As some of you undoubtedly know, the California Supreme court has ruled that doctors may not discriminate against patients because they are gays or lesbian because their religious beliefs regard homosexuality as sin..
It’s about damned time some court told the fanatics to sit down and shut up.
There are already too many religious exemptions as it is. I can understand an exemption from performing a procedure like abortion—I don’t like it, but I understand it—but when it comes to exemptions for pharmacists who think the Pill or Plan B are the same as performing an abortion (no reputable scientist agrees with their notion that they’re abortifacients) or doctors picking and choosing what patient they will deign to treat because of their sexual orientation or marital status, it’s going way too far. They can’t discriminate according to race or religion, even though I can bet a lot of right wing Christian docs and pharmacies would love being able to tell a Muslim or a Wiccan they won’t treat them.
For those who don’t know the case, it centers around a Ms. Benitez who wanted to have a child with her longtime partner. She went to a fertility clinic—the only one nearby which was covered by her health plan.—for IVF. There she met some resistance from the doctor, who told her that she wouldn’t do the insemination because of her religious beliefs, but that another doctor would do so when the time came. Benitez underwent testing—but at the last moment, when it came time to inseminate. Al the clinic doctors refused. She was good enough for them to do extensive tests and treatment on and they happily took her health plan’s money, but refused to provide the service they had promised.
Even more to the point, they lied. They claimed they refused because their religious beliefs forbade them tohelp her become an unwed mother.
Too bad they were caught.
Whether they did that on the grounds of her sexual orientation or marital status is important because the Unruh Act, which protects the civil rights of Californians in business and commercial settings, protects people from discrimination based on sexual orientation but not marital status.
The California Medical Association has argued that the doctor had the right to refuse Benitez treatment because of a religious conviction against unwed parents.
Benitez's lawyers say her doctors didn't raise her marital status until five years after the case began.
In fact, Benitez's doctor, Christine Brody, said in a sworn statement in the case that she would not perform the procedure because it was against her religious belief to do so on a gay couple. And in a deposition, Brody said she would not perform the procedure on a legally married gay couple.
http://www.sfgate.com/...
Seems to me that not only are the doctors at the clinic anti-gay bigots, but they’re bold-faced liars as well. Gee, and I, raised Catholic with 16 years of Catholic education, though there was a commandment to the effect that we’re not supposed to bear false witness.
And needless to say, the conservatives aren’t happy. Here’s a typical comment from a California conservative blog:
Rather than simply find another provider who had no such religious compunctions, Ms. Lupita Benitez and her partner found another provider who had no such religious compunctions and filed a lawsuit against the two doctors who turned her down. This is California, after all. Diversity is only for the diverse.
Apparently conservative bloggers don’t bother to do their homework, as I did—she didn’t go elsewhere because her health plan didn’t cover another clinic in her region., as I stated above./ She did eventually get treatment, and the Christian clinic footed the bill—and her health plan eventually g ranted her an exemption for another clinic for later IVF pregnancies. So, despite what this blogger claims, she wasn’t being difficult; she simply had no other place to go.
That blogger goes on to say:
Justice Carol A. Corrigan, who voted against same-sex marriage, appeared strongly in favor of Benitez's right to medical treatment.
Corrigan noted that the physicians were running a business.
She added that if they did not want to perform certain procedures, they could take up a different line of work.
Brilliant reasoning, Justice Corrigan. I think I'll go out and sue a foreign auto repair shop for not "offering procedures" in domestic auto repair, because if they're don't want to perform certain procedures, "they could take up a different line of work."
Good to know Justice Corrigan wants to insert the court into the business of deciding what services a business has to offer and to whom. This is an example of why legislating should be confined to the legislature, not exported to the courts.
In the wake of the gay "marriage" ruling, nothing our state Supreme Court does will surprise me. After all, when domestic partnership legislation was being enacted, advocates of it dismissed worries that it was paving the way to gay marriage. Yet, that is exactly what happened.
And if the court does decide to elevate the group rights over our historic guarantees of religious liberty, I look forward to the dismayed response from all those libertarians who cheered the court's gay marriage decision. After all, the will have been cut from the same positivist cloth, and now that this door has been swung open, my libertarian friends should be surprised at what walks through in the years to come.
http://www.redcounty.com/...
He goes on to whine that such a ruling could force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions or sterilizations against church doctrine. His problem is that the ruling doesn’t deal with procedures—in fact this clinic was darned thrilled to treat straight female patients, but only if they’re married or so they claim—but with patients, and whether doctors can pick and choose which patients they will treat. There is no hint that this ruling will force doctors or hospitals to perform procedures that go against their beliefs—but merely states that is they perform those procedures at all, they can’t choose which group they will treat. In other words, redcounty blogger, they won’t force foreign auto repair shops to work on American cars.
As I diaried here, doctors have been allowed to gt away with a lot including one doctor who refused to treat a sick child because her mother had a tattoo/. It seems Doctor Christian Merrill won’t treat anyone with piercings or tattoos because of an obscure Bible passage.. His dress code trumps a child’s ear infection. Does that mean because someone dyes my hair and some church considers that non-Biblical, they can refuse to treat him or her? Seems to me that medical personnel are really pushing the envelope on this to get away with as much as possible. Down here in Biblethumper Land I can easily see someone refusing to treat me because I wear a pentacle and he considers it Satanic.
My solution? When someone, a new patient, calls to make an appointment, the secretary must recite all the categories pf people the doctor won’t see because of religious beliefs. The pharmacy should have to list all the prescriptions it won’t fill, and what customers the pharmacists will not associate with.
Unfortunately, this will likely to go to the SCOTUS, and the RATS plus Kennedy will once again rule against the rights of the individual, as they have since Roberts and Alito took their seats.
But for now, I am glad that one court in the nation is not re-enforcing the notion that right wing Christians’ tender feelings trump the rights of patients.