Conscience Protection Protects Everyone

Rebecca Hamilton reports on the AZ bill allowing businesses to refuse customers based on religious grounds.  I haven’t seen the bill either, so I don’t have an opinion on whether it is a good one. But the idea — that a person should not be required to do something they think is wrong — I like that idea.

Some people would go so far as to say it’s such a good idea it ought to be in our Constitution.

***

The trouble we’re having with these laws is that no one is testing the courts in all the possible directions.  What we need to do is start an onslaught on the printing companies.

• Find a printing press owned by an ardently pro-choice feminist.  Place an order for bunches of anti-abortion propaganda.
• Find a printing press owned by an openly gay couple.  Place an order for bunches of pro-traditional-marriage tracts.

When the tables are turned: Shouldn’t the business owner have the right to decline?  I think so.  I think it so profoundly that I’m not sure I could bring myself to place the test-order.  Who would do that?  If you care about someone, would you really put them in that position?

If I did it accidentally, I’d apologize and quietly take my business elsewhere.  What kind of person *wants* to make another person miserable?  Not me.

This decency is killing us. We’re too nice for own good, and we have an empty slate of court cases to prove it. Because the “anti-discrimination” cases are all running in a single direction, today, everyone thinks that “conscience protection” is all about right wing religious extremists wanting to discriminate against innocents.

No.  Just no.  Conscience protection is about everyone being free to refrain from actions that violate their conscience.

***

The one trouble with conscience protection is that it eventually reaches a wall.  As a society we have a fundamental morality, a firm set of non-negotiable beliefs.  Americans believe (rightly) that discrimination based on race is wrong. It’s a non-negotiable.  If you want to have a business that serves the general public, you can’t pick your clients based on race.  That is a fundamental moral law that Americans have (rightly) adopted.

The battle in our courts and in our legistures right now is not, therefore, fundamentally about “freedom of belief”.  If we truly thought that people were free to have any number of opinions about abortion, or contraception, or the nature of marriage, we would not have these cases. The Bill of Rights would suffice, end of story.

What is being fought, now, is a battle over what our national morality will be.  “You must believe that contraception is morally acceptable.”  That’s what’s at stake. “You must believe that marriage is not the sole province of one man and one woman.”  That’s what’s being fought.

This is evil.

 

Be Careful with those Precendents

My thoughts on a pair of related conversations I’ve witnessed lately.

#1: Liberal friend, offended by Barilla’s opposition to using gay couples in their advertising, declares that corporations have no conscience rights. 

–> The precedent she’s proposing: If the religious right gains power, she’s volunteering to carry out in her business and public life whatever religious or moral requirements those tea party extremists manage to pass.

(Hint to subversive types: Consider hunting down the openly and adamantly pro-choice owners of a local printing company, and commissioning a pile of anti-abortion literature from them.   Consider hiring the local pagan to print your anti-Wiccan Christian tracts. They haven’t the right to discriminate against you, we’re being told.)

#2: Conservative but sophisticated friend dismisses the concerns of those who don’t like certain literature choices mentioned in the common core standards.  She argues that kids are going to be exposed to such things eventually, etc., etc..

–> Here’s the reality for the vast majority of young people: Whatever the public schools put on their reading the list, the student is now required by law to read.  Failure to comply means failure to be admitted to nearly every job opening that offers a living wage.

Private schools? Home schools? The refuge of a privileged few.  Most parents have no option but to send their child to the local public school.  And if they fail to do so, their child will be seized by the state and put into the care of the foster system. 

Yes, that’s the reality.  Your child is literally forced by law to read whatever is on the list, or forgo every economic advantage that high school graduation confers.

That’s not me being reactionary.  That’s me summarizing life in the US today.

So, precedent #2: Be careful what you say is an acceptable choice for that high school literature curriculum.

August 1 Rally for Religious Freedom at the White House, 11AM

If you’re in the DC area and didn’t get this in your inbox already, latest on the rally for religious freedom at the White House:

Greetings Jennifer,

We’ve had a huge response to our call for an August 1 demonstration by WSFT. So it’s a GO.

We have a permit from the Park Service: 11:30-12:30 Lafayette Park, Washington DC, Pennsylvania Ave. at 16th, (In front of the White House!! yea!). Can start assembling around 11:00.

We’ve ordered about 60 signs. Will need you to bring your own too though! About 3’x3′ or 2’x 3′, and NOT on sticks please.

Some possible slogans?

• Women For Religious Freedom
• Women Against the HHS Contraception and Abortion Mandate
• Women can Speak for Themselves !! [Pelosi/Sebelius, etc…..]

… and others dreamed up by your fertile brains. Try to keep them short, punchy, and positive!

I probably have 75-100 women coming now. Would be great to have about 50 more!

In the spirit of WSFT, I will need you to arrange to get yourselves there and home please.  I don’t have a spare minute to arrange for proper drop off and pick up spots or other transportation. I’m so sorry but I just can’t….

But WSFT will organize marshals, first aid, water and a series of two minute speeches, by our members.

I have some speakers. FOR SPEAKERS, YOU WILL HAVE A BULLHORN, NOT A MIC, and are limited to two minutes each please.

I could use few more speakers who work at religious institutions but want them to be free to choose insurance coverage that respects their religious integrity.

After the rally, there is the possibility that we could go to the Capitol Visitors Center and meet some female staffers or Representatives. We are working on this. We would need to cab to the Capitol, 16 blocks away.

Finally, I am working on personal meetings with Biden and Sebelius staff to present our current total of signatures, I’ll keep you apprised.

That’s it for now! See you soon I hope!

Helen

http://womenspeakforthemselves.com/
https://www.facebook.com/WomenSpeakForThemselves?ref=hl
https://twitter.com/womenspeak2012

April 8th HHS Contraceptive Mandate Comment Period Closes

Go here to leave a comment. Go ahead and do it right now, then you can come back to read my ranty-rant if you like.

Either you believe in women’s liberation or you don’t.  Do you believe that mentally competent, grown women are capable of making their own purchases?

Then require employers to pay us a living wage, and let us make our own purchases.

Women don’t need men at the office, men in Congress, or men at the HHS to force us to spend our wages on this pill or that surgery.  And we don’t need Mama making us buy stuff either.

We’re grown-ups.  Pay us fairly, and we’ll pick our own health insurance, thank you very much.

Seven Takes: Life, Death, Warped Things Governments Do

No, I’m not back to regular blogging.  But I had approximately seven things to say, and it’s a Friday, so that makes this Seven Quick Takes, right?

1.  Why yes, that was us you saw at the National Vocations Meet-Up March for Life.

Low point:  Children in tears due to experience of being a southern-person whose mother does not know how to dress them for cold weather.

High point: Making a brief retreat into the National Gallery to go potty, rest, and warm-up, then re-emerging to a gentle made-for-TV snow flurry, taking up our signs, and falling into line with these guys.  Who sing beautifully.

Weird Point: The Metronome, as my 3rd-grader calls it, is determined not to take my money.  I kept trying to pay full fare, but the machines refused me at every turn. Fortunately the kind metro-ladies are apparently used to clueless tourists with five children in tow, and sorted me out with a combination of generosity and exasperation that I think must be the hallmark of the metro system.

2. Petersburg National Battlefield is a good place to run the kids and get your history fix all at once.  The ranger does come around checking to see if you’ve paid.

–> Touring tip:  Always ask if you’re supposed to pay.  Because they expect you to pay, even if they never ever tell you that.  And the ranger lady has a gun.  Luckily I had asked.

Discussion Question: Any Particular Reason the Union had to engage in war?  Why not just let the Confederacy secede, and work on patching things up diplomatically?  Put another way:  Did the US Civil War meet just war criteria for the Union?

My boy says yes.  I’m playing neutral professor-person.

In other US history topics: The essay “Smuggler Nation” in this month’s Harpers is really quite good. One more shovel of fodder for that pirates-vs.-privateers topic that’s always coming up around this household.

Our other airline-miles magazine subscription, Western Horseman ran a great piece a month or so ago on the troubles ranchers along the US-Mexican border are having with Mexican smugglers, and the lack of cooperation from some of the US border patrol in keeping their lands safe.  I can’t seem to find an article link.  But let me just say right now, that if you purchase approximately one plane ticket every five years, and want a family-friendly periodical to purchase with your miles before they expire, WH is the one.

3.  My son objects to the strong language in Dorothy Sayer’s Lord Peter Views the Body.  It pleases me greatly to discover I’ve reared a middle-schooler who complains about words like “damn” and “hell” improperly used.

4.  My January New Evangelizers column was 10 Ways to Support Evangelization Even When Your Parish is Falling Apart.

I picked this photo.

Apparently it grabbed someone’s attention, because the Catholic Vitamins people invited me to do an interview for their podcast.  Which is exciting, in an I-hope-my-phone-battery-doesn’t-die-while-we’re-talking kind of way.  I think I can bribe my kids into being quiet with the promise of Krispy Kreme donuts.  Also, presumably this is just one step on the long road towards true fame? By which I mean, of course, being on Rhett & Link’s Good Mythical Morning? My son doesn’t think I’ll ever be quite that good, but he puts on an encouraging face all the same.

5.  Helen Alvare nails it on the head in her analysis of the new HSS regulations.

Let me observe once again that there would be no moral objection at all if the government merely required employers to pay workers a sum sufficient to pay for the desired contraceptive services — for example, by putting the necessary funds into a healthcare savings account that employees could then use to purchase supplemental insurance if they so chose.

And how exactly is it “freedom of religion” if insurance companies and self-insurance administrators must sell (or give away, per the new iteration of regulations) products they may themselves object to?  Is there no legal right to sell insurance for some but not all health care services?  Will insurers eventually be required to pay for euthanasia as well?  Apparently there is a religious test required in order to enter the insurance industry.

6.  Speakin’ of that constitution thing . . . my boy observes that 2/3rds of gun deaths are suicides.  (Wikipedia’s citing 60%.) Which puts a certain corner of the culture in the odd position of wanting to outlaw something they’re trying to legalize.  Apparently depressed and disabled people should die, but only at the hands of licensed death-care providers?

If you aren’t from Gunlandia, you probably should not visit gunmemes.com. It takes a special red-state redness to enjoy.

7.  You know you live in a warped culture when you feel the need to clarify something like this: “For the record, I’m 100% opposed to all forms of murder and suicide.”

Ooh, oooh, want me to exasperate everybody in one single catechism quote? How about this one?  Enough to make everyone you know get all squirmy-wormy:

2269 The fifth commandment forbids doing anything with the intention of indirectly bringing about a person’s death. The moral law prohibits exposing someone to mortal danger without grave reason, as well as refusing assistance to a person in danger.

The acceptance by human society of murderous famines, without efforts to remedy them, is a scandalous injustice and a grave offense. Those whose usurious and avaricious dealings lead to the hunger and death of their brethren in the human family indirectly commit homicide, which is imputable to them.⁷⁰

Unintentional killing is not morally imputable. But one is not exonerated from grave offense if, without proportionate reasons, he has acted in a way that brings about someone’s death, even without the intention to do so.

Happy February.

Religious Freedom. Worth Keeping.

 

It’s that time again.  Find a list of locations here.  If you aren’t able to attend one, think now about what you could do tomorrow — prayer, fasting, offering something up, doing a work of mercy — to stand in solidarity with those who are showing up on your behalf.

Reminder: This is a not a partisan issue.  This is not about money.  If it were about money, the US government would do just as well requiring employers to set aside the necessary amount of health care savings, and leave it to employees to decide whether or not they need this or that type of insurance.

To gather the critical number of participants per plan, the US government is entirely capable of asking health insurers to organize their policies by groups of some kind other than “employees of this” and “employees of that”.  You could, say, simply pool all people in each state who want a particular level of insurance from a particular provider into a single insurance pool.  Not complicated.  The alternatives are myriad.  It is absolutely not necessary to require employers to purchase specific products directly.

Does your boss buy your Christmas tree?  Your hot dogs?  Your swimsuit?  It is entirely legitimate for the government to require employers to pay fair wages, including sufficient amounts to cover health care costs.  It is not legitimate to require individual employers to purchase products directly for their employees, with no regard for the employer’s religious beliefs.  Or the employee’s beliefs.  Please, no, give my money to charity, I don’t need that ____.

My vote for Most Important Book of 2012

I just spent 3 days in the largest Catholic bookstore in the world.  I bought one book.  This is it:

Then I was stuck in an airport for five hours.  Perfect timing.

What it is:  Tiến Dương is a real guy about your age (born 1963) who is now a priest in the diocese of Charlotte, NC.  Deanna Klingel persuaded him to let her tell his story, and she worked with him over I-don’t-know-how-long to get it right.  Fr. Tien is a bit embarrassed to be singled out this way, because his story is no different from that of thousands upon thousands of his countryman.  But as Deanna pointed out, if you write, “X,000 people endured blah blah blah . . .” it’s boring.  Tell one story well, and you see by extension the story of 10,000 others.

The book is told like historical fiction, except that it’s non-fiction verified by the subject — unlike posthumous saints’ biographies, there’s no conjecture here.  It’s what happened.  The reading level is middle-grades and up, though some of the topics may be too mature for your middle-schooler.  (Among others, there is a passing reference to a rape/suicide.)  The drama is riveting, but the violence is told with just enough distance that you won’t have nightmares, but you will understand what happened — Deanna has a real talent for telling a bigger story by honing in on powerful but less-disturbing details.  Like, say, nearly drowning, twice; or crawling out of a refugee camp, and up the hill to the medical clinic.

–>  I’m going to talk about the writing style once, right now: There are about seven to ten paragraphs interspersed through the book that I think are not the strongest style the author could have chosen.  If I were the editor, I would have used a different expository method for those few.  Otherwise, the writing gets my 100% stamp of approval — clear, solid prose, page-turning action sequences, deft handling of a zillion difficult or personal topics.

Why “Most Important Book?”

This is a story that needs to be known.  It is the story of people in your town and in your parish, living with you, today.  And of course I’m an easy sell, because the books touches on some of my favorite topics, including but not limited to:

• Economics
• Politics
• Diplomacy
• Poverty
• Immigration
• Freedom of Religion
• Freedom, Period
• Refugee Camps
• Cultural Clashes
• Corruption
• Goodness and Virtue
• Faith
• Priestly Vocations
• Religious Vocations
• Marriage and Family Life as a Vocation
• Lying
• Rape
• Suicide
• Generosity
• Orphans
• Welfare
• Stinky Mud
• Used Cars
• Huggy vs. Not-Huggy

You get the idea.  There’s more.  Without a single moment of preaching.  Just an action-packed, readable story, well told.

Buy Bread Upon the Water by Deanna K. Klingel, published by St. Rafka press.

7 Takes: The Ease With Which We Lie

Lighter fare this way. Click as needed.

1.

I would like to thank all of you who have prayed for me.  I’m lousy at praying, but I do pray for my benefactors, and that would be you.  Because your work has been, thus far, very effective.  I would like to double-thank those who have been patient in practical matters as my attendance at this or that has been spotty.

2.

Tuesday  morning I learned a friend had been deceiving me for some time.  Not lying, not outright.  She’d made a (perfectly legitimate) decision that she knew I wouldn’t like.  She put off telling me, presumably in the hopes it would simply never become an issue. That I wouldn’t, in the end, need to know after all.

2468 Truth as uprightness in human action and speech is called truthfulness, sincerity, or candor. Truth or truthfulness is the virtue which consists in showing oneself true in deeds and truthful in words, and in guarding against duplicity, dissimulation, and hypocrisy.

What began as prudence and discretion, looking for the right moment to share the news I needed to know, turned into  a lack of candor as the months dragged out.   Sometimes I worry about doing the same thing.  Is there something I should be saying, and haven’t?  It is easy enough to be misunderstood.  It is possible to deceive without intending to, without any sin at all.

3.

2469 “Men could not live with one another if there were not mutual confidence that they were being truthful to one another.”²⁶² The virtue of truth gives another his just due. Truthfulness keeps to the just mean between what ought to be expressed and what ought to be kept secret: it entails honesty and discretion. In justice, “as a matter of honor, one man owes it to another to manifest the truth.”²⁶³

4.

I should note here that my own fault runs more often the other way — I had already strained our relationship by being quite blunt in a matter where I felt absolute candor trumped sparing of feelings.  There are long passages in the catechism about the importance of not saying too much.   I stink at that.

Even when I am trying to be prudent, to actually shut up and think for a change, there’s always the wondering.  Does someone truly need to know this thing I know?  Will I be more guilty for speaking, or for not?

5.

2483 Lying is the most direct offense against the truth. To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth. By injuring man’s relation to truth and to his neighbor, a lie offends against the fundamental relation of man and of his word to the Lord.

So I was composing this post in my head this morning before mass.  After, I had the privilege of being outright lied to, in a mortal-sin kind of way, if my fact-checking turns out to be correct.  (Completely different scenario, different people.)  It was . . . very strange.

But it happens.  People do evil things.  People who are kind and generous and pious sometimes do evil things.

6.

Why do Mark Shea and Chris Tollefsen get told off every time they point out lying is wrong?  I think it’s because we’re so used to it.*

We have a cultural fear of the truth.  Faced with a difficult thing to say about even the most trivial matter, we tend to look for away to skirt the truth.  How can I get my girlfriend to purchase a different outfit, without telling her this one she loves makes her look awful / is terribly tacky / is exactly the one I’m wearing to the same event?

We are so used to thinking of deceit as necessary for police work, or some similar situation, that it is unimaginable, truly unthinkable, that it might, possibly, be the wrong thing to do.  We so fear harming innocent children or the frail elderly with difficult facts, that I’ve been accused of great cruelty for suggesting that such people can, in fact, be given difficult but necessary news in some sensitive but honest way.

7.

And it cannot be denied: the moral life is not the easier life.  The freedom truth brings is bought at a cost.  A willingness to risk not nabbing the criminal, of making the little girl cry for the rest of her life, of causing grandma’s heart to fail.  Or a boycott by angry customers.  Or martyrdom.

Mostly, doing what is right is also doing what feels better.  What, in the end, makes like easier.  Our conscience is clear, our friendships are solid, people want to work with and help others they know to be decent, honest folk.  Mostly.

Not always.

Don’t forget to pray for Allie Hathaway, then go read more takes at the home of our lovely hostess Jen F. at ConversionDiary.com. 

*Not telling them off.  Lying.  Though we’re also getting used to telling them off.  Curiously, my Mark Shea link has no negative comments on it, at this writing.

Fortnight of Freedom June 21st – July 4th

Check out the many events around the country planned for the Fortnight of Freedom June 21st to July 4th.

Over at the Catholic Writers Guild blog, I just queued up a good troll-baiting guest post (Not mine! For once I’m mostly innocent!) to go live first thing in the morning.  And I gave our regularly-scheduled bloggers a private talking-to about how EASY it is to write on this topic.  So we’ll see how they do.

I’m going to keep this post sticky for the next two weeks, so if you post something on the theme of freedom, or have an on-topic link you’d like to share, feel free to put it in this combox.

Don’t Tread On Us

So our federal government’s gone and gotten all totalitarians-in-training on us.  Enjoy using what amendments we’ve still got left:

• The next set of nationwide religious freedom rallies will be Friday, June 8th at noon.  Look here for the list of locations.
• For regular updates on the campgain for freedom, check out Women Speak for Themselves.
• The US Catholic Bishops are leading a Fortnight of Freedom from June 21st to July 4th.

Feeling shy?  Freedom’s not just for Catholics!  The whole point of religious freedom is that you get to choose whether and how to practice your faith.  Is it really so important that your employer set aside money for birth control only, instead of giving you the same amount of cash into a general-use health care savings fund?  (Or just cash, if you run libertarian.)   We all love to see a ‘win’ for our own cause.  But regardless of where you stand on contraception, healthcare, or organized religion, the Bill of Rights just rocks.  Defend it now.