Will the Church now stop offering perscription drug coverage or will it stick by it's principles and ignore the Court?
Utterly unconscionable and ripe for overturning.
Why not jus stop prescription coverage and put a monthly stipend into an HSA for each covered person? Then they can buy whatever they want.
Government despotism run amuck.
Those sixteen words have taken a terrible beating in the past fifty years. For most of our history, they occasioned little controversy. That was when our culture and our polity seemed to be on more or less amicable terms. There are several possible datings of the change, but I think we can settle on the Supreme Court decision of 1947 Everson v. Board of Education, as the beginning of what would later come to be called the culture wars. That’s when the Court decided that ours is a secular society and began, by pitting the polity against the culture, a determined effort to create a naked public square.The sixteen words, of course, have to do with the first freedom of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Religion Clause—note that it is one clause with two provisions, no-establishment and free exercise—has been turned upside down, with the result that free exercise, which is the entire purpose of the clause, is again and again trumped by no-establishment. In recent years, the Supreme Court has been increasingly candid about the incoherence of its Religion Clause decisions, admitting that they are riddled through with contradictions. There is reason to believe that the Court just may be ready to return to the original meaning of the text, which is to protect the free exercise of religion.
Meanwhile, however, the battles continue. Just yesterday, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that religious institutions must cover contraception services in their employee health plans. The appeal of Baptist and Catholic groups for an exemption was denied. The ruling clearly burdens the free exercise of religion for those who believe that paying for artificial contraception is complicity in evil. Defenders of the decision say the decision only marginally inhibits the free exercise of religion. But free exercise means free exercise. When the exercise of religion is inhibited, it is not free exercise.
Last week the New York Times ran for four days in a row front-page stories, followed by two full inside pages each day, attacking religious exemptions from taxes and government regulation and control. The stories were written by Diana B. Henriques, and she has another big story on the same subject in Friday’s business section. This is an extraordinary amount of space for the Times to devote to anything. Under executive editor Bill Keller, this is known as the “blast” or “barrage” tactic when the Times understands itself to be launching a major campaign. This campaign is a take-no-prisoners assault on tax and other exemptions that historically have been deemed essential to the free exercise of religion.
The focus of the stories is on real or alleged abuses of religious tax exemptions. There is no shortage of such abuses, religion being as prone to scams and chicanery as any other human enterprise. But the Times is clearly after more than the correction of abuses. It is the very idea of religious exemptions that is under attack. Among the targets of the stories is the “faith-based initiative” of the Bush administration whereby, according to the Times, exemption from taxes and government regulation give religious organizations an unfair advantage.
Aren't we constantly being told that some of the more religious folks within the Republican party are not pleased with Republicans and are going to sit out this election?
If that's true, we really are the stupid party. Because there's no way that with Democrats in power in any branch of government that we'll be able to appoint judges who won't make ridiculous rulings like this.
I certainly disagree with this decision, but I also have a problem with these kinds of laws in general. Why should the government have any say when it comes to what is covered under a company's insurance plan or even whether a company should offer insurance as a benefit at all?
Makes me wonder who is dumber - the judges or the church.
Maybe they could have the pharmacist sit in a car in the parking lot. If he doesn't want to provide his state-mandated service for a particular customer, he just waves him away. Seems to work just fine for the towelheads at the Minneapolis airport.
Typical case of one bad law demanding another. If the church were able to limit hiring to Catholics, it wouldn't have the philosphical problem of denying contraceptive-coverage. Even so, full disclosure beforehand should cover all of this, but of course it doesn't.
It is a horrible development. But when people keep voting for social liberals (D) and (R)--Hillary, Rudy, Spitzer, etc.--you'd have to say it's amazing that things aren't worse. There are many of these developments that would have caused people to have a heart attack just a few short decades ago!
So much for "freedom" in the US. We're getting less and less every day.