Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Wait for the screaming to start.
Childbirth is usually associated with some pain and struggle, at least in most humans. That's normal, and to be expected.
But the cries of anguish I'm expecting to hear shortly will not be coming from women giving birth. Rather, it will likely come from religious fundamentalists who are going to scream about how their rights are being denied, how they are being persecuted for their beliefs. Which beliefs? These:
Calif top court: Docs can't withhold care to gays
SAN FRANCISCO - California's highest court on Monday barred doctors from invoking their religious beliefs as a reason to deny treatment to gays and lesbians, ruling that state law prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination extends to the medical profession.
Justice Joyce Kennard wrote that two Christian fertility doctors who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian have neither a free speech right nor a religious exemption from the state's law, which "imposes on business establishments certain antidiscrimination obligations."
Cue the outrage:
Robert Tyler, one of the lawyers for the clinic, said the ruling advanced the Supreme Court's "radical agenda" and would help the campaign supporting a November ballot initiative that seeks to once again ban gay marriage in California.
"The Supreme Court's desire to promote the homosexual lifestyle at the risk of infringing upon the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion is what the public needs to learn about," said Tyler, who leads the nonprofit Advocates for Faith and Freedom in Murrieta, Calif.
Ayup, there it is.
There are several things at work here. One is the idea that only Sky Daddy gets to create virgin births (no, seriously, that's exactly why a lot of Catholics object to IVF). Another is just a basic hostility to any science-based procedure that is "playing God" in their eyes. And another is that these people believe that their religion gives them the right to not provide medical care to people they don't like, or do procedures they don't like, or to hand out medicine they don't like.
Actually, I largely agree with them: I don't think that they should be compelled to do these things. But then, if they make that choice, they shouldn't be in the professions which require them to do those things. Don't want to hand out birth control pills? Fine - you can't be a pharmacist. Don't like abortion? OK, but there goes your OB/GYN practice. Can't work on your Sabbath? That's cool - but you don't get to be an ER doc. Simple.
Of course, that's not the answer they want. They want to have it both ways. To discriminate, but to not have to pay any price for doing so. To inflict their religious fantasies on others, but not to have to answer to anyone but their version of the Big Magic JuJu Man. Seems a funny way to act for those who profess to believe that another guy died 2,000 years ago in order to save Mankind, but hey, what do I know.
Jim Downey
Hat tip to ML - thanks!
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Navigating the rapids
I actually have respect for people who are willing to navigate the contradictions between their beliefs and basic reality. I worked at a hospital in Baltimore, where the chief of OB/GYN was a Catholic. When I asked about abortion in a conversation, he said that he would never perform one because of his beliefs, but he felt that the hospital, as a major medical center in the region, should provide necessary health care services. So his department did provide at least first-term abortions within the safety of a fully equipped hospital.
I don't have respect for the people who want, as Jim says, to have it both ways, who don't want to respect the sanctity of other viewpoints, who want to impose their rules on others, who want to use their rules and limitations as a bludgeon against anybody who wants to take a different tack. Sadly, I see that tendency on the rise in more and more parts of life.
Frank Moorman, skeptic