Crazy is as crazy does. If anything, a person who can calmly and persuasively explain why women and sexual minorities are not people and it’s okay to indiscriminately bomb civilians in foreign countries is way more dangerous than someone who sounds obviously unhinged while doing it, because he might be more persuasive. There’s no such thing as a “non crazy” argument for restricting access to contraception or other conservative tenets, just an argument that doesn’t use inflammatory words like “slut.”
You don’t have a right to birth control through employer provided health care, it’s a policy question not a rights question. It’s ludicrous to act like the employer isn’t paying for the health care though. It doesn’t matter that it is part of compensation. If we were required to give employees 1 pint of beer for every hour worked in addition to their wage, and I was morally opposed to drinking, even though the beer was compensation I can still see it raising a moral issue because mandated or not I (as an employer) am being forced to do something I don’t want to do.
However, that isn’t the actual present scenario. You can opt out of providing any coverage. I’m not sure why that isn’t being brought up more, if these Catholic organizations really dislike this so much, they can just stop offering health insurance. It would probably make the State exchanges stronger, actually, if all Catholic employers in the country didn’t offer health care.
Also, it is not accurate as a general idea that your employer has no right to mandate you live in a certain way. Many employers have clauses in your employment agreement that say if you do things to embarrass the company even on personal time they can fire you. Many employment contracts have standard “moral turpitude” clauses that let them fire you if you do something that is not a crime but is just “offensive to public morality.” In at will states you can be fired pretty much for any out of work reason as long as it doesn’t relate to your membership in a protected class or violate a narrow range of statutory protections.
In my example about being required to provide a pint of beer for every hour worked, it is just simply disingenuous to pretend that as an employer there is no difference between that situation and one in which my employees buy beer with their own money. I’m directly having to buy that beer with my physical money and provide it to my employees. It doesn’t matter that it is their compensation, it is still my resources being forced, by the government, to fund something I find morally objectionable.
I’ve said it in other threads and I’ll repeat it here, I don’t agree with the Catholics argument, but I think it disingenuous to act like it’s not even their money and there is no reason at all they should even care. Should the Church have a different position on birth control in general? Sure, but they also shouldn’t believe in a non-existent god, but that’s entirely beside the point, they are still entitled to their moral opinions.
I don’t think that point of hers is that strong, and it may in fact undermine her side’s main argument.
Basically, if some women need a certain class of pills for medical treatments, and are denied them, then we should enforce and/or changes the laws to ensure this doesn’t happen. This is not a valid argument for “let’s make this class of pills freely available to everyone”.
If the main argument for contraceptive coverage is “it’s my own damn business if I take birth control pills or not, and not the company’s business”, I don’t think coming up with special cases to convince people that these pills are in fact some times medically necessary bolsters the main argument, which is that women shouldn’t need to give any explanation of why they are taking them.
Forgive me if I’m misconstruing your post, but you seem to suggest that all (or the vast majority of) conservative viewpoints are crazy or invalid. If so, I strongly disagree and that blurring of the lines is why I think what Rush et al have done to the discussion is abhorrent. This is distinct from swaying the conversation (a different thread).
For example, while I vehemently disagree from a societal perspective (and a host of other reasons), I think the basic position that as an employer, I disagree with a business regulation that forces me to engage in or otherwise provide or subsidize services to which I have a moral objection is, though oversimplified at the moment, a rational and valid perspective. I am swayed by counter-arguments and believe otherwise, but do not think that the position is crazy.
Or further, it’s my perception that calling Obama a socialist or making similarly outlandish claims about his economic policy will make it more likely to get time, exposure, and attention from the right wing media machine. This focus (and time spent rebutting such ludicrosities) takes away from more earnest economic policy debate that stems from valid opposing viewpoints.
Assume for a moment that we lived in a society where, as part of work compensation, companies signed up their employees with companies that provide gift cards for various activities: restaurants, movies, sky diving, etc
Assume that one class of gift cards covered adult activities (e.g. in Nevada, a visit to a brothel).
Do you think it’s OK for companies to decide what “gift card packages” they provide their employees? Do you think it’s OK for some companies to register for gift card packages that exclude certain activities, e.g. adult activities, or anything else they may not like?
If they did that, would that be “mandating how their staff lives” or just deciding what benefits they are providing? I think only if they have rules on what you do with your salary is when we can state that they are “mandating how their staff lives”
Regarding the main topic, it seems to me that:
[ol]
[li]It’s good public policy for contraceptives to be freely available to everyone[/li][li]It’s a bit strange to force companies what to cover[/li][/ol]
So, the long-term solution should be to move away from company-provided health insurance. The short-term solution is to mandate contraceptive coverage, because #1 above trumps #2.
+1
As a conservative you get used to the fact that the liberal media frames issues in ways that help promote the Democrat party and the liberal agenda. This whole controversy is just electioneering on the part of the president and the Democrat party to distract from the horrible job they have done on the economy. Having Rush say what he said just gave them more ammunition because Rush is overweight and easy to hate. If he had said nothing the Democrats would have still trotted out the War on Women meme and the compliant press would have gone along with it.
The timeline on this is instructive, the first we heard about this was the debate moderated by former Democrat operative George Stehpanoupolus. All of the candidates were blindsided and cleary confused about why he would ask about such a non-issue. Then the HHS announces it will not allow Catholic organizations to opt out of birth control coverage despite administration assurances to the contrary during the health care debate. This provokes the Catholic church to object strenously. Congress then calls hearings on the religous freedom issues raised by the rule. Democrats call Rev. Lynne, their go to guy on religous issues to testify. They then cancel Lynne and substitute Fluke to late to be added to the witness list at the hearing. They know all of the women called by the Republicans to testify will be in the second session so before the first session they proclaim the hearings about Women’s Birth Control instead of Religious Freedom and stage a walk out ostensibly because there are no women testifying. Then they stage a fake hearing about birth control and proclaim there is a war on women and that Republicans want to deny people birth control because they don’t want to force people to violate their conscience. Many people have made well reasoned arguments about why this policy is wrong, but all of those get ignored because the emphasis is on a radio host making a crude comment for the first time in history.
What Limbaugh said was in poor taste but the fact is that he was clearly joking around and in any case what he said would have not made the top 50 bad things said about Sarah Palin or Rick Santorum. Some people say that Limbaugh should be held to a higher standard than other entertainers since he is so important to the Republican party. This ignores the fact that during the last presidential election the GOP nominated McCain who is probably Limbaugh’s second least favorite politician.
“Leave Rushie ALOOOOOOONE!!!” <sob>
That is a rather strained analogy, because gift cards have no value if they are not used for their face purpose. If an employer gave out nothing but brothel cards, those employees who don’t go to brothels derive no value from them. This not the case with health insurance; employees health care needs vary, and health insurance should not discriminate between employees based on their health care needs.
If health insurance devolved to your gift card analogy, employers could give out gift cards for appendectomies, but not for heart attacks; mole removal, but not chemotherapy. That kind of intrusive control of their employees health care choices would not be tolerated, so I don’t see why we should head down that road by giving employers the power to impose their religious morals on employees that don’t share them.
Conservatives must think women are pretty dumb if they’re going to offer up these half-assed “religious freedom” rationales to justify a position that’s calculated to screw over women. Do they just assume that women are likely to vote Democrat anyway? Are they counting on getting 75% of the male vote in November? The political calculus makes absolutely no sense to me.
Your argument is every bit as compelling as it is nicely formatted.
If I’m not mistaken, don’t current health/dental insurance plans come close to this? e.g. some procedures are covered and some are not, depending on what plan your company signs up for?
It is, but presumably there are already a few things that an insurance company is required to cover, and this is just one more. No big.
On the bright side, this whole dustup may fatally cripple wingnut radio.
It’s an inapt analogy, but betrays your conviction that women using birth control are doing something immoral and that their employers know better how they ought to live.
You want to complain about loaded questions, but you start your argument with terms like “liberal media”, “liberal agenda” and (a long-time conservative favorite) “Democrat Party”?
It’s the Democratic Party.
I do agree with one thing, though–I think the Democrats intended for this to be a trap. Good for them, I say. It’s about time our side learned to use wedge issues to our advantage. I think it worked beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
This is wishful thinking. The nearest analogy is when the New York Times decided to target the Masters golf tournament. They refused ads for a couple of years, the furor died down and when they decided to accept advertising again they had companies lining up.
The companies that advertised on Limbaugh’s show did not do so because they liked him they wanted to reach his audience. As long as he has his audience he will get sponsors. At some point the left will settle on something else to be outraged about and the advertisers will come back. All the publicity will probably cause his audience to grow so when the advertisers come back, he will be able to charge even more to reach his audience.
This is the way talk radio works. The host says something deliberately provocative. A group pretends to be outraged and demands an apology, while using the issue to fundraise. The ensuing publicity attracts new listeners for the host and new donors to the outraged group. Everyone gets paid and goes home happy.
Oh, I’m sure Rush and the rest winger radio will be able to find sponsors. They just won’t be sponsors of the caliber of Ford, State Farm, and Subway. They’ll all be gold sellers, Lifelock, and a whole slew of other grifts.
This dent in advertising dollars might not affect Rush too badly, but it certainly hurts the minor radio personalities.