Don't Like the Rules, Don't Take the Money

This is, of course, just the flip side of giving tax exemptions to freakazoids who preach political hate. No tax exemptions, no tax breaks, no subsidies, no tax dollars of any amount to anyone who claims fealty to any kind of religion. Period.

Kevin Drum:

E.J. Dionne makes the liberal case (last month) that the Obama administration screwed up when it issued rules requiring insurance companies to cover contraceptives:

Speaking as a Catholic, I wish the Church would be more open on the contraception question. But speaking as an American liberal who believes that religious pluralism imposes certain obligations on government, I think the Church’s leaders had a right to ask for broader relief from a contraception mandate that would require it to act against its own teachings. The administration should have done more to balance the competing liberty interests here.

I'm just a big ol' secular lefty, so I guess it's natural that I'd disagree. And I do. I guess I'm tired of religious groups operating secular enterprises (hospitals, schools), hiring people of multiple faiths, serving the general public, taking taxpayer dollars — and then claiming that deeply held religious beliefs should exempt them from public policy. Contra Dionne, it's precisely religious pluralism that makes this impractical. There are simply too many religions with too many religious beliefs to make this a reasonable approach. If we'd been talking about, say, an Islamic hospital insisting that its employees bind themselves to sharia law, I imagine the "religious community" in the United States would be a wee bit more understanding if the Obama administration refused to condone the practice.

I can understand compromising over a very limited number of hot button issues. Abortion is the obvious one. But in general, if Catholic hospitals don't want to follow reasonable, 21st century secular rules, they need to make themselves into truly religious enterprises. In particular, they need to stop taking secular taxpayer money. As long as they do, though, they should follow the same rules as anyone else.

Digby gets to the core of the hypocrisy:

First, they did it so that women will have their birth control covered even though they happen to work as a file clerk in a Catholic University or an x-ray technician at a Catholic Hospital. I can understand why they didn't think about that. After all, in the entire discussion "women" didn't even come up. Why should they? This isn't about them. It's about the important men who make decisions for them.

Secondly, Mark Shields and everyone else who is shrieking about conscience clauses fail to see a very important distinction. A Quaker individual is not required to join in combat. A Seventh Day Adventist individual is not forced to work on the sabbath. An Orthodox Jewish individual is provided kosher food. A Catholic individual is allowed to exercise her conscience and not use birth control. These are what is known in common parlance as "people" as opposed to institutions.

After all, as Katha Pollit points out in this piece:

Are [individual] Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other pacifists exempt from taxes that pay for war and weapons? Can Scientologists, who abhor psychiatry, deduct the costs of the National Institute of Mental Health? As an atheist, a feminist, a progressive, I ante up for so much stuff that violates my conscience, the government should probably pay me damages. Why should the bishops be exempt from the costs of living in a pluralistic society?

Indeed. After all, the religious institutions have one very special privilege: they pay no taxes, unlike their followers, who are required to pay for many things they disagree with. Apparently, that isn't enough, however. The Church wants to pay no taxes and be exempt from the costs of living in a pluralistic society. Sweet deal.

People are getting very confused on this issue. We ostensibly believe in rights and liberties in America and have a set of rules in our constitution guaranteeing them. But lately, we've decided that these phony constructs of institutional rights and liberties --- "corporate personhood","conscience of the church" --- actually supercede individual rights and liberties. I don't mean to evoke the sacred founders here, but I'm afraid they would say that idea is, in their words, total bullshit. They knew very well that the government wasn't the only possible oppressor. 500 years of bloody European religious history had taught them that.

If the Catholic bishops don't want people to use birth control it needs to convince people not to use birth control. That's how we exercise "conscience" in a free society. No Catholic employees anywhere, including a Catholic bishop, will be forced to use birth control, I guarantee it. Their individual consciences will be respected.

Beyond that, this is a matter between the Church and the congregant to work out for themselves. There is no reason for the government to discriminate against citizens who happen to work for Catholic institutions simply because the hierarchy of that institution doesn't want them to behave a certain way in their private lives. We don't do that here. At least, we didn't used to.