So I have some very Catholic friends. We disagree on a lot. I'm basically an agnostic, but I abhor organized religion. I don't spend a ton of time thinking about the existence of God, because it forces me to run in mental circles. In any case, my friends and I have some disagreements. The big thing on the religious right now is "first amendment rights" and "religious liberty." They drag this out when they want to use the state as their poxy to deny same sex couples the right to marry. I would not force any unwilling church to marry a same sex couple, but I would allow them to go to the court house and get a marriage certificate. With the recent announcement from the Obama administration about requiring employers to cover contraception without co-pays has gotten the Catholics in a tizzy. My first reaction is to just ignore their reaction and cheer the fact that now more women will have access to contraceptives. To my thinking, greater access to contraceptives will lead to obvious health benefits and allow women to plan their pregnancies. However, I'm not religious, and I don't have strong religious convictions like millions of Americans do, so I wonder if this is in fact infringing on Catholics' rights.
I know, you've got your pitchforks and torches ready, but hear me out. In the gay marriage example, there is a third way: the state. Marriage rights are conferred by the state and there is a clear public sector by which the state can effect its rights by association. If a Catholic hospital that takes federal money wants to offer medical care in a state that allows same sex couples, then it will have to service that couple like it would any other in cases where marriage confers special rights. This is true in many other circumstances, like a recent case in my home state of Michigan where a girl did not want to deliver counseling to someone because they were gay, citing her "religious liberty." I'm very sensitive to right wing Trojan horses that they use to discriminate and divide people based on their religion convictions. In the case of the counselor, since the clinic received federal funds, they cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation. If the clinic doesn't like it, then they can operate without the funds, and if the girl didn't like counseling gay people, she can work another job. Even though I think her religious views are idiotic to say the least (you would deny someone care because of a few sentences in an old book?), she does have a right to believe whatever cockamamie idea she wants.
However I see this as a case where we are forcing institutions to pay for something they object to deeply, ignoring their conscience. I know, there is hypocrisy here on the part of Catholics, as up to 98% of them use birth control, even those who go to church on a regular basis! With this in mind, then, this is about a small minority of bishops and leaders of religious institutions raising a stink, trolling out the "religious liberty" Trojan horse and denying women the right to decide when they get pregnant. Or is it? This is where the role of government gets muddy in my eyes. We don't allow full religious liberty. If a Muslim were to kill one of his children because he/she dishonored themselves (plenty of cases of this happening), then he would be sent to prison. Citing Sharia law would be useless in keeping him out of jail, as American law supersedes religious law. You don't have a right to kill someone based on your religious convictions. The first amendment doesn't protect that. This is not an equivalent case, but when you don't have hard and fast rules, it ends up becoming a make it up as you go situation. This law would force a University or another institution and the people within it to provide birth control which is against their conscience. The fact that it is already done in many states is not really the issue here, as expanding force does not mean the initial force was in fact correct.
I'm glad women who could otherwise not afford it will have greater access to contraception. I understand there is an exception for non profits who cater to people of the same religious persuasion. I'm assuming the law is basically to protect employees of Catholic institutions who themselves have no religious based reservations against using contraception and want to be able to afford it, but would otherwise be blocked because they happen to work for people who are against it. If that is the reasoning behind this law, then I can understand it. If I worked for an institution that happened to be religious, I wouldn't want their religious reservations to negatively affect my life. If we're going to have a health care mandate, then there should be some ground rules. Also, there is the fact that if Catholics don't want their adherents to use birth control, they should do a better job of conveying that message and getting other Catholics to follow suit. 98% is a pretty big message that people find the benefits of birth control outweigh whatever their priest says on Sunday.
However, I just can't escape the feeling that we have in fact trampled on someone's religious liberty. In the aforementioned case where we tell the girl who doesn't want to counsel the homosexual to find another job, why doesn't the Catholic institution tell the employee to find another job, an employer whose conscience is not assaulted by being forced to provide a product they find to be against their morality? When we do use the state to dictate something, we have to be quite clear why we're doing it and why we're sacrificing the beliefs of others to do it. I'm fine, for instance, with the government mandating that restaurants serve all of their customers. I don't care if there is a free market principle to prevent "White's Only" lunch counters; you can just use the government to ban them, and if that makes a few racists unhappy, then who cares? However where does that power begin and end? What if the racists back then were to create a smokescreen of fake statistics and scare stories to try and show why there should be White's Only lunch counters? The religious right is already in full spin mode with this, saying that the government wants to promote abortion and that the government treats pregnancy like a disease. I don't agree with the religious convictions of someone who would deny someone else birth control through their insurance plan, but isn't it their right not to want to buy it?
Of course as liberals we're keenly aware that liberty is directly linked to how much power a person has in any situation, and that freedom of choice is an illusion in many cases, but I'd really like a good explanation of how we're not infringing on Catholic institutions' religious liberties in this case, because if we are, then I won't be able to say anything when my Catholic friends show up.
11:05 AM PT: I'm mostly afraid of this being used as spin to divide the Catholic vote. The sites I go to essentially are saying this is a great time to dump Obama and vote Republican, because he's against religious liberty. Many sites single out liberal Catholics, saying that they can no longer apologize for him. I kind of feel there is a case to be made, and if you're a single issue voter, then this might be the final nail in the coffin for some Catholics who had voted for Obama, but might not now.