Religious freedom in the name of discrimination is crap

Let's do away with religious freedom. There's no need for it. For lots of reasons it makes no sense. Let me explain.

I'm fine with people being free to believe whatever they want to. So let's simply have believing freedom. After all, religious belief is just one form of believing.

Some people believe in God. Others believe in playing golf, in listening to rap music, in eating meat -- none of which I believe in.

So be it. Each to his own. Beliefs, that is. If we all looked upon life the same way, we'd be identically programmed robots. Boring.

What irks me is when religious believing gets elevated above other forms of believing.

Actually, a belief is a belief. A belief is different from a fact because there is no demonstrable evidence for it, nothing that justifies saying "This is" rather than "I believe."

Gravity is a fact. Considering that using certain forms of contraception or having sex with a person of the same gender is evil -- that's a belief.

You and I are each entitled to our own beliefs. But not to our own facts.

Yet in the Hobby Lobby decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that closely-held corporations can deny contraceptive coverage to their employees in the name of religious freedom.

In other words, a belief was considered (by five Catholic male members of the Court) to be higher than the law of the land. Well, if this is so, why aren't people with other sorts of strongly held beliefs able to ignore laws?

I've blogged about this before. For example, here and here. From the first post:

A "religious conscience exemption" argument usually is a load of crap. Religious believers shouldn't be able to avoid laws just because they have a strongly held personal belief. Hey! We all have strongly held personal beliefs.

I haven't had a single bite of meat or fish since I became a vegetarian in 1970, forty-one years ago. I strongly believe in both the morality of not killing animals for food, and in the health benefits of vegetarianism.

But if a bunch of other vegetarians and me started a college which espoused our dietary beliefs, yet enrolled meat-eaters also, would it be fair if we required that anyone who got a student loan from the federal government couldn't buy a hamburger -- or any other animal flesh -- while they were associated with our college?

Most people would think that'd be ridiculous. But it's no more ridiculous than a Catholic hospital saying "We shouldn't have to provide our employees with birth control coverage under their health insurance plan."

Today the New York Times reported that President Obama plans to sign an executive order that doesn't allow religious believers to discriminate against their fellow human beings.

President Obama plans to sign an executive order on Monday that protects gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees from discrimination by companies that do federal government work, fulfilling a promise to a crucial Democratic constituency, White House officials said on Friday. But the directive will not exempt religious groups, as many of them had sought.

The order will also, for the first time, explicitly protect federal employees from discrimination on the basis of gender identity, officials said. Gay men, lesbians and bisexuals who work for the federal government already have such protections.

Excellent. But not surprisingly, bigots want to use religion as an excuse to keep on with their unjust discriminating.

Religious groups had sought the exemption to ensure that they would not lose federal money or contracts if they could not meet the new guidelines because of their beliefs.

Because of their beliefs. Ah, what a screwed-up country we would live in if everybody could ignore any law they chose because of their beliefs. 

"You can't arrest me for drunk driving, officer. I believe it is OK to chug a couple of six packs and then drive home from the bar."

"I don't have to pay my taxes because I don't believe in government."

"I'm innocent of murder because I believed that asshole deserved to die."

Hey, these are all beliefs.

They have exactly the same validity as an equally subjective religious belief that contraception is evil or homosexuality is wrong. The only difference is that religions are collections of people with similar beliefs who have managed to get the government to give them special treatment under the law. 

The absurdity of this is clear when we take out the word "religious" from religious beliefs, as in the quote above. Should anyone be able to ignore regulations or laws "because of their beliefs"? I say, no. That way leads to anarchy.

In a sane, reasonable, rational, fair world, religious beliefs wouldn't be treated any differently than other sorts of beliefs. Eventually, I hope, that world will come. Until then, we'll have to put up with bigoted people wanting to discriminate in the name of a belief that they call "religious."

 

 

 

Comments

[TejO]

Woaw! Talk about a healthy dose of blog catharsis... right on Dude!

"Believing" in golf, rap, and eating meat seems rather absurd since these are activities that do exist in our reality(ies)- objective reality, hence making it possible to also exist in our subjective reality (when we fantasize about 'hitting a hole in one', with the models featured in 50 cent's latest mvs cheering on, and then hosting a barbecue after).
However, 'believing in God' does seem to make a tad bit more sense...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO7mfoD_edU

[tucson]

Under the Supreme Court ruling corporations/businesses are still going to have to provide 16 of the 20 birth control drugs that are available. The other 4 drugs in question terminate an already fertilized egg...in other words, abortion drugs. Those are the drugs under the Supreme Court ruling that certain private companies will not have to provide due to their religious beliefs.

It seems reasonable to me that those who believe in abortion should allow those who do not believe in abortion to do so especially in a privately run company.

That abortion is OK is a belief.
That abortion is not OK is also a belief.

If someone does not like a private company's policies based on religious beliefs they can work somewhere else.

[Brian Hines]

tucson, those four drugs don't cause an abortion. Medical experts have said that Hobby Lobby and the Supreme Court are wrong about this.
http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-ra-craziest-thing-about-hobby-lobby-20140630-column.html

Unfortunately, the Court went along with the notion that I criticize here: a deeply held religious belief is what counts, not whether the belief is true. This is ridiculous. Laws are meant to apply to everybody, regardless of someone's beliefs.

[tucson]

Brian, I'm not one for doing much research and homework which probably explains why my formal education ended in the tenth grade, a badge of honor I cherish deeply. Having a surfing beach and beach babes only a mile from one of my high schools didn't help either because I often turned left towards the beach as if drawn by a magnet instead of going straight into the school.

Anyway, I girded up my loins and did a little search enginning and found articles stating that the four drugs in question, Plan B, Ella, ParaGard (copper IUD) and Mirena are all considered by at least some doctors/ObGyns/researchers to be abortifacients (they induce abortions), especially Plan B and Ella.

So, the opinion stated by the doctor in the article you presented is just that, an opinion among differing opinions.

Although the data is not conclusive, it appears there is enough evidence to lead medical professionals as well as the Hobby Lobby folks to reasonably consider them to be abortion drugs.

So, should Hobby Lobby be forced to provide abortion drugs to their employees if they don't want to? I don't think so.

I agree with you that laws should not be based on religious beliefs but rather secular ethical and practical considerations. Hobby Lobby could just say they think abortion is wrong and don't want to support it and leave it at that.

[cc]

it appears there is enough evidence to lead medical professionals as well as the Hobby Lobby folks to reasonably consider them to be abortion drugs.

If this is what you got from the article, you don't know how to read. Not only is there no mention of "some doctors" who believe these drugs cause abortions, but it quotes a statement from The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists saying that the drugs are "contraceptives, not aboritfacients". They do not cause abortions.

What makes this Supreme Court decision such an awful one is that it gives greater value to the ignorant opinion, i.e., the belief that these drugs cause abortions than it gives to scientific fact.

[Willie R]

I think that the Supreme Court's decision was the fairest way to placate the most cry babies.

When life begins is simply conjecture, whether it is informed scientific consensus or dearly held belief. Because it really doesn't matter. At all.

Pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg gets implanted in the uterine wall. This is the scientific consensus opinion (sic). Ergo - any process or agent employed to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg is a contraceptive. No definable process has begun to occur.

Religious people are of the opinion that the definable process of pregnancy occurs when the egg becomes fertilized, and that, therefore, an abortion has occurred; abortion being the forced cessation of a process that has known consequences.

Women who use birth control do not want to become pregnant. You probably will not get much of an argument from chemists who formulate "contraceptives" that the main goal of chemical contraception is prevention of implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine wall. Why dick around trying to prevent a vast army of spermatozoa from reaching an egg when preventing the egg from becoming implanted is much easier, especially on the woman's physiology?

So - our wise Supreme Court justices capitulated somewhat to the religious cry babies who can't tolerate the notion that a woman can achieve near-100 percent surety that she will not get pregnant in spite of the fact that she likes to fuck.

[cc]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/07/1311462/-Cartoon-Corporations-are-religious-nbsp-people

[cc]

http://jensorensen.com/2014/07/28/sincerely-screwed-hobby-lobby-fracking/