If the contraceptive mandate passes, it will ruin a core U.S. ideology

[Warren Stupidity]

By Rick Warren, Published: March 21
Rick Warren is pastor of the Saddleback Church, in Lake Forest, Calif., and the author of “The Purpose Driven Life.”

Does our Constitution guarantee the freedom of religion, or does it merely allow a more limited freedom to worship? The difference is profound. Worship is an event. Religion is a way of life.

Specifically, does the First Amendment guarantee believers of all faiths the freedom to practice their ethics, educate their children and operate family businesses based on their religious beliefs, moral convictions and freedom of conscience? Do Americans have the freedom to place our beliefs and ethics at the center of our business practices — or must we ignore them when we form a company?
...
In this case, the administration is insisting that those who form and operate a family business based on religious beliefs must disobey what they believe is God’s standard in order to obey the government’s program. The administration wants everyone to render unto Caesar not only what is Caesar’s but also what is God’s. If it wins, the first purpose on which the United States was founded would be severely damaged.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/religious-liberty-is-americas-first-freedom/2014/03/21/498c0048-b128-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html

This is the same rightwing homophobic creep who Obama invited to speak at his 2009 inauguration. Why? Done being the Great Conciliator yet?

[Thinkingabout]

1. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. No, he really imagined he could conciliate.

Given the way the midterms are likely to go, one can only hope he has learned that is impossible.

[LuvNewcastle]

2. He's Jerry Falwell in jeans.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. Does it?

Specifically, does the First Amendment guarantee believers of all faiths the freedom to practice their ethics, educate their children and operate family businesses based on their religious beliefs, moral convictions and freedom of conscience?

No, it does not. Otherwise, we would have to allow human sacrifice, if it was part of any given religion.

The First Amendment allows you to worship in ways that do not break other laws. It is not 'First' in the sense that no other law can limit it, but merely 'first' in that it was first 'amendment' added to an existing document. Our laws, including the amendments, work with each other, and are limited by each other. None is 'absolute' and 'above all others'.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. I think we pretty much resolved that a public business has to follow

all regulations, regardless of how "heartfelt" the bigotry of the business owners is. But that was then, who knows what this fucked up court is going to do.

[LuvNewcastle]

6. Yes, it was supposed to have been resolved in the 60's.

That's what the sit-ins at the lunch counters were about. If a business is open to the public, it's open to everyone, not just the people you like. It's the same with selling and buying houses; we don't get to choose who buys our property. If someone offers the price you're asking, then you sell it to them. Forty+ years ago this was decided, and some people are acting like it's a new thing, and an unfair burden on their conscience. I guess we're going to have to decide again if people can keep slaves, too.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

8. Is that true with individual homeowners?

What if I wanted to offer my house at one price to 'the general public', but was willing to knock off some amount for anyone who also belonged to some group I was part of? So if I was a freemason, maybe I'd offer to knock off 10k if another freemason wanted to buy my house? Or Mormon to Mormon, or whatever?

Would that actually be against the law, or does it only apply to commercial sellers?

After all, I'm not in a public business of selling houses, it's a private piece of property I'd only sell once. And don't people who want to sell houses and those who want to buy them 'haggle', and either party can decide they can't come to terms and nix the deal, then wind up coming to lower terms later with someone else?

[LuvNewcastle]

10. My parents are realtors, and they've told me that they can't

even discuss the racial makeup of a neighborhood with buyers. If they show the property being sold to a buyer and they see for themselves what the neighborhood is like, they can make up their own minds about it, but a realtor can't discuss anything like that with a client. I haven't really talked about offers and such for a property being sold at less than the price asked, but I think they just discuss prices with the seller, nothing about the person making the offer.

Most people go through realtors to buy and sell property around here, but I'm not really sure if it's different with people who sell things on their own. I believe that if a black person, for instance, catches someone favoring a white client, they can sue the seller. However, things like that are difficult to prove. I know that it's definitely illegal for any person to refuse to sell to someone just because they're part of a certain minority.

[Igel]

11. Peyote use among Native Americans.

There's a fine line between what the majority cannot tolerate and reasonable accommodations for beliefs.

Ignoring the drug laws for religious ritual, whether peyote use now or alcohol use for Communion during Prohibition, didn't cross that line.

The question is whether allowing religious employers to not pay for contraception or otherwise "trigger" it's provision (two entirely different topics, mind you) is on the same order of ignoring drug laws or licensing human sacrifice.

That's not how I would have put it, but since we like extremes, there it is.


My take on it is that it'll depend on perspective and the thrill of using power to extend or restrict rights. In the case of Native Americans, they enjoy a certain measure of sympathy, so extending their rights causes joy to some (and makes others grind their teeth). Simply not curtailing the right of the religious to not pay for something will make some want to grind their teeth, because they really look forward to hurting others, while others want to extend the rights of those that they sympathize with.

[GeorgeGist]

7. Its part of the EMPLOYEE's compensation.

Employers shouldn't dictate how employee's compensation is spent. Any employee is free to decline birth control products.

[Swede Atlanta]

9. When you open a business that is open to the public....

AND you take advantage of:
(1) Free market economy and the legal structure that facilitates and protects it
(2) Publicly-built roads and other infrastructure
(3) Access to a workforce largely educated using taxpayer, i.e. "public" dollars
(4) Take advantage of the legal protections afforded businesses including intellectual property, etc.
(5) Take advantage of the legal protections afforded owners of businesses through "limited liability" business forms

You are in the "public" sphere. You are not in your church, mosque, synagogue, temple, etc. When you take advantage of the benefits you receive by running your business in the public sphere then you must comply with the laws of the land. You are not personally being asked to use birth control, have an abortion, undergo chemo-therapy, have a blood transfusion, etc. You are simply being required to provide insurance that guarantees to your employees certain basic minimum insurance protections including contraception.

If you don't want to comply then set up a private 'club' where only whack-a-doodles like you engage in business. I'm sure your business model would implode on itself if you did that but hey, you didn't want to comply with the law.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

12. I actually think he makes an excellent distinction I haven't seen before.

I think he's wrong about the answer - the state should protect freedom of worship, but not freedom of religion, because what if my religion involved killing people? - but it's a useful way of formulating the distinction that I hadn't seen before.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. And yet Obama pushed through the contraceptive mandate, and he has gone to bat for Marriage Equality

In short, despite a symbolic sop to these folks at the '09 inauguration (which a lot of us nevertheless opposed) in terms of actual on-the ground progressivism regarding social policy he has SMOKED every president in recent history, particularly Clinton.

Your OP would have been better without the shot at the President, IMHO.

[Warren Stupidity]

14. Putting Warren up at the inauguration was crap.

And it was part of Obama's disastrous and nearly endless (and is it over?) efforts to work with these nutjobs, nutjobs who have made it perfectly clear that their only interest is in destroying this administration.

Obama finally changed course on marriage equality, that is true, after opposing for most of his first term. The contraceptive mandate came with religious exemptions, which it never should have.

My shot at Obama was clear: had enough compromising with these shitheads yet? Hopefully the answer is "yes".

[Warren DeMontague]

15. I think he has.

And like I said, a lot of us were against Rick Warren at the inauguration.

Me, I've been pretty damn consistent in speaking out against shitheaded religious fundamentalists, and usually all I get for my trouble is attacks from some quarters on DU of being a selfish libertarian poopy-head who just hates religion and wants to get rid of all morality, because boobs.

But, then, I'm also not one of the 'progressives' who will play ideological agenda convenience kissy-face with the likes of the American Family Association, Judith Reisman, or Ed Meese, either.