The Pope wants to play doctor. Politicians want to play doctor. Doctors want to play God. I just wish everyone would stick to their own knitting. Religious meddling in temporal affairs is exactly what the constitutional bar on established religion was intended to prevent. Those who wrote it had two centuries of bloody sectarian struggle as a lesson in what not to do. The constitutional solution is majority rule.
No. The constitution protects the individual from the majority.
But not from the supermajority.
If two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures want something in the Constitution that derogates the rights of an individual, they get it.
It’s not a perfect system. But at least the bar is high.
What would a perfect system be?
Did I suggest I knew? I assume a better system is possible, but I was standing up for America’s high bar for the tyranny of the majority.
Even bigots are people, and they don’t like to be seen as bigots. So getting a constitutional convention together for oppressing gays is probably all but impossible. I think that’s a good thing.
True, but I see no evidence of that in the issue at hand.
If you don’t know what a perfect system is, then you can’t tell if one is perfect or not. No reason to get all pissy about it.
Bolding mine. That doesn’t follow. I don’t know what a perfect blender is, but one that explodes and sends shards of glass into your face isn’t it. I don’t know what a perfect day is, but one where your family is killed in a flood and you’re left destitute and alone isn’t it. I don’t know what a perfect argument is, but the one you just made is flopping like a fish on deck and I must needs club it to put it out of misery.
You mistake *correct *for pissy.
I don’t think you want to defend that assertion very long.
Exactly. This has been going on for years and the Supreme court has refused to hear cases brought by the church agasint California and NY. This is a ploy during an election year that will ultimately fail as people learn the facts. What the GOP fails to realize is that moderate and independent voters are sick of this kind of shallow superficial BS.
Which means the chgurch in no way is being asked to directly purchase birth control. The employee chooses what meets thier needs out of an insurance package just as they choose how ro spend thier paycheck.
IMO it’s simply a matter of the church’s perception. They choose to make it an issue of religious conscience when they don’t have to.
Let’s also note that the actual church, is exempt. The line is being drawn at buisness oriented affilaiates owned by the church which serve and employ the general public rather than members. We already have clear established sensible legal precedent that religions cannot violate the law and claim religious freedom.
This is one of those cases. The Catholic church has been expanded it’s ownership in hospitals for decades and this has been awn ongoing issues. They’ve already lost in several states and the SCOTUS has refused to hear thier cases in 2004 and 2007. It’s not a new issue. Just one being exploited in an election year.
It only requires due process, and that everyone be treated equally. It also requires that the individual abide by the laws of the land. I may not like taxes, but I must pay them or be a criminal. And I can’t get a religious exemption. The law does not say that everyone must use condoms. Catholics, even Catholic employers, must allow non-Catholics to abide by their own rules. I think the real problem is that the bishops know that even catholic women can’t all live with all their rules.
Some of you will be cheering this firing of a Catholic school teacher for using IVF, but many people, including me, are afraid of widespread happenings of exactly this type of situation. The teacher was fired for using IVF because apparently its considered evil in Church dogma because it “frequently involve the deliberate destruction and freezing of embryos.”
Of course, Emily Herx can’t be tarred and feathered with the same brush as Sandra Fluke. She’s a married woman who just wants more kids for her family. However, her method of conception runs afoul of the rules.
The Catholic Church wants everyone to believe that they simply don’t want to pay for things like contraception. They claim that even if they are not paying to buy the birth control, that paying the insurance company is just like buying it themselves, so they have a problem with Obama’s mandate. Nowhere do I remember them saying what they will do with Catholic women who get a paycheck from the Church and buy contraception themselves, but I figured that was a pragmatic move; they can’t stop the 98% of Catholic women who use or have used contraception, so they aren’t going to overplay that hand.
But unless I’m mistaken, this woman is using her own money to pay for her own IVF (not sure if the insurance comes into play here) and the Church fired her for it. Isn’t this just what people were afraid of? The Church wants to control people, and women especially. To me, what Herx does on her own time with her own money is none of her employer’s business. And even if there was insurance involvement, the right thing would be for the Church to contact the insurance company about disputes and not fire the person. They are wrong in this case, they are wrong to oppose Obama’s insurance mandate, and they are wrong on the side of history in opposing contraception.
“*frequently involve the deliberate destruction and freezing of embryos.” *Since this is scientifically true I don’t see the point of the scare quotes.
If you don’t understand the difference between direct collaboration (helping your drunk firend start his car) and indicrect involvment (selling cars that could be used by a drunk driver) you should research a bit before talking about them. Paying the insurance company is what directly allows them to provide the service they find objectionable.
It wasn’t scare quotes, I put it in quotes because it’s a direct quote of someone in the article
In this case, the article doesn’t mention insurance at all. I know IVF can be expensive, but it may be that this woman had the money to take on the burden herself. Or if she hadn’t, the Church still should have taken up their issue with the insurance company itself instead of with the employee. Doing an end run around laws mandating such health care by firing the person using it is a cheap and devious tactic. It just further confirms that the Church’s ultimate goal wasn’t some altruistic religious freedom like they lied about over and over, they simply want to control as much of their people as possible. As simply being Catholic isn’t enough to dissuade people, the Church has gone one step further and fired those who they could get their hands on
And what if this wasn’t a contraception issue but a life-saving one, and the Church fired someone who had to get life-saving treatment (that they disapprove of), I hope they get sued for all they’re worth.
What you don’t seem to understand is that once the money goes from the Church and into the pockets of its employees, that’s it, they have no control over it anymore nor should they. This woman should have been free to used IVF without additional attack from her employer
One of the rather interesting things I noticed in reading this thread was the use of the the term ‘the Church’ to describe the Roman Catholic Church. I know it is the religious entity in play here, but the subtle connotation that the RCC and ONLY the RCC can get such special treatment by the federal government is rather obvious (at least to me.)
As was asked (but not answered) earlier, what are the guidelines here when it comes to a religious organization limiting access to medical procedures that violate their beliefs? Do you have to have paid a certain amount of campaign contributions to Congress? Is it required for the senior members of your organization to wear special clothing? Do you merely need to have a certain amount of followers in order to convince the government to treat your beliefs as somehow more ‘sacred’ than those of other religions?
These are real questions and quite serious in their ramifications. If the RCC can mandate certain conditions that must be followed by the federal government, then why not Hindus or Jehovah’s Witnesses? Must there be a minimum amount of people that follow a particular set of tenets before the federal government heeds their demands?
You’ve got the situation backwards. Neither the RCC nor anyone else is trying to “mandate certain conditions that must be followed by the federal government”. The federal government is trying to mandate certain conditions that the RCC and every other religious body must follow.
I really don’t see why it’s always so difficult to understand the difference between government action that everyone in the country is forced to obey and private agreements that no one in the country is forced to obey. Everyone who teaches at a Catholic school has chosen to do so. Anyone who doesn’t like the terms of his or her employment is welcome to not take the job. On the other hand, Catholics (or anyone else) who own insurance companies are not welcome to simply not take whatever rules are laid down by government bureaucrats.
All private employers are subject to worker safety regulations. Should we do away with those, and just let workers assume any risk when they choose to take the job?
Safe working conditions and a benefits package really aren’t comparable.