Please Vote NO on House Joint Resolution 7!

Dear Ms.Rose Berger, Mr. Jon Botten, and Mr. John Patton,

It is a permissible reading of the 1st Amendment to say that if prohibiting the exercise of religion is not the object of the Affordable Care Act but merely the incidental effect of a generally applicable and otherwise valid provision, like requiring insurers to provide contraception coverage, then the First Amendment has not been offended. To make an individuals obligation to obey such a law contingent upon the laws coincidence with his religious beliefs, except where the States interest is compelling-permitting him/her, by virtue of his/her beliefs, to become a law unto himself, contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense. To adopt a true compelling interest requirement for laws that affect religious practice would lead towards anarchy.

As with its ruling in Lying v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Association, the Court warned of the perils of allowing a religious group to have veto power over laws. The neutrality of laws and their general applicability protect them from First Amendment challenge.

So Please Vote NO on House Joint Resolution 7!

My Primary Concerns:

• The HHS rule on essential services is not about government mandates. This is about the importance of reproductive medical care and women's health. HHS heeded the findings of an independent panel of experts, the Institute of Medicine, which recommended that birth control be included as a preventive health care benefit.

• Forcing women to pay out-of-pocket for contraceptives puts an unfair, discriminatory cost burden on a certain segment of society, and women may choose not to use the most effective form of birth control due to cost concerns.

• Birth control pills are sometimes prescribed and used for many other medical conditions. Allowing employers to exclude contraceptives from health insurance plans could also prove costly to individuals with such conditions.

• Contraception helps prevent unintended pregnancies, improves the quality of women's lives, and reduces the need for abortion.

The problem is that birth control is legal in the United States, and birth control pills are used for other purposes than contraception (in fact, contraception may not even be the purpose of the majority of prescriptions). Contrary to what Santorum and others allege, the prescriptions are relatively expensive for poor and working class families.

Religious practices in the United States are trumped by secular law all the time when there is a conflict. Thus, Native Americans who believe in using peyote as part of their religious rituals were fired from their government jobs for doing so, and the US Supreme Court upheld it in 1990.

The arguments the Catholic Bishops are making about the balance between conscience and the obligations of civil law should be welcomed by all Americans as part of our national dialectic.

President Obama is to be applauded for at least trying to find a compromise that doesn’t dragoon Catholic institutions into betraying that conscience. In the end, of course, civil law must uphold equitable treatment of all women, and a satisfactory compromise may not be possible. We will be the better for having the debate, and attempting to find a modus vivendi.

What isn’t helpful is to have loud-mouthed hypocrites who reject all the humane principles for which the Catholic Church stands getting on a high horse about a third-order teaching such as artificial birth control (on which the position of the church has changed over time, and may change again).

Thank you for your time and any consideration given to me regarding this issue. And please vote NO on HJR 7! Thank you.

"Official message from Congressman Cynthia Lummis Regarding Women's Health and her Opposition to it!"

Here is a wonder example of right-wing lies and bullshit with a topping of the 18th century "Blount Amendment". Cynthia is a member of the right-wing "Uterus Police" but her rank is unknown at this time.

 

So, Dear Cynthia,

It is a permissible reading of the 1st Amendment to say that if prohibiting the exercise of religion is not the object of the Affordable Care Act but merely the incidental effect of a generally applicable and otherwise valid provision, like requiring insurers to provide contraception coverage, then the First Amendment has not been offended....To make an individuals obligation to obey such a law contingent upon the laws coincidence with his religious beliefs, except where the States interest is compelling-permitting him/her, by virtue of his/her beliefs, to become a law unto himself, contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense. To adopt a true compelling interest requirement for laws that affect religious practice would lead towards anarchy.

As with its ruling in Lying v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Association, the Court warned of the perils of allowing a religious group to have veto power over laws. The neutrality of laws and their general applicability protect them from First Amendment challenge.

 

 

 

February 21, 2012     William Harasym 200 Smith Street, Apt. 410 Sheridan, Wyoming 82801-3842   Dear William:   Thank you for contacting me regarding H.R. 1179, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act of 2011.  It is good to hear from you.   On August 3, 2011, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a list of preventive services specific to women that most health plans in the United States will be required to provide without co-pays or out-of-pocket expenses.  These mandatory preventive services include sterilization procedures as well as contraceptives approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  There is a religious exemption to the mandate for health plan sponsors that are "religious employers."  As originally drafted, however, "religious employer" was very narrowly defined as an employer that: "(1) has the inculcation of religious values as its purpose; (2) primarily employs persons who share its religious tenets; (3) primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets; and (4) is a non-profit organization" under the Internal Revenue Code.    This exemption would not cover most employers, including numerous religious institutions in the United States who do not meet all of the requirements of the exemption.  While the Obama Administration has offered a "compromise" under which non-exempted religious organizations could elect not to provide coverage, the insurance plan would still have to provide the coverage free of charge.  This means religious organizations would still be indirectly subsidizing the coverage.  Moreover, the mandate would remain in full force for other employers who nonetheless have conscience objections.  This is but one example of how Obama Care has limited the freedom of American citizens.  Congress needs to repeal Obama Care in its entirety and start over.   Because the chances for full repeal of Obama Care are still uncertain, I have also cosponsored the bipartisan Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (H.R. 1179).  This legislation is designed to preserve the status quo for conscience protections prior to the enactment of Obama Care.  H.R. 1179 has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, where it awaits further consideration.   H.R. 1179 would permit (but not require) a health plan to decline coverage of specific items or services that are contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the plan issuer, sponsor, purchaser or beneficiary.  To eliminate any financial incentive for health plans to feign conscience objections in order to escape coverage mandates, plans that opt out of coverage would not be able to lower the overall actuarial value of the plan.   H.R. 1179 also prohibits the federal government or health plans in Obama Care's health insurance exchanges from discriminating against medical providers who do not wish to provide or refer for items or services based on their religious beliefs or moral convictions.  H.R. 1179 does not overturn state laws or even other federal laws in this area.  It simply prevents Obama Care from being used as a tool for discriminating against medical providers based on their conscience objections.   Thank you again for taking the time to write to me.  I value your input.  If you haven't done so already, I would like to encourage you to visit my website at www.lummis.house.gov.  There you can sign up to receive my newsletter, and have access to a wealth of other information.  I won't flood your email box, but I will provide you with updates once in a while about activities in Washington that affect our lives in Wyoming.  I hope you will sign up so that we can stay in close touch, and I look forward to seeing you in Wyoming.   Sincerely, z Cynthia M. Lummis Member of Congress

I find it extremely hypocritical that a party that rants about less government regulations and interference, yet when it comes to certain topics, like women's rights and trying to control their uterus, you are all for it. This isn't about religious freedom, it's about women's rights, and you and your gang wanting to limit them. Is there a big kerfuffle about men and their Viagra which is also covered? NO! Why, well because we live in a patriarchy, where the men make the rules. The churches have already been exempt regarding this, but you all want to expand this because you think this is a great thing to stir up your conservative base, the base that you have now sexually neutered, and who supposedly doesn't need or use birth control. Oops, wrong there, because over their lifetime, almost 99% of the woman use some form of birth-control. And how exactly is it a violation of the Constitution to have insurance providers to cover birth control? You know the churches aren't always right, and you yahoos seem to be wanting to ride this horse till it dies. Throughout history secular laws have superseded religious law, although in this case, "churches" already are exempt, but you all and this right-wing extremist "Blunt Amendment" are really grasping at straws. This contraceptive battle isn't about religious freedom, it's about women's rights. Maybe your knuckle-dragging followers will believe your lies and misinformation, but your lies don't float here.

This conflict between Federal authorities and the U.S. Catholic Bishops over rules requiring employees of Catholic institutions such as universities and hospitals to have birth control pills supplied to them as part of their health insurance. Because of Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, the contemporary Roman Catholic church has taken the stand that artificial birth control is immoral. The bishops therefore object to having the church be forced to supply it as part of their employees' health care packages. Yet, there are over 100,000+ exemptions regarding this for churches, but you republicans think you can make this a pivotal issue to ignite your sleeping right-winged anti-intellectual base.

The problem is that birth control is legal in the United States, and birth control pills are used for other purposes than contraception (in fact, contraception may not even be the purpose of the majority of prescriptions). Contrary to what Santorum alleges, the prescriptions are relatively expensive for poor and working class families.

Religious practices in the United States are trumped by secular law all the time when there is a conflict. Thus, Native Americans who believe in using peyote as part of their religious rituals were fired from their government jobs for doing so, and the US Supreme Court upheld it in 1990.

Likewise, traditionalist members of the Sikh religion believe that a man should avoid cutting his hair, and should bind it up in a turban. So what if an orthodox Sikh gets a job as a construction worker? He can't get a hard hat on over the turban. Does he have the right to forgo the hard hat on the construction site, so as to retain his turban? The question went to the US courts, and they said Sikhs have to wear hard hats. If a brick fell on the turban and killed the Sikh worker, his family could after all sue the construction company for negligence since it did not require him to wear a hard hat.

Or there are many instances in which Muslim religious laws and practices have been over-ruled in the United States by the courts. American law forbids Muslim-American men to take a second wife, something legal to them in many of their home countries. State law tends to award community property in cases of divorce instead of the much smaller payments men can make to divorced women in Islamic law, even if the couple have specified in their marriage contract that Muslim law (sharia) will govern these issues.

I don't think there is any question that Federal law, and state law, can trump Roman Catholic religious sentiments, just as they trump the religious sentiments and practices of other religious communities where issues of secular justice and equity are at stake.

The tradition of American progressive thought is tolerant of religion even while usually not being religious itself. In my view this attitude of tolerance is rooted in James Madison's theory of democracy, which is that it is best preserved by lively arguments among groups in the body politic that disagree with one another. Thus, while the Roman Catholic Church authorities adopted a negative stance toward modernity, cultural pluralism, and democracy in the nineteenth century, the Catholic community in the United States nevertheless contributed in important ways to modernity, cultural pluralism and democracy. Arguably, had the US been entirely Protestant, its law and practice would have evolved in a less pluralistic and tolerant direction.

A flourishing Catholic community contributed to social debates and so improved American democracy– witness Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. And, the reformist theologians of the twentieth century, most of them European or Latin American, cultivated by American Catholics, made important contributions to our understanding– Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hans Kueng, Paulo Freire, and Gustavo Gutierrez. I would argue that Vatican II was an important event in American religious life across the board, not just for American Catholics. It is lack of appreciation of Madisonian conceptions of democracy of pluralism and checks and balances that led the late Christopher Hitchens to disregard altogether the enormous positive contribution of the Church, whether to the education of the poor and working classes or to teaching social justice. (By the way, the argument for democracy depending on diverse voices and vigorous debate is also an argument for the benefits for the US of the advent of Islam in American public life).

So, the arguments the bishops are making about the balance between conscience and the obligations of civil law should be welcomed by all Americans as part of our national dialectic.

President Obama is to be applauded for at least trying to find a compromise that doesn't dragoon Catholic institutions into betraying that conscience. In the end, of course, civil law must uphold equitable treatment of all women, and a satisfactory compromise may not be possible. We will be the better for having the debate, and attempting to find a modus vivendi.

What isn't helpful is to have loud-mouthed hypocrites who reject all the humane principles for which the Catholic Church stands getting on a high horse about a third-order teaching such as artificial birth control (on which the position of the church has changed over time, and may change again).

Five ways to argue with a Keystone XL pipeline supporter!

By Scott Rosenberg  Feb. 13, 2012 8:05 AM

1. When they say: "The Keystone XL pipeline will bring down gas prices!"

You can say: In your dreams.

Gas is a global commodity and its price is set by global markets. It rises and falls based on all sorts of factors, including current demand, demand forecasts, global economic conditions, and international events that affect distribution channels. Local supply fluctuations rarely have any but the tiniest impact on gas prices. New pipelines carrying costly-to-extract tar-sands oil might extend the lifespan of climate-wrecking fossil fuels by a few years, but they won't bring down the price at the pump. (In fact, in the Midwest, Keystone XL might actually increase the price per gallon — this report explains why.)

2. When they say: "The Keystone XL pipeline will create jobs!"

You can say: If only.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims, ludicrously, that the pipeline will create 250,000 new jobs. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) says 100,000 new jobs are on tap. The pipeline builders are a little more sober but still like to throw around big new-jobs numbers in the tens of thousands. Look closely at them and you realize that their figures are totally fudged: They're talking about "job years," not jobs (so it tallied one worker laboring for two years as "two new jobs").

The only independent report on pipeline jobs, from Cornell [PDF], concludes the project will generate 2,500-4,650 temporary construction jobs. That's not nothing — but it's nothing like the astronomical numbers pipeline supporters pull out of their hats. In fact, after a brief initial spasm of construction, the number of permanent jobs created by the pipeline is comically small — as low as 50, according to the Cornell report.

3. When they say: "The Keystone XL pipeline is safe and won't hurt the environment!"

You can say: That's always the line, isn't it?

Unfortunately, in this case we have extensive and recent evidence to the contrary. (The similar Keystone I pipeline has leaked at least 14 times in roughly a year.) The pipeline's original route was smack over the ecologically sensitive Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies much of the Plains with its fresh water; but even if it gets routed differently, Keystone XL will carry corrosive, unstable, hard-to-clean-up tar-sands sludge across an entire continent using failure-prone systems in hard-to-reach locations. It will be a disaster waiting to happen.

4. When they say: "The Keystone XL pipeline will bolster our national security!"

You can say: Stop living in the 1970s!

We're supposed to be happy about tapping new tar-sands oil reserves from our friends in Canada because that means we're buying less oil from other, less-friendly nations in the Middle East, Latin America, or elsewhere. But even pipeline proponents admit that most of the tar-sands oil will be headed overseas to customers in Asia, no matter where it's refined. Anyway, our national security today is far less dependent on overseas oil than it was 30, 20, even 10 years ago. But rising global temperatures threaten to destabilize our food and water supplies, drown our coasts, and assault us with extreme weather. If we don't get started on changing our carbon-emissions habits soon, the national-security problems caused by a climate-change feedback loop will make us nostalgic for the days when all we had to worry about was OPEC.

5. When they say: "If we don't use the tar-sands oil, someone else will!"

You can say: Buck up, mate!

According to this fatalistic, all-or-nothing logic, any and all action we can imagine taking to mitigate climate change is hopeless unless we can get every nation on earth to agree to take the same steps at the same time. But that's never the way real political change unfolds: Someone always has to take the first step, raise awareness, trigger new ways of looking at a problem, and start a chain reaction.

Bonus Lunatic Congressperson Argument:

When they say: "The Keystone XL pipeline will help caribou mate!"

You can say: Well, what can you say? Do you need to say anything at all?

http://grist.org/climate-energy/five-ways-to-argue-with-a-keystone-xl-pipeline-supporter/

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." -Paolo Friere-

"Pat Buchanan’s TEN Most Outrageous Statements"

"Pat Buchanan's TEN Most Outrageous Statements"

 

 

Chris Matthews, today you spoke highly of this very sick and evil man and you owe America an apology now!

 

Sometimes victory comes quickly and sometimes it takes longer. In the case of Pat Buchanan, there's been literally years of organizing by progressives to draw attention to and hold him accountable for his racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic statements.

Here's the rundown on his greatest misses:

1. Wanted to close the borders to protect white dominance. As he wrote in his 2006 book State of Emergency: "If we do not get control of our borders, by 2050 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built."

2. Blamed lower test scores on minorities. In his most recent book Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?, he blames minorities for dragging down the country's test scores. "[T]he decline in academic test scores here at home and in international competition is likely to continue, as more and more of the children taking those tests will be African-American and Hispanic.

3. Claimed Jerry Sandusky's atrocities are because of "Homosexual marriage."Buchanan appeared on a right-wing radio show on November 15 to make some convoluted comparisons: "Let's take this Penn State thing…these horrors, there's an organization that marches in the gay pride parade in New York called—used to—called the North American Man Boy Love Association, which advocated voluntary sex along the lines of exactly what was going on at Penn State. Many of our political icons have marched in that parade right behind that NAMBLA float […] This is now, homosexual marriage is now the civil rights cause of the decade."

4. Said the Jewish population in the United States dropped in the 90s because Jews aborted all their babies. Buchanan explains that the decline in the American Jewish population during the 1990s (a decline that a Brandeis study says never occurred), "is a result of the collective decision of Jews themselves. From Betty Friedan to Gloria Steinem in the 1970s to Ruth Bader Ginsburg today, Jewish women have led the battle for abortion rights. The community followed."

5. Asserted Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people including 69 teens in Norway, "may have been right." Buchanan called Breivik a coward, evil, and cold-blooded, and then proceeded to defend his twisted rationale for the killings: "As for a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries, on this one, Breivik may be right."

6. Claimed that all great nations punish the gays. In a Human Events column, Buchanan attacked California's 9th Circuit Judge Vaughn Walker after his ruling of Proposition 8 as unconstitutional as a "judicial tyrant," before going on to explain that "through history, all the great religions have condemned homosexuality and all the great nations have proscribed or punished it. None ever placed homosexual liaisons on the same plane as traditional marriage, which is the bedrock institution of any healthy society.

7. Penned "The Affirmative Action Nobel." That's the title of Buchanan's October 13, 2009 column on Townhall.com in which he claims that President Obama's Nobel Prize was simply the result of affirmative action. And the column only got worse from there: "They have reinforced the impression that Obama is someone who is forever being given prizes — Ivy League scholarships, law review editorships, prime-time speaking slots at national conventions — he did not earn."

8. Argued that Poland and the United Kingdom had it coming in World War II.Buchanan seems to suggest in a 2009 column that World War II—and all the atrocities that accompanied it—was really the fault of Poland and Britain, for refusing to engage in diplomacy with Germany. "Why did Warsaw not negotiate with Berlin, which was hinting at an offer of compensatory territory in Slovakia? Because the Poles had a war guarantee from Britain that, should Germany attack, Britain and her empire would come to Poland's rescue."

9. Dabbled in Holocaust denial. Pat Buchanan danced alarmingly close to denying key facts of the Holocaust. In a 1990 column for the New York Post, he defended convicted Nazi war criminal Ivan Demjanjuk (whom he later compared to Jesus Christ) against charges from Holocaust survivors that he was guilty of murder by accusing the survivors of misremembering all of it: "This so-called 'Holocaust Survivor Syndrome' involves 'group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics.' Reportedly, half of the 20,000 survivor testimonies in Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem are considered 'unreliable,' not to be used in trials[…]The problem is: Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody."

10. Argued Hitler was an individual of "great courage." That's just one of the quotes that the Anti-Defamation League attributes to Buchanan in their compendium of offensive remarks from Buchanan over the years. In 1977, he qualified his labeling of Hitler as racist and anti-Semitic by adding that "he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him[…]His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path."

And since Republicans are apparently eager to reignite the divisive culture wars of the past, here's Buchanan's famous 1992 GOP Convention speech on the culture wars — a speech many believe helped cost President George H.W. Bush victory in that year's presidential election. Some of the language may be softer, but 20 years hence we still hear many of the same divisive attacks on progressive values from leading conservatives.

http://youtu.be/iO5_1ps5CAc

 

"This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in."
-Teddy Roosevelt- Chicago, IL, June 17, 1912

Response From John Barrasso

Dear John,

 

It is a permissible reading of the 1st Amendment to say that if prohibiting the exercise of religion is not the object of the Affordable Care Act but merely the incidental effect of a generally applicable and otherwise valid provision, like requiring insurers to provide contraception coverage, then the First Amendment has not been offended....To make an individuals obligation to obey such a law contingent upon the laws coincidence with his religious beliefs, except where the States interest is compelling-permitting him/her, by virtue of his/her beliefs, to become a law unto himself, contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense. To adopt a true compelling interest requirement for laws that affect religious practice would lead towards anarchy.

 

As with its ruling in Lying v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Association, the Court warned of the perils of allowing a religious group to have veto power over laws. The neutrality of laws and their general applicability protect them from First Amendment challenge.

 

From: Senator_JBarrasso@barrasso.senate.gov

Sent: Friday, February 17, 2012 1:58 PM

To: williamharasym@msn.com

Subject: Response From John Barrasso

 

Dear William,

Thank you for taking the time to contact me.  I appreciate hearing from you.

I noted your support for the regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regarding insurance coverage for contraceptive services.  After practicing medicine for over 25 years, I feel that health care decisions are best made when left between the patient and their chosen medical provider.  However, I do not believe that the government should mandate private organizations provide insurance coverage for services that violate their religious beliefs.  This is a clear violation of religious freedom guaranteed to all persons by the 1st Amendment.

Again, thank you for contacting me.  While we disagree on this matter, I value your input and hope that you will continue to keep me informed about the issues that are important to you.

John Barrasso, M.D.                                                                         
United States Senator
 

Sen. Johnny Barrasso on Contraceptive Regulations: "This is a clear violation of religious freedom guaranteed to all persons by the 1st Amendment."

Dear John,

 

For a doctor, you are pretty ill-informed about birth-control pills, or contraceptives. In many cases the pills are used for non-birth control health-issues, so what about these women? (Maybe one of those thousands of Canadians you treated a few years back during the debate about the Affordable Care Act can explain it to you. Still waiting to hear on how many you actually treated. You could have found out about socialized medicine right here in the U.S., as the VA System, the best medical care system in this country, and of which I'm a patient, and have been for over 30 years could have answered your questions about socialized medicine rather then you treat thousands of Canadians. Still waiting!) I find it extremely hypocritical that a party that rants about less government regulations and interference, yet when it comes to certain topics, like women's rights and trying to control their uterus, you are all for it. This isn't about religious freedom, it's about women's rights, and you and your gang wanting to limit them. Is there a big kerfuffle about men and their Viagra which is also covered? NO! Why, well because we live in a patriarchy, where the men make the rules. The churches have already been exempt regarding this, but you all want to expand this because you think this is a great thing to stir up your conservative base, the base that you have now sexually neutered, and who supposedly doesn't need or use birth control. Oops, wrong there, because over their lifetime, almost 99% of the woman use some form of birth-control. And how exactly is it a violation of the Constitution to have insurance providers to cover birth control? You know the churches aren't always right, and you yahoos seem to be wanting to ride this horse till it dies. Throughout history secular laws have superseded religious law, although in this case, "churches" already are exempt, but you all and this right-wing extremist "Blunt Amendment" are really grasping at straws. This contraceptive battle isn't about religious freedom, it's about women's rights. Maybe your knuckle-dragging followers will believe your lies and misinformation, but your lies don't float here.

This conflict between Federal authorities and the U.S. Catholic Bishops over rules requiring employees of Catholic institutions such as universities and hospitals to have birth control pills supplied to them as part of their health insurance. Because of Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, the contemporary Roman Catholic church has taken the stand that artificial birth control is immoral. The bishops therefore object to having the church be forced to supply it as part of their employees' health care packages. Yet, there are over 100,000+ exemptions regarding this for churches, but you republicans think you can make this a pivotal issue to ignite your sleeping right-winged anti-intellectual base.

The problem is that birth control is legal in the United States, and birth control pills are used for other purposes than contraception (in fact, contraception may not even be the purpose of the majority of prescriptions). Contrary to what Santorum alleges, the prescriptions are relatively expensive for poor and working class families.

Religious practices in the United States are trumped by secular law all the time when there is a conflict. Thus, Native Americans who believe in using peyote as part of their religious rituals were fired from their government jobs for doing so, and the US Supreme Court upheld it in 1990.

Likewise, traditionalist members of the Sikh religion believe that a man should avoid cutting his hair, and should bind it up in a turban. So what if an orthodox Sikh gets a job as a construction worker? He can't get a hard hat on over the turban. Does he have the right to forgo the hard hat on the construction site, so as to retain his turban? The question went to the US courts, and they said Sikhs have to wear hard hats. If a brick fell on the turban and killed the Sikh worker, his family could after all sue the construction company for negligence since it did not require him to wear a hard hat.

Or there are many instances in which Muslim religious laws and practices have been over-ruled in the United States by the courts. American law forbids Muslim-American men to take a second wife, something legal to them in many of their home countries. State law tends to award community property in cases of divorce instead of the much smaller payments men can make to divorced women in Islamic law, even if the couple have specified in their marriage contract that Muslim law (sharia) will govern these issues.

I don't think there is any question that Federal law, and state law, can trump Roman Catholic religious sentiments, just as they trump the religious sentiments and practices of other religious communities where issues of secular justice and equity are at stake.

The tradition of American progressive thought is tolerant of religion even while usually not being religious itself. In my view this attitude of tolerance is rooted in James Madison's theory of democracy, which is that it is best preserved by lively arguments among groups in the body politic that disagree with one another. Thus, while the Roman Catholic Church authorities adopted a negative stance toward modernity, cultural pluralism, and democracy in the nineteenth century, the Catholic community in the United States nevertheless contributed in important ways to modernity, cultural pluralism and democracy. Arguably, had the US been entirely Protestant, its law and practice would have evolved in a less pluralistic and tolerant direction.

A flourishing Catholic community contributed to social debates and so improved American democracy– witness Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. And, the reformist theologians of the twentieth century, most of them European or Latin American, cultivated by American Catholics, made important contributions to our understanding– Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hans Kueng, Paulo Freire, and Gustavo Gutierrez. I would argue that Vatican II was an important event in American religious life across the board, not just for American Catholics. It is lack of appreciation of Madisonian conceptions of democracy of pluralism and checks and balances that led the late Christopher Hitchens to disregard altogether the enormous positive contribution of the Church, whether to the education of the poor and working classes or to teaching social justice. (By the way, the argument for democracy depending on diverse voices and vigorous debate is also an argument for the benefits for the US of the advent of Islam in American public life).

So, the arguments the bishops are making about the balance between conscience and the obligations of civil law should be welcomed by all Americans as part of our national dialectic.

President Obama is to be applauded for at least trying to find a compromise that doesn't dragoon Catholic institutions into betraying that conscience. In the end, of course, civil law must uphold equitable treatment of all women, and a satisfactory compromise may not be possible. We will be the better for having the debate, and attempting to find a modus vivendi.

What isn't helpful is to have loud-mouthed hypocrites who reject all the humane principles for which the Catholic Church stands getting on a high horse about a third-order teaching such as artificial birth control (on which the position of the church has changed over time, and may change again).

So Johnny, there you have it. Oh, I think I hear someone knocking at your door, oh yes, it's Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly!

If you can't argue the law, you attack the facts, and if you can't argue the facts you attack the women and secularists.

Good night and good luck!

Best wishes always,

Bill Harasym (Recovering Roman Catholic)

 

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." -Paolo Friere-

 

 

 

From: Senator_JBarrasso@barrasso.senate.gov

Sent: Friday, February 17, 2012 1:58 PM

To: williamharasym@msn.com

Subject: Response From John Barrasso

 

Dear William,

Thank you for taking the time to contact me.  I appreciate hearing from you.

I noted your support for the regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regarding insurance coverage for contraceptive services.  After practicing medicine for over 25 years, I feel that health care decisions are best made when left between the patient and their chosen medical provider.  However, I do not believe that the government should mandate private organizations provide insurance coverage for services that violate their religious beliefs.  This is a clear violation of religious freedom guaranteed to all persons by the 1st Amendment.

Again, thank you for contacting me.  While we disagree on this matter, I value your input and hope that you will continue to keep me informed about the issues that are important to you.

John Barrasso, M.D.                                                                         
United States Senator
 

Barrasso Works to Defend Religious Freedom? How? The man's an idiot!

Again "TV" Johnny knows not what he is talking about, and has no clue about the Constitution and the 1st Amendment. This is just more RW bullshit trying to make an issue out of a non-issue.

Subject: Barrasso Works to Defend Religious Freedom- Ha! Ha! Ha!

 

Dear William,

I am writing to update you on my efforts to protect American religious freedoms.

One of the cornerstones of our society is the religious liberty guaranteed to everyone by the Constitution. Under President Obama's healthcare law, the Department of Health and Human Services will require that all health plans, including those sponsored by religious organizations, provide birth control as a free preventive service. This would include religious hospitals and universities.  President Obama's healthcare law is an astonishing attack on the First Amendment and religious freedoms in our country.

I am a co-sponsor of S. 1467, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. The bill amends the health care law by allowing health plans to decline coverage of specific items and services that are contrary to the religious beliefs of the sponsor offering the plan or the purchaser without penalty. Similar legislation, S. 2043, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, was introduced recently by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL). Additionally, Speaker of the House John Boehner announced on February 8, 2012, that the House would move quickly to block this rule. I look forward to supporting this effort if it is brought before the full Senate for a vote.

Please know that I will continue to fight for our religious liberties and the ultimate repeal of President Obama's bad healthcare policy.

John Barrasso, M.D.                                                                         
United States Senator