Posted on 01/07/2014 4:42:57 PM PST by Diago
Et tu, Justice Sonia Sotomayor? Really, we can't trust you on women's health and human rights? The lady from the Bronx just dropped the ball on American women and girls as surely as she did the sparkling ball at midnight on New Year's Eve in Times Square. Or maybe she's just a good Catholic girl.
The Supreme Court is now best understood as the Extreme Court. One big reason why is that six out of nine Justices are Catholic. Let's be forthright about that. (The other three are Jewish.) Sotomayor, appointed by President Obama, is a Catholic who put her religion ahead of her jurisprudence. What a surprise, but that is no small thing.
In a stay order applying to an appeal by a Colorado nunnery, the Little Sisters of the Poor, Justice Sotomayor undermined the new Affordable Care Act's sensible policy on contraception. She blocked the most simple of rules – lenient rules – that required the Little Sisters to affirm their religious beliefs against making contraception available to its members. They objected to filling out a one-page form. What could be easier than nuns claiming they don't believe in contraception?
Sotomayor's blow brings us to confront an uncomfortable reality. More than WASPS, Methodists, Jews, Quakers or Baptists, Catholics often try to impose their beliefs on you, me, public discourse and institutions. Especially if "you" are female. This is not true of all Catholics – just look at House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. But right now, the climate is so cold when it comes to defending our settled legal ground that Sotomayor's stay is tantamount to selling out the sisterhood. And sisterhood is not as powerful as it used to be, ladies.
Catholics in high places of power have the most trouble, I've noticed, practicing the separation of church and state. The pugnacious Catholic Justice, Antonin Scalia, is the most aggressive offender on the Court, but not the only one. Of course, we can't know for sure what Sotomayor was thinking, but it seems she has joined the ranks of the five Republican Catholic men on the John Roberts Court in showing a clear religious bias when it comes to women's rights and liberties. We can no longer be silent about this. Thomas Jefferson, the principal champion of the separation between state and church, was thinking particularly of pernicious Rome in his writings. He deeply distrusted the narrowness of Vatican hegemony.
The seemingly innocent Little Sisters likely were likely not acting alone in their trouble-making. Their big brothers, the meddlesome American Roman Catholic Archbishops are bound to be involved. They seek and wield tremendous power and influence in the political sphere. Big city mayors know their penchant for control all too well. Their principal target for years on end has been squelching women and girls – even when they should have focused on their own men and boys.
In one stroke with ominous implications, there's no such thing as Catholic justice or mercy for women on the Supreme Court, not even from a woman. The rock of Rome refuses to budge on women's reproductive rights and the Supreme Court is getting good and ready to strike down Roe v. Wade, which became the law of the land 40 years ago. President Clinton had it exactly right in his formulation: abortion should be safe, legal and rare.
Meanwhile, the forces arrayed against women's right to self-determination have been busy taking their campaign to the statehouses. In roughly half of them, women's human rights have been eroded. On the airwaves, the anti-woman conspiracy goes on, with Rush Limbaugh leading the pack of thousands of men. He uses the Obamacare contraception mandate to say, just about every workaday, that young women are just using the government to get sex, or some such thing. He wins the prize for virulently infecting the public dis-coarse.
With friends like Sonia, we don't need opponents like Rush.
Almost 90 years after Margaret Sanger spoke at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Silver Lake, New Jersey, we see that the femi-nazis like Jamie Stiehm are still simply haters without the sheets.
If you are on Twitter, Jamie is @gypsyinme and US News is at @usnews
What is wrong with these people...
Feminists are slime.
You do a disservice to slim world wide. ;-)
slim = slime (oops!)
Wait, aren't the Little Sisters of the Poor, women? And isn't Justice Sotomayor, herself, a woman????
This is just nuts. How could US News print this garbage???
“...defending our settled legal ground...”
You mean things like owning slaves?
LOLOLOLOLOUTEFFINLOUD.
Looks like the “Wize Lateena’s” “Catholic” done gone and kicked in!
Very much to the chagrin of the lefty idiots who put her there.
Shows to Go ya, it isn’t always the stupid pubbies who get played.
Those Nuns KNEW how to get the job done.
Bet the Justice’s phone melted that night, from no less than BEEHOE himself!
https://www.creators.com/liberal/jamie-stiehm-about.html
Jamie worked as an assignment editor at the CBS News bureau in London,
Raised partly in progressive Madison, Wisc., she loved the lively conversations on the university campus by Lake Mendota and missed Madison when her family of five moved to California.
Catholics impose views on non Catholics?
I’d have to actually see an example
Fortunately I was lucky and didn’t marry one. One of the few guys I know that is still married, and happily too.
Wow, this gal has some anger issues!
It’s like this: If you want birthcontrol, make sure you can afford it yourself, or, purchase an insurance that covers it, and don’t work for an industry that isn’t willing to support your personal sex life.
I happen to disagree with the catholic stance on birthcontrol. I don’t think it’s any of their business what happens between a married man and woman. The decision is in my opinion, the couple’s decision, not the organization’s.
However, if people want to be a part of that (or any other organization) and adhere by their declarations, that’s also their business. I don’t believe churches should be forced by government to adhere to government rules that override their morality.
and the same goes for individuals too. I don’t belong to an organized religion but i practice certain traditions in accordance to some. I don’t want, nor do I need birthcontrol and I shouldn’t have to be forced to pay for it.
The author is a dumbshit.
I still don’t understand how this got as far as a religious issue. No liberal has yet been able to tell me why one should be forced to pay for the birth control of another. Who cares what the religious beliefs of either of them are? By what right can the government force that transaction? I highly recommend asking libs that question as often as possible. Their inner-fascist will come out.
I agree with you a lot. I am NOT a catholic nor a christian even. I was raised as one, but never got the hang of it and rejected it outright after my time in Asia.
In my opinion, "birth control" should be viewed by the church as a sin of "indulgence." Kinda like gluttony and the such. Kindof more on the "venial" level.
Infanticide now, abortion, is a different kind of sin altogether. The TAKING of a life is far, far different from PREVENTING a life from happening.
And I think the church has been seriously stupid in putting the two on the same plane.
Am I wrong in this thinking?
I can't imagine how this gets by an editor unless this lady's editor simply hates her, and thought it would be funny to see her commit career suicide.
We are Legion. We forgive, but we never forget. Expect us.
Let me get back tomorrow. In the meantime, ponder this quote:
“Morals — all correct moral laws — derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.” Robert A. Heinlein
Obama wants to force the Sisters and all Catholics to pay for drugs which induce abortions along with birth control pills, the media always forgets to mention that.
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