As I said in my comment on an earlier post the desire of transgender advocates to impose government rules is going to cause Catholic leaders to needlessly define Transgender Operations as immoral.
From today's America:
Catholic hospitals welcome transgender patients—and stand firm in their religious convictions
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has proposed new rules implementing Section 1557, the nondiscrimination provision of the Affordable Care Act. It rightly prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in health care. We wholeheartedly support all efforts to ensure that everyone, without exception, receives the best health care that is their due.
However, under this new proposed rule, it would be considered discrimination for a health care facility or worker to object to performing gender transition procedures, regardless of whether that objection is a matter of sincerely held religious belief or clinical judgment. This is government coercion that intrudes on the religious freedom of faith-based health care facilities. Such a mandate threatens the conscience rights of all health care providers and workers who have discerned that participating in, or facilitating, gender transition procedures is contrary to their own beliefs.
...all people who come to us, no matter their age, sex, racial or ethnic background, or religion...(including) ... people who identify as transgender...will receive the same treatment as any other patient. Catholic hospitals do not discriminate against anyone and to do so would be offensive to the embracing and expansive healing ministry of Jesus Christ. However, if health care facilities are to be places where the twin pillars of faith and science stand together, then these facilities and their workers must not be coerced by the government to violate their consciences.
Does objecting to performing gender transition procedures—but welcoming patients who identify as transgender—constitute discrimination? Of course not. The focus of such an objection is completely on the procedure, not the patient. Prohibiting the removal of a healthy, functioning organ is not discrimination, provided that the same determination would be made for anyone of any sex or gender, which is true at Catholic hospitals.
The proposed regulation does not codify the rights of faith-based providers to decline procedures based on conscience, as other federal laws do. Rather, it holds that H.H.S. reserves the right to decide whether, despite those existing conscience protections, it can force faith-based providers to violate their beliefs. Considering that the government is currently fighting court rulings that held that it violated religious freedom laws the last time it tried to impose a mandate like this, it is reasonable to lack confidence in the department’s commitment to construing these laws to provide appropriately robust conscience protections.
We support H.H.S.’s efforts to ensure all people receive high-quality health care. The church has supported universal health care as a basic human right for more than a century. We have long proposed moral principles for discerning health care policy: It should respect the life and dignity of every person, be accessible to all, honor conscience rights, be truly affordable, and be comprehensive and of high quality.
By the same token, Catholic hospitals and health care workers should not be punished because of their religious convictions or clinical judgments. We urge H.H.S. to reconsider its misguided mandate.
It seems to me from what I have read that there should be plenty of people in the scientific and clinical community that should have objections to being forced to perform certain operations as a violation of the oath to do no harm.
In a rightly ordered church which valued the initiative of its laity, I would think that bishops would be encouraging them to act with their colleagues on their medical beliefs and then arguing from both medical and religious viewpoints, physicians and hospitals should not forced to violate their consciences.
Instead, we seemed to headed into a classical church (i.e. Bishops) vs. state controversy in which Bishops are setting themselves up to be the bad guys despite saying nice words about the human worth of transexuals.
It's my understanding that transgender surgery is a specialty. It's not something that would be performed by a general surgeon. It doesn't make sense that someone would go into that specialty unless they believed it was the right thing for them to do. And it makes sense that someone desiring that surgery would want to make sure that their surgeon was well qualified and well trained. Transgender surgery doesn't qualify as an emergency, it should be easy for a Catholic hospital to opt out of having that specialty available. Not every hospital has every specialty; such as, not every hospital has a neurosurgery department, or is an organ transplant center. So are we making big deal out of something that doesn't have to be?
ReplyDeleteYes, only big research and advancef tech hospitals do the whole nine yards of genital reassignment surgery. It's not common.
DeleteHowever, mastectomies, hysterectomies, orchidectomies, etc are much more common procedures that transgender people might request.
It would be nice if a Catholic hospital could figure out a way not to do them without condemning them as immoral. But isn't that the only way they can get a clear religious exemption?
Sorry, fellas, that should be orchiectomy ...
DeleteWhether or not the Catholic Church likes it, "gender-affirming treatment" is the prevailing approach of the medical community to dealing with transexuals. Therefore, in my mind, it is discriminatory to deny, say, a mastectomy to a trans man. That does not necessarily mean that any hospital or medical professional should be forced to do it, but just because the Catholic Church decides something is not discrimination doesn't mean it isn't. As far as I know, there is no Catholic objection to surgical treatment of gynecomastia (abnormal enlargement of male breasts), which is done for largely cosmetic/psychological reasons. ("Abnormal" does not necessarily mean "pathological.")
ReplyDeleteI don't want to start anything again, I will just cite this article and wonder how the following Catholic principle is applied: " Prohibiting the removal of a healthy, functioning organ is not discrimination, provided that the same determination would be made for anyone of any sex or gender, which is true at Catholic hospitals."
I wonder if Catholic hospitals allow freedom of conscience to members of their staffs who believe that gender-affirming surgery is the correct medical approach for transexuals. What happens if medical professionals working in Catholic hospitals don't think their bishops have a right to make clinical judgments?
No matter what the Church directs its hospitals to do regarding transgender surgery, transgender surgery is still available to those who want it. If there's money in it, corporate hospitals somewhere will do it. If it doesn't increase the carbon footprint, I'm not in the way of Americans getting whatever they want even if I think it's stupid. If drug addicts get what they want, they don't rob and kill innocent people and invigorate crime cartels in poor countries. I don't approve of governments banning these procedures unless accumulating data shows it's fallacious. Frankly, I don't care what Catholic hospitals do or whether some people get their genitals altered. The practice of driving automobiles is causing much more harm than the availability or non-availability of transgender surgery. I think it occupies us religiously and politically much more than it should.
ReplyDeleteThe Catholic church views some things as immoral, and its institutions choose not to cooperate in them. All institutions have policies; if individual employees have a conscience objection to those policies, their choices are to lump it or go work somewhere else. Presumably that's all understood at the time the employee is recruited.
ReplyDeleteAny physician who expresses shock that the Catholic hospital which employs her won't allow her to perform abortions on demand, either is being disingenuous or wasn't paying attention during her new employee orientation session.
I do think that medical staff have a conscious right and balancing the rights of patients with individual staff is a challenge. But One big problem with this is when the Catholic hospital refuses to perform an abortion on a patient admitted in the ER who will die without it. As happened in Arizona not so many years ago. The hospital did the abortion and was punished by the bishop. He forced the nun on the ethics committee that voted to save the mother’s life to grovel to him to be un excommunicated.
DeleteThis is from an interview that Tish Harrison Warren did with David French, with French wearing his constitutional-attorney hat. I saw this yesterday at the NY Times site.
ReplyDeleteI offer this to illustrate the constitutional framework we live and operate under, here in the US. I'm grateful that the Catholic church's religious liberty is protected by our constitution.
Warren: Beto O’Rourke, who is currently running for governor in Texas, where I live, has said that religious institutions — including schools and charities — should be stripped of their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage.
How would you reply to him?
French: First, there’s a legal response to that. O’Rourke’s position has no chance of prevailing at the Supreme Court of the United States.
One of the most important recent religious liberty cases was a case called Hosanna-Tabor, which was brought during the Obama administration. The Obama administration was attempting to extend civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination at the federal level in race, sex, religion, et cetera, into the realm of pastoral hiring or ministerial employees. And the Supreme Court rejected that attempt, nine to zero.
There are certain ideas about religious liberty that are widely held across the judicial spectrum. There’s been an unbroken record of victory for religious liberty cases at the Supreme Court reaching back a decade plus. But you’ll also find that the majority of those cases are supermajority decided.
Religious liberty, in other words, is not hanging by a thread of a single justice. It’s not hanging by a thread of two justices. You would have to have a generations-long transformation of the court in a particular direction to fundamentally alter American religious liberty law.
The additional answer is essentially, what Beto is saying here is that millions upon millions of Americans who have a different view of sexual morality, rooted not in bigotry, not in hatred, but in a deep and profound belief in a particular scripturally informed definition of human sexuality, would essentially become second-class citizens. Their institutions, their churches, their schools would be placed at a profound disadvantage in American law and American life because of their view. I know people have profound disagreements. But the mere fact that I disagree with a religious point of view does not render it bigoted.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/25/opinion/david-french-religious-freedom.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20220926&instance_id=72974&nl=opinion-today®i_id=87407961&segment_id=108150&te=1&user_id=7bba122dbc8acf5289c69a5c9f2867a2
Btw, if you scratch your head, flummoxed at the notion that Donald Trump still is politically viable and seemingly has a pretty good chance of returning do the White House in 2024: if you find that difficult to conceive, then consider unforced errors like the proposed Biden Administration HHS guidelines which are the subject of the post. The Biden Administration appears to be going out of its way to alienate religious believers. If the Democratic nominee isn't going to protect their constitutional rights, they only have one alternative.
ReplyDeleteJim, it seems that religious liberty is being reserved only for those who believe that that they have the right to discriminate against others, and to impose their own religious beliefs on all. The extreme conservative religious believers are a minority in this country. Biden is not trying to alienate religious believers. He is fighting to protect the religious freedom of ALL Americans against those trying to impose conservative religious beliefs of a minority on all citizens, via the government. A many on the right no longer even try to hide the reality that they are working furiously to make their version of christianity the official religion of this country.
DeleteSo a small business owner who bakes case can refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple. How is this any different than allowing businesses to discriminate against bi- racial couples like my son and his wife, based on religious beliefs? A business owner who does not treat all customers equally should not be allowed to discriminate. They should demonstrate their beliefs by finding another source of income where they will not be in a position to discriminate against others. A Catholic charity that is staffed by people of all religions, hired for their expertise and experience, that serves people without a religious test, and and is funded largely by the government as contractors, such as Catholic Charities, can discriminate against hiring gay staff. Or discriminate against gay couples seeking to adopt. Forcing taxpayers to fund this discrimination is wrong, and violates the religious freedom of all those who are forced to pay for the religious contractor.
BTW, Trish Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church of North America, formed after the ECUSA approved gay marriage. Many of their congregations were breakaways from the ECUSA and are among those that joined African dioceses.
Delete"So a small business owner who bakes cakes can refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple. How is this any different than allowing businesses to discriminate against bi- racial couples like my son and his wife, based on religious beliefs?"
DeleteIn order to answer the question, you'd need to provide an example of religiously-motivated discrimination against your son and daughter-in-law, and then show how it parallels whatever that baker did.
Anne, thanks, I didn't know that about Trish Warren. I guess she's kind of a ...specialized choice to be a NY Times columnist. I admit I haven't read much of her so far (although I've now started subscribing to her newsletter), so I don't have much of a feel of where she falls on the political spectrum.
Delete"So a small business owner who bakes case can refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple."
DeleteIf we're talking about that baker in Colorado, that's not an accurate summary of what he did.
Actually it is, Jim. Google the case. He said he would not accept the order based on his religious beliefs. The SC ruled in his favor based on a legal technicality involving the wording of the decision by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. But the baker made it very clear that he wouldn’t bake the cake because of his religious beliefs. That his religious beliefs exempt him from following civil rights laws. I have read of similar cases of business owners discriminating not only against gays, but against bi-racial couples in offering wedding venues because they believe that God forbids mixed race marriages. The Virginia Judge in the 60s used his “Christian” beliefs to uphold the state laws against interracial marriage, even quoting the Bible in his decision. This was in the 1960s. The SC overturned that decision in Loving v Virginia to make interracial marriages legal through the country. They did the same years later with gay marriage. Now we have a packed SC that seems determined to tear down the wall between church and state, and help a minority of Americans, the most conservative wing of christianity, impose its beliefs on ALL. Recent decisions on this are showing a clear, and frightening, trend to those who truly value religious freedom for ALL. The same Colorado baker is now involved with a case involving a transgender “ birthday” celebration cake. I can’t help but wonder if he would refuse to bake a birthday cake for my bi- racial grandchildren if my sons and their wives came into the bakery together to order it.
DeleteJim, I am aware of cases during the trump years where conservative christians who operate wedding related businesses, specifically venues, refused interracial couples. They backed down after being told that it was against the law to discriminate against them because of their different races and apparently decided not to get involved in lawsuits. Of course some of those same business owners claim that they can refuse to have a gay wedding there. Right now they think that even though they do not run a religious organization of any kind, but are owners of private businesses, that they have the right to discriminate based on their beliefs.
DeleteThe point, Jim, is that religious liberty for religious organizations is protected. But a bakery is not a religious organization and it has no right to flout civil rights laws. So while I might agree with you about the exemptions for religious organizations, I do NOT agree that any business owner has a religious right to discriminate. That means bakers and florists. It means people who hire and fire in private businesses. It means people who rent or sell property and it applies in a thousand other cases.
DeleteReligious organizations like Catholic Charities and similar organizations operated by other religious groups who are operating programs as contractors to a government organization and receive direct funding from them should not be exempt from civil rights laws.
Anne, your summary basically has the baker saying, "Sorry, I won't sell you a cake, because you're gay". There is nothing about that scenario (which isn't an accurate summary of what happened) that touches on religious liberty.
DeleteHere is what happened: the baker essentially said, "Sorry, I will not provide a good or service that enables your same-sex marriage, because same sex marriages violate my religious beliefs."
Here is what is happening: LGBTQ persons are a federally protected legal class in the US: it is not legal to discriminate against them.
But: religious freedom is a Constitutionally protected freedom. When a federal law conflicts with the Constitution, the Constitution wins.
I'm not a lawyer, but that's my understanding of how it works.
Did the baker discriminate against the couple for being gay? According to him, he would sell them any number of goods and services, but will not compromise his religious beliefs.
Think of it this way: Person A, a disabled person, walks into the bakery and says, "May I have a chocolate chip cookie?" The baker answers, "Certainly, here you go. That will be $2.50"
Person B, a Black person, walks into the bakery and says, "May I have a chocolate chip cookie?" The baker answers, "Certainly, here you go. That will be $2.50"
Person C, a gay person, walks into the bakery and says, "May I have a chocolate chip cookie?" The baker answers, "Certainly, here you go. That will be $2.50"
So long as the baker treats all persons equally, as illustrated here, he is not engaging in discrimination against protected classes.
Now...suppose a gay couple walks in and says, "We would like to order a wedding cake for our same-sex wedding". The baker would reply, "Sorry, I have conscience objections to same sex marriages. In line with my Constitutional right to religious freedom, I don't provide goods or services for same-sex weddings". None of the parties say anything about the couple's sexual orientation. It is the event, not the orientation, which the baker is refusing to take part in. We already know that he is willing to provide any manner of other goods and services to gay customers; it is the wedding he is refusing to have any part of.
If a single disabled person or a single Black person walked into the bakery and said, "I'd like to order a wedding cake for my same-sex wedding", the baker could (and presumably would) similarly refuse the order, for the same reason.
Jim, he refused to bake the cake because gay marriage is against his religious beliefs. He could also refuse to bake a cake for a couple of different races based on his religious beliefs. And that is WRONG for anyone operating a business open to the public.
DeleteJim, would you feel the same way if you wanted to order a First Communion cake for your child and the baker refused because his religious beliefs include a belief that the Catholic Church is satanic and he won’t “participate” in a Catholic ritual even by baking a cake for the party afterwards?
DeleteIrrelevant, but…I did subscribe to Trish Warrens newsletter for a while. She is progressive on selected issues. Obviously she has no trouble with the rightness of ordaining women, but, given her choice of denomination, she apparently does not agree with gay marriage. Probably opposed to gay married priests too but I don’t know for sure. I finally stopped reading them because it was clear that she supports religious “ freedom for me, but not necessarily for thee”.
DeleteA similar case to the Masterpiece Cakeshop case is on the Supreme Court's docket for the coming session. Interestingly, the plaintiff, a web designer who declines to do web sites for same sex weddings, is citing freedom of speech rather than freedom of religion as the Constitutional issue. She claims the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the same org which the Supreme Court slapped down in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, is compelling her speech by forcing her to do a website, and compelled speech is a violation of her Constitutional right to free speech.
DeleteAn evenhanded discussion is here:
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/post/3398/supreme-court-to-revisit-lgbtq-rights-this-time-with-a-wedding-website-designer-not-a-baker
"Jim, he refused to bake the cake because gay marriage is against his religious beliefs. He could also refuse to bake a cake for a couple of different races based on his religious beliefs."
DeleteI believe there is Supreme Court case law which prohibits that sort of religious-freedom-based discrimination toward couples in interracial marriages. I don't think there is anything similar (yet - could come in the next SC term) for same sex marriages.
"Jim, would you feel the same way if you wanted to order a First Communion cake for your child and the baker refused because his religious beliefs include a belief that the Catholic Church is satanic and he won’t “participate” in a Catholic ritual even by baking a cake for the party afterwards?"
DeleteI guess I'd support his right to be an idiot like that, if it's Constitutionally protected. (I don't know whether it really would be Constitutionally protected, because singling out the Catholic church for his policy sounds discriminatory to me.)
In real life, I'd shake the dust of his shop from my sandals, and go find another baker.
FWIW, I think a more realistic scenario these days would be a militant atheist baker who won't provide religiously-themed goods and services. I suppose he could do that in a non-discriminatory fashion, if he equally refused all religiously-themed commissions, regardless of the faith or creed, and was willing to do business with religious adherents for other, non-religiously-themed goods and services.
"So while I might agree with you about the exemptions for religious organizations, I do NOT agree that any business owner has a religious right to discriminate. "
DeleteI think the Hobby Lobby case decided this question. There is more info here: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2013/13-354
Hobby Lobby is probably one of the very worst decisions thevSC has made in recent years. The Washington football coach decision last year was terrible too. The Citizens United decision has had a disastrous impact and opened the door to billionaires being able to freely buy politicians. But I truly fear the rush yo creating a conservative, christian theocracy.
DeleteAnti- Catholic fundamentalists don’t think every religion is Satanic, but some do believe that about the RCC. So they might discriminate against a Catholic who wanted a cake for their childs baptism, but not against a Baptist who wanted on for the party after the immersion in the river.
Be careful Jim- today you support the right of a business owner to discriminate, but that might come back to haunt Catholics someday. Too many have forgotten the era of Know- nothingism and No Irish ((Catholics) Need Apply.
Jim, how can you logically differentiate between supporting a businesses alleged religious freedom right to discriminate against gay couples and their right to discriminate against inter- racial couples also because of religious beliefs? You are trying to twist and turn into a pretzel to excuse your support of discriminating against gays whose marriage rights are protected just are the marriage rights of interracial couples. It’s because you are trying to justify discrimination by religious organizations, even when those organizations are not involved in a specifically religious mission. I may think that firing a Catholic school teacher who enters into a gay marriage is ethically and morally wrong, not to mention un- christian, but they have that right as long as it’s confined to the organizations with a narrow, religious focus. But to say that a public business owner can discriminate based on any wacko religious beliefs he claims to hold is right, it’s not and it SHOULD be unconstitutional.
Delete"Anti- Catholic fundamentalists don’t think every religion is Satanic, but some do believe that about the RCC. So they might discriminate against a Catholic who wanted a cake for their childs baptism, but not against a Baptist who wanted on for the party after the immersion in the river."
DeleteI think that scenario would be discriminatory because it singles out Catholics. But I don't make the big bucks for being on the Supreme Court. If such a case came before them, they'd have to entangle it.
And this cake maker singled out gays to discriminate against.
DeleteSo your bottom line, Jim, is that private business owners can discriminate against gays or anyone celebrating any kind of event like baptism, marriage, birthdays etc based on their religious beliefs, unless the group being singled out happens to be Catholic. Or maybe the customer being discriminated against is Muslim? Jewish? Hindu? Wrong to single out people of one particular religion but it’s OK to discriminate against gay people whose civil rights are also SUPPOSED to have the same legal protections as those of bi- racial couples and if every other customer who walks into the shop?
So you believe that “freedom of religion” gives any business owner the right to discriminate against anyone they don’t approve of based on their religious beliefs, no matter what those beliefs are, and that trumps ( so to speak) both the civil and religious freedom rights of the person wishing to hire the business services. And of course, unless the person being discriminated against is a Catholic who is being singled out for discrimination. Just when I thought you were making progress….
"So your bottom line, Jim, is that private business owners can discriminate against gays or anyone celebrating any kind of event like baptism, marriage, birthdays etc based on their religious beliefs, unless the group being singled out happens to be Catholic. "
DeleteNo - that is not even close to what I believe, nor is it close to what I've said. I think I've been pretty clear on this, and for some reason you're not getting it.
Peace.
This is what you wrote - I think that scenario would be discriminatory because it singles out Catholics.
DeleteThe cake baker singled out gays for discrimination. So - is that ok? Would it also be ok to single out Catholics?
"This is what you wrote - I think that scenario would be discriminatory because it singles out Catholics. The cake baker singled out gays for discrimination. So - is that ok? Would it also be ok to single out Catholics?"
DeleteI think it's wrong to single out either Catholics or gays. In a way, they are apples and oranges (the one is a set of personal beliefs, the other is a set of personal characteristics; a gay person can be Catholic or not, a Catholic can be gay or not, etc.).
The baker in Colorado didn't single out gays. According to his own testimony, he had many customers who were gay, and he gladly served them. He didn't refuse to serve gay persons. If he had refused to provide any/all goods and services to all gay persons, he certainly would have violated state law, and would rightly have been disciplined by the state's Civil Rights Commission.
What he refused to do was to cooperate in a same sex wedding.
In theory, two straight persons could enter into a same sex marriage (as far as I know, there is no law against that). Or, perhaps more realistically, a gay person and a bi person could enter into a same sex marriage. (Culturally, we distinguish between L, G, B, T and Q; I don't know whether there is such a distinction legally), so a gay man marrying another gay man would be a different case than a gay man marrying a bi man. Agree? The point is: if the baker is being consistent, he would not cooperate in a same sex marriage, whether it is between two gay men, two lesbian women, two bisexuals of the same sex - or even two straight persons of the same sex. That refusal would be non-discriminatory, because he's treating all these cases consistently. Because what he is objecting to is not the protected class (gay, lesbian, bisexual, et al) but the the same sex wedding.
I guess it's clear to anyone and everyone that a wedding is not the same thing as a set of personal characteristics. But you're failing, consistently, to make that rather elementary distinction.
Your argument is complete ideology. You've drunk the same Kool-Aid as the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. You're taking Case A (won't cooperate in a same sex wedding) and conflating it with Case B (won't do business at all with gay people.) You're certainly not dumb, and I have no reason to suppose the members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission are dumb, either. All of you can plainly see that a wedding is not the same as a set of personal characteristics, any more than an ostrich is the same as a snare drum. It's not that you can't think it through. It's that your ideological commitment won't allow you to.
Jim, perhaps you aren’t reading my comments carefully. I have referred several times to the baker’s refusal to bake the cake because he believes that he would be participating in a gay wedding and it violates his beliefs.
DeleteYesterday, at 1:11 I wrote Google the case. He said he would not accept the order based on his religious beliefs. The SC ruled in his favor based on a legal technicality involving the wording of the decision by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. But the baker made it very clear that he wouldn’t bake the cake because of his religious beliefs.. He did not refuse to sell a cookie to a gay person. Unless the person tells him, he would have no way of knowing the customer’s sexuality. He refused because it was a wedding cake and you know that as well as I do. If the order included the names of the groom and groom, as most wedding cake orders do, he would know it was a gay couple. Or perhaps they came in together to decide on how to decorate it. And perhaps they made a point of informing the baker that it was for a gay wedding. I believe that is what they did because they knew he would refuse to bake the cake and they were wanting a test case to clarify the legal rights of gay people. But I would have to re- read the stories to know for sure.
So why do you keep trying to twist what I am saying?
Jim, you keep trying to find a reason to say that the cake baker can refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay wedding because he chooses to believe that gays should not marry. Yet you seem to claim that if the same baker refused to bake a cake for a Catholic wedding because he believes that the Catholic Church is satanic and that the pope is the anti- Christ it would be illegal discrimination. . I NEVER said that he might not sell a cookie to a gay person. His entire refusal was that he believes that baking a cake for a wedding means that he is participating in that wedding and that participation in the wedding would violate his religious beliefs. He could make the same claim about “participation “ in a Catholic wedding, or a Muslim wedding. You seem to be so wedded to your ideology that allows discrimination against gay weddings to be a matter of religious freedom even though it violates the couples constitutionally protected civil rights but you then change the discrimination to be only wrong if it’s against a gay individual. Unless the wedding happens to be Catholic it seems.
I do get the distinction, though I seem to remember (maybe faultily so) that there was some argument about whether baking a cake for a wedding constitutes actually participating in it. Seems so, if the customers' state that the cake is a wedding cake.
DeleteThe baker also said he would bake a cake, just not a wedding cake. Which begs the question, what constitutes a wedding cake? If "Jim and Joe" had asked for a three-tier cake with white icing, red roses, and piped swags, but had not specified it was for a wedding, and the baker turned them down because he suspected a gay wedding, would the case have been more ambiguous? Dunno.
Does the baker have a right to disclosure about how the product will be used? Does he have a right to ask? Dunno.
Perhaps an analogous situation is that a feminist baker declines to make wedding cakes for straight couples because she has a sincerely held philosophical belief that heterosexual marriage demeans women, and doesn't want to participate in it.
Not that I want to keep this bickering going. I just like thought experiments.
A bit over the top either way. It's a cake, not nourishment. Not baking the cake isn't stopping the gay marriage. Baking the cake doesn't make the wedding possible. I guess the worst part for the baker would be having to close his eyes while placing the two little tuxedoed figures on the cake. On the other hand, it's still just a cake. Just go to another bakery and let the cultural shift happen naturally. I think, in this case, it causes a headlong clash of constitutional rights that are poorly resolvable.
DeleteRight now, gays, heterosexuals, evangelicals and Catholics are being hammered by a Category 4 hurricane. The bakeries are closed down.
A nurse refusing to participate in an abortion doesn't stop it, either, but the point is that the nurse is not forced to contribute to something s/he thinks is immoral.
DeleteBut point taken that we're not gonna be arguing about gay cake if we don't stop fueling hurricanes with greenhouse gasses.
Or maybe we will. Never underestimate the ability of people to latch onto a trivial issue and make a federal case out of it.
Anne if you get all that, maybe we're having a vehement agreement. But in fairness, you started this back-and-forth with this statement: "So a small business owner who bakes cakes can refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple. "
DeleteThere were a couple of other points where you used similar language ('discriminate against gays'). That is what I am disagreeing with.
Jim, my point is if a baker can discriminate against a gay COUPLE based on religious beliefs, then any business owner can discriminate against almost anyone of whatever race, sexual preferences, religion or whatever the person doesn’t like based on so- called religious freedom. This includes mixed race couples who have in the past been discriminated against by businesses, and still face problems in certain parts of the country that are dominated by conservative christian religious zealots. . The arguments made by the Virginia judge in the landmark case that led to the SC decision to legalize mixed race marriages throughout the country was based on the judge’s religious beliefs. He had decided that GOD didn’t want people of different races to marry. Others feel the same way, not only about mixed race marriages but about gay marriages, and will ignore their civil rights. The SC in the late 1960s had to act to protect the rights of mixed race couples because of the Virginia judge. . They also need to act to protect the marriage rights of gay couples. The SC judgement in Colorado was based on the wording of the state Civil Rights Commission. Let us pray that when the next gay wedding discrimination case makes its way to the SC that this stacked with culture warriors judges court will do the right thing and make it clear that businesses cannot discriminate against gay couples who want to contract their services for their wedding. But I’m not holding my breath. The culture war judges seem quite ready to tear down the wall between church and state and give free rein to conservative culture war christians to both ignore the civil rights of gays and whom ever else they decide is violating God’s will, and to be allowed to impose conservative Christian beliefs on every American via the government.
Delete"The SC in the late 1960s had to act to protect the rights of mixed race couples because of the Virginia judge. . They also need to act to protect the marriage rights of gay couples. "
DeleteBy "they", I assume you mean Congress, not the Supreme Court. It's Congress's job to legislate. The Senate has a bipartisan group that has put together a bill that protects the right to same sex marriage (not that the legislation is urgent; the Obergefell case still has the force of law, and is not in imminent danger). I believe I read that the Senate may wait until after the election to proceed with its bill. I understand it stands a fair chance of passage.
Btw, as I understand it, the Loving case (permitting interracial marriage) was decided, not on First Amendment religious-freedom grounds, but on other Constitutional grounds. I am sure the justices do that intentionally, as religious freedom seems a difficult thing to define. Anyone can sincerely believe anything. But there is nothing unusual about the beliefs of the guy in Colorado; many millions of Americans belong to denominations which frown on same sex marriage.
I got paywalled out of the NYT, but found the text of the David French/Tish Harrison Warren interview here, if you want to read the rest of it: https://puffnachrichten.com/opinion/why-religious-freedom-matters-even-if-youre-not-religious/23967/
ReplyDeleteCheck out the interesting article in America titled Does providing PrEP, a drug that prevents H.I.V., clash with Christian beliefs? An overview of church teaching.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the article, "A federal judge in Texas . . . [ruled] . . . on Sept. 7 that a provision of the Affordable Care Act requiring employers to provide insurance that covers H.I.V.-prevention medications known as PrEP violated the religious liberty of the plaintiffs." There is no official Catholic position, and there are two diametrically opposing views:
[Against] While a range of Catholic medical ethicists interviewed for this article found no church teaching that would support withholding PrEP from patients, the Catholic Medical Association, a U.S.-based membership organization of Catholic health care workers, released a policy statement last year about the drugs.
The statement said that “Catholic clinicians should never formally cooperate with unchaste activity in any patient entrusted to their care.” The statement argued that prescribing PrEP is morally licit only when a partner in a heterosexual marriage is infected with H.I.V.
[In Favor] “Prescribing PreP, or paying for it via our insurance premiums, is primarily an act of preventing a serious, horrible and often fatal illness,” Dr. Lysaught told America.
Dr. Lysaught, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said that refusing to prescribe an effective drug like PrEP because of the possibility that the patient would engage in acts considered immoral by the church would constitute “an enormous shift within the Catholic and secular medical traditions.” Rather than examining the treatment, that kind of argument instead judges the moral choices of a patient, she said.
“It entirely ignores the fundamental purpose of medicine, which is to care for patients—to help them prevent illness, to promote their health, to cure illness,” said Dr. Lysaught. “To privilege one’s own moral purity over the health and well-being of another person has no warrant in the Christian tradition and is the epitome of solipsistic vice.”
Thanks for the link, David. It is an interesting article. Apparently most Catholic medical ethicists don't see a problem with the drug; the person raising the issue and bringing the lawsuit was Dr. Steven Hotze. It appears that he is a professional activist/culture warrior who has initiated lawsuits multiple times. From what I looked up on the Catholic Medical Association, it seems that they are very right-wing and way more involved with culture issues than with actual practice of medicine. It is telling that they take the position that homosexuality is curable and preventable, thereby putting it in the category of "disease".
DeleteI Googled "Catholic Health Association PrEP" and poked around a little bit but couldn't find any CHA position on PrEP. (I consider the CHA to be credible.)
DeleteBy no means am I a Catholic medical ethicist, but I'll share my own views:
* It's indefensible to conclude that anyone who is HIV positive is therefore gay
* It's indefensible for a medical provider to refuse to treat a gay person
* It certainly seems wrong to withhold an effective treatment, regardless of the person's sexual orientation.
In short, that CMA policy strikes me as deeply sinful. I'd like the bishops to repudiate the CMA.
The issue in this case is not about treating HIV+ patients, but providing people with a drug that PREVENTS it, which the right wingers have decided encourages gay sex. Cuz only immoral people like dope addicts, hookers, and gay people get AIDS, I guess.
DeleteJim:
DeleteYou say, "It certainly seems wrong to withhold an effective treatment, regardless of the person's sexual orientation."
PrEP is not a treatment for people with HIV (like Biktarvy or Dovato). It is a prophylactic treatment to prevent a person who is HIV-negative from becoming HIV-positive when he or she is exposed to the virus through sex (99% effective) or intravenous drug use (74% effective). Sexual orientation and gender are irrelevant. PrEP is for anyone—straight, bi, or gay—who has sex with HIV-positive partners or unprotected sex with partners whose HIV status is unknown. Yes, gay and bisexual men—men who have sex with men (MSM)—account for the majority of HIV/AIDS cases, but in the US, about 1 in 5 living with HIV are women. (Sex workers are especially vulnerable.)
So I would imagine by your past reasoning, it is not discriminatory to deny PrEP to anyone other than a married person whose spouse is HIV-positive. In all other cases those who seek PrEP are in essence acknowledging that they intend to have sex outside of marriage with people whose HIV status is unknown to them. The Church has been adamant that it does not recommend condoms in such cases, although condoms would reduce the risk of HIV transmisision. It recommends abstinence and only abstinence. The condom argument is not much engaged in any more, but the old line was that it was not the job of the Church to advise people how to sin more safely, but to advise them not to sin at all.
So in theory those who adhere to the CMA guidelines would only have to ask those seeking a prescription for PrEP whether or not they are married, and if so, is their spouse is HIV-negative. If they are not married, they get no PrEP, because unmarried people are not supposed to engage in any sexual behavior at all, and if they are married but their spouse is HIV-negative, they do not need PrEP because their only sexual behavior will be in marriage with a HIV-negative partner.
Or are you actually saying that the reality is that gay and bisexual men (and sex workers, etc.) are going to have risky sex and that preaching Catholic morality to them will have little impact, so society might as well promote condoms, PrEP, and other non-abstinence-based approaches for the sake of general welfare even including people who engage in "behavior to which no one has any conceivable right."
DeleteLETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
ON THE PASTORAL CARE OF HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS (CDF, 1986) Section 10, Second Paragraph:
But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.
In 1986, 36 years ago, I don't know if it would have been Pope John Paul II or then-Cardinal Ratzinger who would have written this letter. But I'm going to say that which we aren't supposed to say, which is that the teaching is in the process of developing (teachings have been developing all the time, like for 2000 years, they just do it at glacier pace.) I haven't read that Pope Francis has issued any statements like that. An example of a teaching which has developed is that I'm sure the church still says that drug use is wrong, but they don't seem to have a problem with needle exchange programs, or for first responders to carry Narcan, which is an antidote for overdose of opioids.
DeleteI read a few years ago that missionary nuns who worked in a hostile environment, in which women were frequently raped, were allowed to take birth control pills to at least prevent them from getting pregnant from a rape.
I think we would say that the glacier needs to speed up. But it does move, we just can't see it happening.
"PrEP ... is a prophylactic treatment to prevent a person who is HIV-negative from becoming HIV-positive when he or she is exposed to the virus through sex (99% effective) or intravenous drug use (74% effective)."
DeleteWhat about the case of a healthcare worker (e.g. a phlebotomist) who runs the risk of accidentally getting stuck with a used needle in a hospital or clinic setting? That was the case that sprang to my mind when I read Jean's previous explanation. Is it effective for that case, too?
"So I would imagine by your past reasoning, it is not discriminatory to deny PrEP to anyone other than a married person whose spouse is HIV-positive. In all other cases those who seek PrEP are in essence acknowledging that they intend to have sex outside of marriage with people whose HIV status is unknown to them. The Church has been adamant that it does not recommend condoms in such cases, although condoms would reduce the risk of HIV transmisision. It recommends abstinence and only abstinence. The condom argument is not much engaged in any more, but the old line was that it was not the job of the Church to advise people how to sin more safely, but to advise them not to sin at all."
DeleteWell...in my discussion with Anne, I was essentially engaging in legal reasoning: what Federal regulations and the US Constitution's First Amendment could or could not permit. In this PrEP discussion, I don't think there is a potential conflict between federal law and the Constitution, so I think we're having a moral-reasoning discussion here.
As a practical matter, pharmacists and pharmacy workers dispense all sorts of prescriptions which could be used either for moral or immoral purposes. (E.g. teenage girls picking up a birth control prescription; birth control has various medical uses, some of which the Catholic church would disapprove of).
I've never experienced, nor witnessed, a pharmacist interrogating a customer about her/his intended "use case"; I'd like to think that sort of intrusive questioning would be an ethical violation in that profession, although I don't know whether it actually is.
Condoms prevent pregnancy, so in a marriage with an HIV-positive partner, the spouses who wish to use condoms have to choose between the goods of marital intimacy and good health for the other spouse, vs. the evil of preventing pregnancy. I don't see that the same trade-off occurs with PrEP (based on what I've read here; until we started having this discussion, I had never heard of it before). Indeed, PrEP seems to me to represent an effective resolution to the HIV-positive-spouse condom conundrum. I'd say, Prescribe it as much as possible to spouses in that situation.
"Anything that prevents the spread of disease is a good thing. It's we against the germs."
DeleteYes, that, to me is the overriding ethical question: Do we want to eliminate or reduce the incidence of serious and fatal diseases? If so, we need to vaccinate and prevent and stop thinking, well, maybe God wants this disease to be a consequence of that sinful behavior.
Jesus told us to take care of each other, not sit in judgment.
I see troubling tendencies along these lines. An oncology nurse in my cancer group flat out said she didn't feel sorry for smokers "who give themselves lung cancer."
I suggested maybe she could put a lung cancer patient in a storefront window and let folks watch him die slowly without any treatment or care as a deterrent to smoking.
Not my finest response, but we are ALL going to die of something, and we are ALL contributors to our own death in some way.
"An oncology nurse in my cancer group flat out said she didn't feel sorry for smokers "who give themselves lung cancer.""
DeletePersonally, I'd say the nature of addiction to tobacco mitigates that personal culpability. But the smoker surely bears some responsibility: s/he started smoking while understanding the risks, both of addiction and cancer.
We all bear some responsibility for what kills us--eating too much, eating the wrong stuff, drinking too much, driving recklessly, swimming where there might be sharks, not getting vaccinated, living near a chemical plant, forgetting to wash the lettuce before you put it in a salad, taking pills to stay awake or fall asleep, and blah blah blah.
DeleteIf you want to slice and dice the sick and dying into categories of personal culpability, I'm glad you're not doing my funeral!
What I really hate is that people I like have died from smoking. There are some who don't for whom I'd buy the cigarettes by the carton.
DeleteStanley, LOL!
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