Doubting Marcus

*Context

There seems to be a problem with my inbox so I apologize if this is a rather slow response. Anyway, make no mistake if this decision had declared that Catholic churches themselves had to do this for their employees I would be staunchly against it as that would be totalitarian rule but there is a rather significant difference between a church and a church affiliated organization (though I profess admitted ignorance on the specific legal precedent). Of course since I published that there has been some concession of sorts but still that is beside my point. I still want to know what, if anything significant, the difference in kind would be between forcing some extreme minority religious organizations like Christian Science or Jehovah’s Witnesses to respect basic healthcare standards and forcing affiliates of a much larger religious group to cover certain care. Both see the action as immoral. Both will claim it’s an issue of religious freedom (and rightly so). However it seems to me that the question is not so dichotomous as you try to make it and what’s interesting is where exactly we are willing to draw the line and the current debate exists only because Catholics represent a sizable part of the population.

Now you could have argued that it is indeed that difference I outlined between refusing to help someone and actively forcing someone to do something they consider to be immoral and perhaps you could have convinced me as I am not but declaring that it is unconstitutional without an explanation for why other than to express your opinion that it infringes on religious liberty is not an argument. Again let me stress I’m not interested in what this means politically but rather this is yet another case of a popular religion getting undue privileges based solely on it’s popularity.

You seem to be working under the assumption that if someone disagrees that this provision should be allowed it is totalitarian which both makes any dialogue impossible and downplays what real totalitarian regimes enforce upon their people. I couldn’t agree more that freedom of religion is non-negotiable but this does not mean that this particular measure is necessarily an infringement upon that right.