Religious persecution against tadpoles
Who’s making this a religious issue? The recent mandate by the Obama administration that requires companies who ensure their employees to provide birth control coverage isn’t forcing anyone to use contraception. It simply makes sure that certain requirements regarding those who do provide health insurance are met, regardless of who or what is doing the hiring and providing the coverage. Sounds fair. But Roman Catholic bishops and various Catholic and Christian groups are crying foul, and in some cases, religious persecution, over having to cover said contraception, which goes against their proclaimed beliefs.
But what you do in your church is one thing; but if you hire people and pay them money and provide health insurance, you are bound to the same rules as everybody else. Nobody is forcing any Christian or Catholic to use contraception. And nobody is forcing any Christian or Catholic to get involved in healthcare. But if you do, then regulations of the government ARE involved, and you cannot hide behind the “wall of separation between Church and State”, merely because it suits you. Not everybody the Church hires follows their beliefs. Why would you want to impose doctrine on those who are in your employ?
Even locally, Bishops and the clergy are speaking out against this mandate, as this link to WIVB reveals, titled “Diocese preaches against healthcare law”, but if you read the link itself, it is less subtle: www.wivb.com/dpp/news/local/Diocese-will-not-abide-by-unjust-law. Is it really unjust? Wouldn’t it be more unjust if any organization that hires people can impose their own limits on what the minimum standard of health insurance coverage, all in the name of “religious freedom”? I hope Scientologists don’t open up hospitals, otherwise you may see stories like this..
Some are saying this could hurt Obama’s re-election chances by turning the Catholics against him. Well, I hope not, since how many Catholics do you know that use contraception themselves, or have even had abortions? Or divorce? Joan Walsh at Salon has it right: they need to preach what they practice instead..
It seems a woman’s right to their own reproductive freedom is under an assault, not an outright one, but “backdoor”, what with cancer research groups trying to de-fund Planned Parenthood and hope nobody notices, and churches who think the law doesn’t apply to them when they decide to get into the healthcare business.
And for those who cry “persecution”, your freedom of religion does not allow you to use the machinery of government to impose your religious beliefs as law.
If your religion happened to support racism, and you didn’t hire minorities in your business endeavors based on that belief, would you expect your religious rights would trump hiring laws? Of course, that stuff has happened, but change and progress is slow. And nobody’s slower than the Catholic Church. As a recovering R.C., I’ve always wondered why contraception is so frowned upon. Abortion? Yes, it is not a desirable situation, and I understand their opposition, even as I support a woman’s right to their own reproductive systems. But the pill? Condoms? It’s okay in my book, and apparently, a lot of Catholics (98 percent of Catholics already practice birth control according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute).
So, to answer that question, and because Tommunisms’ motto for 2012 is “All Potshots, No Solutions”, I hereby include two clips from Monty Python, in reverse order, as to why “Every Sperm is Sacred…
Tags: Obamacare