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Arrgh.
(Fair-use disclosure: I borrowed a few phrasings here and there from some wonderful bloggers, particularly some who hang out at Atrios.)
By way of huskiebear comes word of some lovely, simply lovely legislation:
http://tinyurl.com/2tnvy
The gist of it is, it would make it legal for pharmacists to decide not to give someone drugs based on what the pharmacists's beliefs are -- e.g., if the pharmacist thinks abortion is wicked, he or she can decide not to give a woman her prescription for birth control or morning-after pills, and can also refuse to transfer the prescription to a pharmacy that will.
Pharmaceutical activism, if you will.
As Les says, this is fucked up.
Y'know, it's been annoying me for a darn long time now that many conservatives, especially the Religious Right, say -- often in the same breath -- that they want both less government (i.e., privatization of potential profit centers, such as, oh, health care, prison management, education, pollution control, and even the military) and more government (i.e., the right to dictate people's personal behavior that would otherwise harm no one, such as, oh, homosexuality, birth control and abortion, religion or lack thereof, etc., etc., etc).
What they basically want is for their rules to apply to other people.
This would piss me off royally to begin with... but, at the risk of sounding flippant, the rules they invoke were thought up three thousand years ago by a bunch of illiterate goat-herders.
And, to this day, these morons see no contradiction -- logical, moral, or otherwise -- in taking away someone's legal rights because they, the morons, don't approve. Or believe their Big Invisible Superhero in the Sky doesn't approve.
Having believed, foolishly, for some years now that maybe religion wasn't so bad, as long as everyone kept it to themselves, I am now at the point of despising most major religions, because of the obvious intent of their followers to declare war on people who simply want to live their lives in their own way in conformance with the law but who happen not to belong to that religion.
And, to my friends who are religious: I love you dearly, but this is screwed up.
"An it Harm No One, Do What Thou Wilt shall be the Whole of the Law." Crowley was a nutcase, but he had that much right.
An embryo is not a baby.
A fetus is not more important than a mother.
A pharmacist is not a doctor.
A religious tenet, even a religious doctrine, is not more important than a law.
If you feel you must worship something, a god who directs you to hurt other people in any way is not a god worth worshipping.
A person who believes that a god directs them to hurt other people in any way needs help.
A person who hurts other people in any way in the name of his or her god is a criminal.
Perhaps most important of all: A person can have ethics, even morals, without belonging to a religion. And, according to the laws of our land as intended by the "Founding Fathers" the conservatives often invoke, freedom from religion is defended just as stringently as freedom of religion.
If you godly whackjobs want to run a country where you can oppress everybody who'll take it, go somewhere the fuck else.
Remember this, though: Your forebearers did just that, centuries ago. They were the Puritans, and they were so obnoxious and self-righteous that they pissed off the Dutch. They gave us such joys as the Salem Witch Trials, and were a perfect background for Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. They are the reason the First Amendment is worded the way it is ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances").
You, the religious conservatives of America, are completely in the wrong -- ethically and morally.
Leave us alone.
(Fair-use disclosure: I borrowed a few phrasings here and there from some wonderful bloggers, particularly some who hang out at Atrios.)
By way of huskiebear comes word of some lovely, simply lovely legislation:
http://tinyurl.com/2tnvy
The gist of it is, it would make it legal for pharmacists to decide not to give someone drugs based on what the pharmacists's beliefs are -- e.g., if the pharmacist thinks abortion is wicked, he or she can decide not to give a woman her prescription for birth control or morning-after pills, and can also refuse to transfer the prescription to a pharmacy that will.
Pharmaceutical activism, if you will.
As Les says, this is fucked up.
Y'know, it's been annoying me for a darn long time now that many conservatives, especially the Religious Right, say -- often in the same breath -- that they want both less government (i.e., privatization of potential profit centers, such as, oh, health care, prison management, education, pollution control, and even the military) and more government (i.e., the right to dictate people's personal behavior that would otherwise harm no one, such as, oh, homosexuality, birth control and abortion, religion or lack thereof, etc., etc., etc).
What they basically want is for their rules to apply to other people.
This would piss me off royally to begin with... but, at the risk of sounding flippant, the rules they invoke were thought up three thousand years ago by a bunch of illiterate goat-herders.
And, to this day, these morons see no contradiction -- logical, moral, or otherwise -- in taking away someone's legal rights because they, the morons, don't approve. Or believe their Big Invisible Superhero in the Sky doesn't approve.
Having believed, foolishly, for some years now that maybe religion wasn't so bad, as long as everyone kept it to themselves, I am now at the point of despising most major religions, because of the obvious intent of their followers to declare war on people who simply want to live their lives in their own way in conformance with the law but who happen not to belong to that religion.
And, to my friends who are religious: I love you dearly, but this is screwed up.
"An it Harm No One, Do What Thou Wilt shall be the Whole of the Law." Crowley was a nutcase, but he had that much right.
An embryo is not a baby.
A fetus is not more important than a mother.
A pharmacist is not a doctor.
A religious tenet, even a religious doctrine, is not more important than a law.
If you feel you must worship something, a god who directs you to hurt other people in any way is not a god worth worshipping.
A person who believes that a god directs them to hurt other people in any way needs help.
A person who hurts other people in any way in the name of his or her god is a criminal.
Perhaps most important of all: A person can have ethics, even morals, without belonging to a religion. And, according to the laws of our land as intended by the "Founding Fathers" the conservatives often invoke, freedom from religion is defended just as stringently as freedom of religion.
If you godly whackjobs want to run a country where you can oppress everybody who'll take it, go somewhere the fuck else.
Remember this, though: Your forebearers did just that, centuries ago. They were the Puritans, and they were so obnoxious and self-righteous that they pissed off the Dutch. They gave us such joys as the Salem Witch Trials, and were a perfect background for Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. They are the reason the First Amendment is worded the way it is ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances").
You, the religious conservatives of America, are completely in the wrong -- ethically and morally.
Leave us alone.
