent Catholics from practicing their religion can certainly be found.