This post was originally written on 2/13/2012
This is a topic that is starting to get way too much play in the
media and the minds of the American public, and since I for some reason
cannot comment on Yahoo news articles lately, I'm going to blog my
thoughts. Bear with me, it could get long and bitchy as I wander
through all the different areas where this subject invariably leads.
First let me say this- Corporations are NOT people. Corporations are
things that are owned and run by people. Not the same thing. A person
converts oxygen into carbon dioxide, organic foodstuffs into calories
that are burned as energy, and has the potential to reproduce another
person sexually even if they lack the social skills to convince another
person to help them accomplish that goal. A car wash cannot do these
things, a Dairy Queen franchise cannot do these things, and neither can a
church, an insurance company, or a bank. Doesn't matter how big or
small those institutions are, they just simply are not people in their
own right.
Humanity at its basest level is the individual
person. Then those people group themselves together in different ways
using various criteria that makes them similar to each other. Joining
those groups does not make the individual any more or less than the
person they started out being. They may add labels to themselves
because of their associations, such as a label that identifies the
country they were born in, or a label that denotes that they believe a
certain religious doctrine, like a particular type of music more than
another, but they don't gain any extra powers over and above those they
already had as an individual, like the ability to fly or shit golden
nuggets.
The country in which I live, the United States of
America, had its leaders decide long before I was born that our country
was going to recognize each individual as having the same value as
every other individual, and the same rights to do some basic things
too. It took them and later leaders and citizens another good length of
time to sort out exactly just what was meant by that, but by the time I
was born, it was accepted by the government that it really does mean
each person in this country, as long as you are old enough to vote and
haven't done anything to prove yourself unworthy of being able to vote.
Criteria for determining who is ineligible have been figured out too.
So we have a country where each person who is allowed to vote gets to,
and must, vote on things as an individual person. Think something
through for yourself, then announce what your personal choice is in the
matter. We don't have to ask anyone's permission to vote our own
conscience, and nobody is allowed to punish us for not agreeing with
another individual as long as we follow the agreed upon rules.
Where am I at? Oh yeah, individuals. Okay, so whole bunch of
individuals, each with their own opinions and each one gets to have them
and act on them and such within the laws. Nobody starts out or gets to
be better than any other individual, yada, yada, yada. Now lets move
on to the Catholic Church:
The Catholic Church is not a
person. Not an individual. It is a group of individuals, headed by
another individual, that bases their group on a shared belief in a
religion. No problem with the individuals in that group being a part of
that group, or for believing what they believe about their religion.
Problem comes from the people who belong to that group thinking that
their group is somehow entitled to special treatment just because it
happens to be a large group, or that their beliefs are "right" while
everyone believes something that is "wrong".
Like many other
groups, or corporations, or non persons who are believed in and
supported by actual persons, the Catholic Church would really like to
influence American politicians (and through them, the American public)
to follow the rules that this particular church thinks people should
live by. This is a pretty big problem, because not only is the Catholic
Church not a person who is eligible to vote in the United States of
America, its headquarters and leading members aren't even persons who
LIVE in the United States of America. They've already got their very
own little country where they have set their own rules for the citizens
to live by. So it's kind of like Queen Elizabeth of England pressuring
our politicians to make changes to the way we do things (or not make
changes) according to the rules that her English subjects have to
follow. Funny, that seems awfully familiar. Almost like we've been
through something like that before...
Oh yeah! We HAVE!
It was called the American Revolution, and it happened right before
those leaders I mentioned a little while ago declared that we were an
independent country, and that each individual that lived here had the
right to certain unalienable truths, like the pursuit of life, liberty
and happiness. They also took the time to mention something about all
men (yeah, pre women's rights movement, I know) being equal. Hmm, looks
like we've already got a pretty clear idea of what we are expected to
think of the leader of another country telling our citizens what we can
and can't, or have to do. It's even in our history books.
So the Catholic Church has things that they don't like about our country
and our citizens, and we as a nation are already clear on the fact that
as a group, we don't really give a shit what they think. Looks like
the Pope and all the other Catholics that are not American citizens
themselves can kiss our ass. Those members of the Catholic Church who
do happen to be American citizens of course do have the right to share
their opinions with the rest of us, and to use their voices and votes to
try and influence the way that things get done around here, but there
are some rules that those pesky leaders who started it all laid down
about that too.
See, it seems that one of the big problems
that led to the people coming here, and starting us out on the path to
becoming an independent nation, was religion. Not to say that none of
these people believed in a religion- many of them did. Problem was that
not all of them believed in the religion that was accepted by the
leaders of the countries they came from. Sometimes they'd start out
believing in the same religious ideals as their leaders, then something
would happen and those leaders would change their mind. When that
happened, the leader thought everyone should change their minds too, and
sometimes people who didn't want to had bad shit happen to them.
Basically, the guys who set up our country thought that it would be best
if the people leading the country stayed the hell out of the religion
business, and left choices about religion up to the individuals. They
were very adamant about this, and made it one of the first rules we had.
Government can't set up a religion, and they can't stop anyone from
following a religion either. Smart move.
Of course, over
time people have chosen as individuals to subscribe to the beliefs of a
variety of different religions. No problem there. Also, over time, a
vast number of laws have been written and enacted governing the behavior
of the individual citizens that live in this country. Some of those
laws are good, some are bad, and some are just asinine. Where they get
especially asinine is when they are written to try and govern the
behavior of non persons, or to govern them according to the complex
beliefs of a group of persons who aren't thinking with their heads, but
are instead reacting to something with their emotions.
For
example. The rules and laws that have been written and enacted
regarding the medical procedure known commonly as abortion. This is a
procedure that's origins are based in fact, in that it was discovered
that a pregnancy that had begun could be stopped from reaching it's
usual end by removing the cells that usually grow into a baby before
they had a chance to grow into that baby. It is indeed fact that this
procedure can be done, and that it does accomplish the goal that it sets
out to do. Once it was proven that it could be done, fact took a back
seat to emotion and people started arguing about the implications of
that fact, and a whole lot of laws got passed based on how people felt
about that fact.
Certainly emotion plays a large part in many
of our laws. One could argue that unless an emotional reaction is
stimulated, no one would care enough about anything one way or the other
to try and control it. But emotion has to at some point be tempered by
logic, and when something comes along that inspires strong emotions
about an issue, then that issue needs to be broken down to its simplest
components in order for us to decide as a nation how we are going to
react to it before we begin making laws to address it. Some would claim
that the simplest issue surrounding the abortion debate is when life
begins. I think that in order to hold true to the ideals of those
leaders who set down our procedure for making laws, we need to ask
ourselves whose opinion matters in this case. In this case, it is hard
to argue that the woman who is pregnant is the one who is most affected
by whether or not she stays pregnant for the better part of a year.
Does the potential baby get a vote or a say? Well, no. Because even if
that baby were born, under the laws of our nation, which have already
been decided upon by citizens who were actually alive, they still
wouldn't be able to vote to change or enact any laws for another 18
years.
Let us get back to the issue actually at hand, before
anyone's head explodes. The Catholic Church. They happen to own and
operate a number of businesses here in the United States, as do citizens
who belong to the Catholic Church. Despite the fact that one's
religion isn't supposed to confer upon them ay special status in our
country, these businesses because of their affiliation with the Catholic
Church have certain rights and privileges that other businesses like
them which are not affiliated with a church don't have. They get by
with not having to allow people to do things that go against their
religious beliefs on a variety of subjects in places that they own, they
get by with allowing certain things that aren't allowed in other places
as long as they happen in places that they own. For example, they
don't have to let doctors or patients in their hospitals save the cord
blood of babies who are born there, even if neither the doctor or the
patient is Catholic. They can also have Casino nights down at the local
Catholic Church in a county that prohibits gambling in any
establishment. This is because various Catholic citizens have chosen at
different times to influence politicians to support the right of the
church to run things their own way and call it protecting the free
expression of religion.
President Obama, in an effort to
address some of the issues that we have with our nation's health care
system, recently chose to make it law that certain Catholic
institutions, namely those who employ people in positions that have
nothing to do with promoting the Catholic religion, to offer to those
employees the same type of health insurance coverage that businesses not
owned by a church must offer to their employees who do the same jobs.
The Catholic Church and some of its members oppose this law, on the
grounds that it forces the Catholic Church to support financially
medical decisions that their employees make that go against the
teachings and beliefs of the Catholic religion. Well, we already know
what the US and its citizens think of the Catholic Church (that non
person) setting the rules for people who live and can vote here, and we
already know what we think about the Pope setting the rules for the
people who live and can vote here, so that leaves us with just the
individual Catholics who live here and can vote. What about them?
Well, those people are certainly entitled to their own beliefs, and to
live their own lives according to those beliefs. But if the government,
having been invested with the power of the people through our votes,
cannot insist that we all live our lives according to the beliefs of a
particular religion, then it certainly stands to reason that no
individual can force another individual to lives according to a religion
that they don't personally believe in either. One can try to make
their children follow those religious rules, but that's about as far as
their power extends. A business cannot belong to a particular religion,
because a business is a thing. Once the people who own that business
expand it to serve and employ people who don't believe in the religion
of the people who own that business, they can no longer claim that the
business is a purely religious institution and cannot deny those who
employees or customers of that business the right to make decisions of
their own based on the beliefs that those people have.
If
Catholic institutions truly want to refrain from being subject to the
laws that govern everyone equally, regardless of religion, then they
need to limit their scope to only those things that fall under the
purview of their beliefs and restrict the services that they provide
only to their members. It's as simple as that. Close your doors to
anyone who is not a Catholic, insist that every employee you hire be a
Catholic in good standing with their local parish, and get those
employees and customers to agree that they are willing to live under the
laws of your church rather than the law of the country in which you are
operating your business. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
The rest of the American public will find a way to go on without you,
and there are plenty of individuals willing to open and operate
businesses to accommodate those customers that you turn away, and hire
those employees who do not share your beliefs.
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