Obama Caves to the Freakazoids on Birth Control

Cecile Richards is dead fucking wrong.  This is a catastrophe.

The proposed rule details a principle announced nearly a year ago that permits religious organizations like universities, charities, and hospitals to decline to pay for birth control coverage for their employees. If a group avails itself of that exemption, their insurance company would be required to provide the service to the organization’s employees for free.

The exemption, which is set to be finalized later this year, would be provided to any nonprofit that self-certifies it is a religious organization and notifies its insurer that it will not be providing contraceptive coverage, the Department of Health and Human Services said.

The regulation aims to provide a balance between women’s health and religious freedom, a matter of ongoing and heated debate across the country.

Religious nonprofits like the University of Notre Dame, which sued to block the contraception rule after the contours of the accommodation were announced last year, did not immediately comment on the proposed regulation.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which fueled a firestorm after the initial contraception rule was announced last year, also withheld comment, saying in a statement that it “welcome[s] the opportunity to study the proposed regulations closely.”

The administration’s move drew praise from women’s groups.

“This policy delivers on the promise of women having access to birth control without co-pays no matter where they work,” said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, saying that “the principle is clear and consistent. This policy makes it clear that your boss does not get to decide whether you can have birth control.”

 Ed Kilgore gets it right:

The only thing that will satisfy critics of the mandate, of course, is this sort of self-triggered plenary exemption, and/or a restriction of the mandate to exclude contraceptive devices and drugs that anti-choicers consider “abortifacients,” which generally means Plan B and IUDs, but for some means “the pill” itself.

And any “solution” that doesn’t effectively allow employers—religiously affiliated or otherwise—to keep their employees from obtaining subsidized contraceptive coverage won’t cut much ice, either.

It’s not about the money; it’s about the power. Keep that in mind as this controversy continues.

And it will continue, because the freakazoids won't accept anything less than full power over the sex lives of every single woman in the country. They're already there on abortion, and with this surrender by the administration, they're halfway there on birth control, too.

Because to them, "religious freedom" means "my personal beliefs have primacy over everyone else's."

The findings of a poll published Wednesday (Jan. 23), reveal a “double standard” among a significant portion of evangelicals on the question of religious liberty, said David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group, a California think tank that studies American religion and culture.
While these Christians are particularly concerned that religious freedoms are being eroded in this country, “they also want Judeo-Christians to dominate the culture,” said Kinnamon.

“They cannot have it both ways,” he said. “This does not mean putting Judeo-Christian values aside, but it will require a renegotiation of those values in the public square as America increasingly becomes a multi-faith nation.”

Digby:

Yes, they can have it both ways. They believe the constitution is a Christian tract that requires the American government to follow the Bible. To them "religious freedom" means that Christianity must guide the entire nation. And they have con artists out there "proving" it every day:

Charlie Pierce, naturally, nails it.

I'm sorry, but, generally speaking, "Stuff is happening that I don't like" does not constitute a threat to your liberty. Gay people don't want to remove Christian values from the country. Except where it impacts their daily lives, they don't care if you worship a frog's head of a Sunday. They just want to get married and serve in the Army. And if equal protection under the secular law is really a threat to your religious liberty, then both your religion and your liberty are made of spun sugar and you should shop around for a most robust variety of both of them.

That we have allowed this kind of transparent nonsense to poison our politics is not entirely the fault of the politicians who exploit it, or even of the wagonloads of suckers who believe it. The fault lies with the preachers who peddle paranoia instead of the gospels, who tell the people comfortably ensconced every Sunday in the sprawling religious compounds that their towering megachurch is really an embattled outpost in the barbarian country of Fabuloustan.

The Righteous Remnant malarkey largely has been an easy con at least since Constantine first enlisted Christianity in the service of an empire. In the context of the United States, where religion is more free — and, let it be said, more profitable — than anywhere else in the world, it is utterly transparent, and it is destructive to the genuinely devout. It convinces them that their faith is so delicate, so shallow that the transitory enthusiasms of politics can put that faith at risk. It  In the gospels, The Founder himself tells us that the gates of hell will not prevail against his Church. That being said, Barney Frank's wedding doesn't seem like much of a threat.

How much more proof do you need that a purely secular government is the only kind that works, because religions poisons fucking everything?