signs the “unacceptable” HHS mandate letter.
Notre Dame’s Carter Snead, who spearheaded the letter, now signed by over 500 academics and others, will be speaking on “The Current Battle Over Religious Conscience Rights” in D.C. Thursday.
He may need to talk some First Amendment sense into certain senators while there.
I am trying to understand the outrage.
Let's get one thing straight: no person has to get an abortion or use birth control under the mandate.
So, this is not like telling a Jew or a Muslim to eat pork. It is more like telling them that, if they are going to provide meals for people, they should not exclude pork from the menu (and they can still have a kosher kitchen on the side).
No-one, not even my boss, should be able to tell me how to run my personal life. So, if I want to use birth control, that is my moral choice.
I pay for a lot of things that I believe are morally wrong. For example, the war in Iraq. Heck, even Quakers have to pay taxes for the defense of the nation. Indeed, by allowing deductions for religious institutions, we allow money that would have gone into the public fisc to go to religions that I do not support.
I think we are going down a slippery slope here. Perhaps, as conservatives, we want that, but come on. If Catholics don't have to pay for birth control, why should others with similar religious beliefs not get a free pass? Perhaps, I have a Protestant work ethic and don't believe in unemployment. Should I, then, not have to pay unemployment insurance for my workers? Perhaps I am a Scientologist, should I then not have to pay worker's compensation (on the theory that prayer heals better than physicians)?
We live in a society and some things require societal norms. This may be one of them. I do think that, were there a mandate to have abortions (like in China) or that women use birth control, that would be a step too far. But to provide necessary (to many women) health care options is not.
I simply do not understand. Why should the availability to health care depend on who one's boss is? As an aside, this is the perfect reason for doing away with employer provided health care (a la Ron Paul) or having a single payer system.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe mandate is a little stronger than you make out. It's more like all employers being forced to buy pork for all their employees, regardless of whether the employers or employees are Jewish. So you would end up with a Kosher kitchen, employing an all-Jewish workforce, being forced to buy pork for its employees. Of course the employees don't have to eat it, but you would still be forcing the Jewish employers to subsidize something (pork for Jews) which is against their conscience.
"If Catholics don't have to pay for birth control, why should others with similar religious beliefs not get a free pass."
They SHOULD get a free pass. The very word is in your sentence: free. Freedom means the government doesn't get to tell you what you must buy or what you must pay for (save those essential functions of gov't specified in the Constitution). Back to your original example: If you wish to provide meals for people, where does the gov't get off telling you what you can and can't put on the menu?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseStanding against the Administration Kulturkampf starts with taking a stand for all of us to be allowed to exercise our freedoms of religion and of conscience. That's where the Becket Fund and the "unacceptable" letter really seem to me to shine: in building a good, broad-based, interdenominational, inter-faith coaltion of the willing. As the old Revolution-era saying has it, we either all stand together, or we all hang separately.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseso, cardinal, caring for the sick and needy goes right out the window in favor of political positions?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd, again, that's great that Cardinal Dolan is signing a letter. Is this all there will be - signing letters and the occasional speaking engagement? We are beyond the point where that means much; will any actual ACTION ever be taken?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDolan showed no guts during the "gay marriage" fight in New York. He could have stood up and asked all Catholics in the state, and all New Yorkers, to examine the meaning of the demented "gay marriage" bill, and to examine their consciences about it. But he punted, at least in public. He's the happy Church bureaucrat, as far as I can tell. And didn't want to blow being made a Cardinal or at least not have gay activists following him everywhere and screaming at him. Nobody is terribly concerned about what position he'll take on anything.
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