Posted on 02/14/2012 9:42:32 AM PST by SmithL
From San Francisco, the controversy over the White House decision to require religious-affiliated employers to provide contraception in their employee health care benefits has felt like an argument about the barn door being open years after the horse got out of the barn.
In 1996, San Francisco effectively forced Catholic Charities to offer domestic-partner benefits for same-sex couples (without calling them domestic-partner benefits) in order to receive city funds to care for the sick. A 1999 law made California one of 28 states that now require employers to include contraception in health-care plans that cover prescriptions.
Yet the Obama administration boldly went where no state (not even California) had gone before when it announced that, under the Affordable Care Act, all employers must provide birth control as part of their health-care insurance packages. Churches would be exempt, but Catholic hospitals, universities and religious-based charities would not.
States have legal loopholes. In California, for example, a religious-affiliated institution can get around the mandate by self-insuring or not offering prescription-drug coverage. The only way out of the Obamacare mandate is to move to another country. Otherwise, there's no exit.
On Friday, the White House announced an alleged compromise: religious organizations can opt out of paying for contraceptives, but their health-care insurers must provide contraceptives to the organizations' employees on their own. Because, as President Obama claimed, "no religious institution will have to provide these services directly," the administration offers the illusion that religious organizations aren't paying for contraceptives.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Obama is using this to split the Catholics. Most Catholic women use some form of birth control. That is a fact.
The clergy knows this, and has been turning a blind eye for years. By bringing this up now, Obama is forcing the Church to restate its beliefs, and forcing the majority of contracepting Catholic women to take a stand. Most will NOT stand with the Church. It also forces the GOP to take a side, something they don't want to do. There is no upside for them in this.
After talking with my sister in law this weekend, I think the guy was right. She kept saying that the Bishops had no right to tell her it was wrong, and that it is the same as NFP only better (I know, but that is what she said). Looking at some of the polling data, I think she echos the majority of the Catholic womens view.
One path leads to freedom for individuals and the other leads to oppression and negation of real "choice."
“Obama is using this to split the Catholics.”
Obama cannot split Catholics. Catholics have already been split for some time: There are practicing Catholics and Cafeteria Catholics.
We have known for some time that eventually the Cafeteria types would either sincerely question and repent of their disobedience or....they would desert the True Catholic Church.
As the Church continues to proceed through its purification, this tension will increase. Obama’s strong attack on the free exercise of religion may have exacerbated this tension. But, ultimately, this will be a good thing....because what it means to be CATHOLIC will be uncompromisingly CLEAR.
This is why the R’s must frame the argument in terms of the First Amendment. It isn’t about contraception, abortifacients or abortion. It’s about the government controlling religious organizations. Period.
If the R’s let the argument remain about drugs and abortions, they will never win. And we all lose.
Very true. In my corner of Protestantism we have the liberal church (PCUSA comes to mind) and the truely reformed, like the PCA, OPC, URCNA. We really shoudn't be surprised. After all, the path is narrow.
Standing face to face are the ideas of ordered freedom (liberty) and control (tyranny). Age-old ideas are at the fore of the battle in America. Which idea will dominate the minds of citizens? The future of liberty in the world will depend upon the outcome.
"The People's" Constitution exists to "bind down" their elected officials by its "chains" (Jefferson), and this President, by intrusion on the Bill of Rights' protections, is attempting to use the chains to bind the people. That is a perversion of his role and duties, and neither he, nor "the People" can "compromise" away the prohibitions on government power protected by the Constitution on their behalf.
"Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant—they have been cheated; asleep—they have been surprised; divided—the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson? ... the people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government, they should watch over it ... It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free."
The current population control mechanism, to be administered by government, is not without roots in the ideology which dominates the Administration and so-called "progressive" thought.
Earlier, FR poster "livius" wrote: "What we are now being forced to pay for is essentially a government funded and (as yet) indirectly government administered population control program."
Writers have been exposing socialism's tyrannical principles and goals for over a century.
Yet, we have arrogant Americans, born in liberty, and viewing themselves as "intellectuals" and "progressives," who have embraced socialist ideas over the ideas of liberty and are determined to impose its deadly limitations on a once-free people.
Last week, my post included an excerpt from Edward Stanley Robertson's essay (1891) in which he stated that "the scheme of Socialism is wholly incomplete unless it includes a power of restraining population."
From the Liberty Fund Library is "A Plea for Liberty: An Argument Against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation," edited by Thomas Mackay (1849 - 1912), originally published in 1891, Chapter 1, excerpted final paragraphs from Edward Stanley Robertson's essay:
"I have suggested that the scheme of Socialism is wholly incomplete unless it includes a power of restraining the increase of population, which power is so unwelcome to Englishmen that the very mention of it seems to require an apology. I have showed that in France, where restraints on multiplication have been adopted into the popular code of morals, there is discontent on the one hand at the slow rate of increase, while on the other, there is still a 'proletariat,' and Socialism is still a power in politics.
I.44
"I have put the question, how Socialism would treat the residuum of the working class and of all classes—the class, not specially vicious, nor even necessarily idle, but below the average in power of will and in steadiness of purpose. I have intimated that such persons, if they belong to the upper or middle classes, are kept straight by the fear of falling out of class, and in the working class by positive fear of want. But since Socialism purposes to eliminate the fear of want, and since under Socialism the hierarchy of classes will either not exist at all or be wholly transformed, there remains for such persons no motive at all except physical coercion. Are we to imprison or flog all the 'ne'er-do-wells'?
I.45
"I began this paper by pointing out that there are inequalities and anomalies in the material world, some of which, like the obliquity of the ecliptic and the consequent inequality of the day's length, cannot be redressed at all. Others, like the caprices of sunshine and rainfall in different climates, can be mitigated, but must on the whole be endured. I am very far from asserting that the inequalities and anomalies of human society are strictly parallel with those of material nature. I fully admit that we are under an obligation to control nature so far as we can. But I think I have shown that the Socialist scheme cannot be relied upon to control nature, because it refuses to obey her. Socialism attempts to vanquish nature by a front attack. Individualism, on the contrary, is the recognition, in social politics, that nature has a beneficent as well as a malignant side. The struggle for life provides for the various wants of the human race, in somewhat the same way as the climatic struggle of the elements provides for vegetable and animal life—imperfectly, that is, and in a manner strongly marked by inequalities and anomalies. By taking advantage of prevalent tendencies, it is possible to mitigate these anomalies and inequalities, but all experience shows that it is impossible to do away with them. All history, moreover, is the record of the triumph of Individualism over something which was virtually Socialism or Collectivism, though not called by that name. In early days, and even at this day under archaic civilisations, the note of social life is the absence of freedom. But under every progressive civilisation, freedom has made decisive strides—broadened down, as the poet says, from precedent to precedent. And it has been rightly and naturally so.
I.46
"Freedom is the most valuable of all human possessions, next after life itself. It is more valuable, in a manner, than even health. No human agency can secure health; but good laws, justly administered, can and do secure freedom. Freedom, indeed, is almost the only thing that law can secure. Law cannot secure equality, nor can it secure prosperity. In the direction of equality, all that law can do is to secure fair play, which is equality of rights but is not equality of conditions. In the direction of prosperity, all that law can do is to keep the road open. That is the Quintessence of Individualism, and it may fairly challenge comparison with that Quintessence of Socialism we have been discussing. Socialism, disguise it how we may, is the negation of Freedom. That it is so, and that it is also a scheme not capable of producing even material comfort in exchange for the abnegations of Freedom, I think the foregoing considerations amply prove." EDWARD STANLEY ROBERTSON
Go back and re-read Madison's words. Do they have new meaning now?
Thanks for that link. I have never heard of the Liberty Fund Library. Just signed up for an account. :D
Yesterday, my posts included a reference to Dr. Leonard Read's "Anything That's Peaceful," which can be read online at that site. His Chapter 5, on the effects of socialism on individuals, is as current as today's news. As a matter of fact, there is a portrait of what he described as "the Authoritarian" which almost perfectly describes a certain political figure of today.
Dr. Read's wisdom and easy-to-understand explanations of principles needs wide circulation today. The simplicity of that book, especially the essay entitled "I, Pencil" should be in every school library.
People read the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion for over 200 years without noticing the Presidential examption: "except when it's in the President's interest to restrict the free exercise thereof." Got to pay attention to the footnotes.
These Catholic officials who supported Obamacare and now are in a tizzy, are either morally ignorant fools (like the idiots who hid the boy molestation, believing they were “cured” in psychiatry) or fakes performing a “moral” act or fake opposition for public consumption.
It can not be both. Are they stupid or evil?
It’s often a combination of ignorance and sinfulness.
Hard lines that should have been drawn a long time ago need to be drawn now.
Postponing that longer would only make things worse.
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