HHS Says Religious-Affiliated Organizations Must Cover Contraception

[ActualSpamBot]

Ha! Clever response to your baseless hair split.

This rule is designed to STOP the Catholic Church from denying its employees a basic medical treatment that should be covered by insurance! So now you're cool with it right? Since its stopping something instead of starting?

Also, show me any sort of legal precedent differentiating between stopping a behavior being acceptable while expecting a group to start doing something isn't acceptable.


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39.369100,-76.761210

[ActualSpamBot]

Your example in both cases were basically the same. BOTH were to STOP abusing your kids.

Well yes, but the operative action in each case was different. In one it was to STOP inflicting harm on them. In the other it was to START providing them with the minimal level of care.

What about the Amish placards? How is that not forcing someone to START using technology their religion prohibits?

And once again, what legal precedent are you basing your insistence that their is a fundamental difference between compelling someone stop doing something compared to compelling someone start doing something?

[NCRAVEN]

Well yes, but the operative action in each case was different. In one it was to STOP inflicting harm on them. In the other it was to START providing them with the minimal level of care.

Lets be honest, you're examples were a little extreme, ridiculous, highly hypothetical and so unlikely to happen I shouldn't even address them. But sometimes I can't help myself. The operative action was different but the reason for the action was the same, to STOP abusing the kids.

What about the Amish placards? How is that not forcing someone to START using technology their religion prohibits?

How is a placard technology?

But the reason it's okay, is because they don't HAVE to drive on the roads, but if the are going to than as to not harm others, they have to be visible.

And once again, what legal precedent are you basing your insistence that their is a fundamental difference between compelling someone stop doing something compared to compelling someone start doing something?

You said it yourself: "It is a well established precedent that the state can limit a religion's ability to exercise their faith if there is a compelling reason to do so"

The compelling reason in your example would be to stop you from abusing your kids by starving.

I apologize earlier for saying you were not smart for not seeing the difference in stopping and starting, I'm smartass by nature. However, you do seem fairly intelligent, so I am unsure if you're playing ignorant so that you can pretend not to see the issue or if you really don't see how it's different.

The difference is simple. Stopping someone from doing something that affects people in a negative way as result of your actions is the one of the reasons for the government. Can inaction be harmful to the others? - Sure. But in the case of not offering insurance that covers contraception (and abortion inducing pills) no. The people who work for the organizations are not forbade to buy or use them. But forcing a religious org to start offering something that goes against their faith is flat out wrong.

Let me ask you this to see if you can see my point. Do think that the mandate in "Obamacare" that requires people to purchase insurance is constitutional?

[ActualSpamBot]

How is a placard technology?

It is manufactured material that the Amish only use because a law was passed requiring them to do so against their religious belief.

But the reason it's okay, is because they don't HAVE to drive on the roads, but if the are going to than as to not harm others, they have to be visible.

And churches don't have to operate businesses, but when they choose to they are required to play by the rules. One rule is that business must include birth control in their insurance plans. If they don't want to do that then they can go back to just being churches and let purely secular organizations run businesses.



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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39.369158,-76.761209

[NCRAVEN]

And churches don't have to operate businesses, but when they choose to they are required to play by the rules. One rule is that business must include birth control in their insurance plans. If they don't want to do that then they can go back to just being churches and let purely secular organizations run businesses.

Actually, they're not businesses, they are non-profit, faith based organizations. If you want to argue that they should not be non-profit if they're are going to operate by different rules, I'd be on your side.

BTW - You forgot to address the below...

I am unsure if you're playing ignorant so that you can pretend not to see the issue or if you really don't see how it's different.

The difference is simple. Stopping someone from doing something that affects people in a negative way as result of your actions is the one of the reasons for the government. Can inaction be harmful to the others? - Sure. But in the case of not offering insurance that covers contraception (and abortion inducing pills) no. The people who work for the organizations are not forbade to buy or use them. But forcing a religious org to start offering something that goes against their faith is flat out wrong.

Let me ask you this to see if you can see my point. Do think that the mandate in "Obamacare" that requires people to purchase insurance is constitutional?

[AirFlacco]

Back to Spammy's mobiilization or lack thereof, some powerful
Catholic DEMs in congress have been mobilized and are bailing out on
OBY who is getting a lot of blow back on this.

As the link I posted above states, OBY is considering their concerns but
take it for what it's worth amongst all his lies.

Powerful DEMs include Tim Kaine, former DNC chairman running for Senate in Virginia, Bob Casey, Senator from Pennsylvania, House Democrat caucus chairman John Larson, those are some of the defectors from Obama.

Rick Warren of the Saddleback church and a liberal post modernist says
he will go to prison over non-compliance of this law.

This is much bigger than the regime ever realized.


http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/20...tholic_mandate

[AirFlacco]

As far as girls going to church, Galen doesn't have a clue as usual. Just because he has 1 patient or 2 doesn't mean that represents all church girls. Christian parents raise their families in church and have been doing it for 2,000 years but church girls are exposed to the same temptations as
non Christian girls with some giving in but many not. The Southern Baptists
have been educating their young women on abstinence with great success. More women are abstaining from sex altogether according to the Center of Disease Control stats.

Many virtuous women have come from the church as well as pre-church
days - women like Hannah, Mary, Ruth and Rahab who was a prostitute but
converted and led a virtuous life afterward. While not publicized, many
Christian women were martyred with the men during the first Century church. Some were burned at the stake and used a lamps on the way to the
collesiums. One woman drowned her daughters and herself as soldiers came to feed them to the lions. Some were fed to animals for sex.


All of the girls I grew up in church married christian men and started their own Christian familes. A gal I dated in hi school became a missionary in
the Phillipines and now her children are missionaries. A son is a pilot who
delivers food and medical supplies to villages in Africa. Galen of all people
should like that.

Christian parents are supposed to raise their families in the church and all
the girls I knew in church were virtuous and turned out to be great Christian wives. Im kicking myself now for not marrying some of them but they turned out to be perfect Christian mothers and wives
and as many as 3rd, 4th or even 5th generations of Christian mothers
and wives. My mother's family of Christians has been traced back to 1820.
Her mother was named Elsie after the Elsie books of the 1880s as her mother was a Christian.

And now my sister is a Christian who married a Godly man and she has two sons that married Christian gals and her daughter is engaged to a Christian boy. It keeps going from generation to generation - all after being raised in the church as God instructed and I didn't even mention my brother's wife who is a Christian and she has 3 sisters that are Christians and they are all married to Christian men.

In fact, her brother in law is a shrink who doesn't have time to go
on message boards and neither do any of his colleagues and he'd fire
his counselors if they did for going on and insulting people with
immature name calling and acting unprofessionally.

[Galen Sevinne]

Although Obama will today announce another manner in which to ensure all women equal access to healthcare, it won't be because of a conflict with the constitution. I think he is doing this the correct way as birth control is still a sensitive issue to some, a small but loud minority, and it is not worth the political capital he would expend here.

It looks like the administration was basing the legality of thier initial decision on a Scalia precedent from 1990:


“One thing I think is crystal clear — there is no First Amendment violation by this law,” Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA, told TPM. “The Supreme Court was very clear in a case called Employment Division v. Smith, written by none other than Antonin Scalia, that religious believers and institutions are not entitled to an exemption from generally applicable laws.”

The Reagan-appointed conservative justice authored the majority opinion in the 1990 decision Employment Division v. Smith, a critical precedent to the birth control case, decreeing that religious liberty is insufficient grounds for being exempt from laws. The Supreme Court said Oregon may deny unemployment benefits to people who were fired for smoking peyote as part of a religious tradition, seeing as the drug was illegal in the state.

“To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself,” wrote Scalia, an avowed Catholic and social conservative, quoting from an ages old Supreme Court decision and giving it new life. His opinion was cosigned by four other justices.

[AirFlacco]

Well, Galen, Scalia will be one of the ones who will strike down O BUMMER
CARE that contains all of this, but it should be safe because another Reagan appointee, Kennedy, will probably vote for it. His vote is always the swing vote as he votes for liberal causes 50% of the time even though he was appointed by Reagan. That's why
the liberals in Congress confirmed him after denying Borke, a previous nominee and much more conservative.

Kennedy still might vote against it and if he does all this is a moot point
because OBY CARE will be ruled unconstitutional as Scalia will vote vs it.

[NCRAVEN]

Although Obama will today announce another manner in which to ensure all women equal access to healthcare, it won't be because of a conflict with the constitution. I think he is doing this the correct way as birth control is still a sensitive issue to some, a small but loud minority, and it is not worth the political capital he would expend here.

It looks like the administration was basing the legality of thier initial decision on a Scalia precedent from 1990:


“One thing I think is crystal clear — there is no First Amendment violation by this law,” Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA, told TPM. “The Supreme Court was very clear in a case called Employment Division v. Smith, written by none other than Antonin Scalia, that religious believers and institutions are not entitled to an exemption from generally applicable laws.”

The Reagan-appointed conservative justice authored the majority opinion in the 1990 decision Employment Division v. Smith, a critical precedent to the birth control case, decreeing that religious liberty is insufficient grounds for being exempt from laws. The Supreme Court said Oregon may deny unemployment benefits to people who were fired for smoking peyote as part of a religious tradition, seeing as the drug was illegal in the state.

“To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself,” wrote Scalia, an avowed Catholic and social conservative, quoting from an ages old Supreme Court decision and giving it new life. His opinion was cosigned by four other justices.

Got a link instead of just some selected quotes?

[AirFlacco]

To copy Galen's technique, here's a quote from the LA TIMES and backs
up my previous post after countering Galen's Scalia quote:


According to the Los Angeles Times, the Scalia/Thomas duo hit a Federalist Society dinner to pretend to listen to what other people think about the Obamacare law before they eventually and inevitably knock it down.

From the LA Times:

Clement’s law firm, Bancroft PLLC, was one of almost two dozen firms that helped sponsor the annual dinner of the Federalist Society, a longstanding group dedicated to advocating conservative legal principles. Another firm that sponsored the dinner, Jones Day, represents one of the trade associations that challenged the law, the National Federation of Independent Business.

Another sponsor was pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc, which has an enormous financial stake in the outcome of the litigation. The dinner was held at a Washington hotel hours after the court’s conference over the case. In attendance was, among others, Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican and an avowed opponent of the healthcare law.

The featured guests at the dinner? Scalia and Thomas.

[NCRAVEN]

Never mind, I found it Galen. And now I know why you didn't include the link. Basically the law professor goes on to say... it ain't over.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2...ntrol-rule.php

Here is the rest of the article:

Thanks to this decision more than any other, Winkler said there’s no reason to believe the constitutional argument against the rule has any legs. And while the high court later ruled to create a ministerial exception in anti-discrimination laws (to shield the Church from liability in forbidding women to become priests), it has not altered the Smith precedent insofar as it applies to the birth control rule. “So it would seem extremely difficult” for the courts to overturn it on that basis, Winkler posited. “I don’t think there’s any real argument.”

Critics have posited that the application of drugs in Smith was a motivating factor in the decisions of Scalia and the other conservative justices. “Sure, I think there’s something to that argument,” Winkler said. But ‘stare decisis’ (court-speak for judicial precedent) applies all the same. And it wouldn’t even be the first time Scalia has handed down a decision that the Obama White House can use against conservatives.

Sadly for liberals, though, the legal basis for a challenge doesn’t end there. Apart from the First Amendment option, there’s another, more substantial judicial route that opponents of the birth control rule can take. After Smith was handed down, Congress passed a law to push back on the ruling, which Winkler said “attempts to provide more protection for religion than the Supreme Court was willing to give.”

The 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act said any law that burdens religious freedom must satisfy strict scrutiny. The Supreme Court later said it cannot apply to states (which is why the 28 states that already have the birth control rule the White House wants to take nationwide are in the clear), but held that those requirements shall apply to federal laws. First, the law may not be a “substantial burden” and can only be an “incidental burden” on religious practices; second, it must be justified by “compelling government interest”; third, it must be narrowly tailored to pursue that interest.

And it’s an open question whether the birth control requirement passes that level of scrutiny, Winkler said, arguing that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is opponents’ best hope to reverse the rule through the courts. “I could see arguments go both ways,” he said.

White House allies aren’t feeling overconfident, either. “I think the lower courts will support the [contraception] rule, based on the precedent,” said Jessica Arons of the liberal Center for American Progress. “But if it makes it to the Supreme Court, I don’t know how it will play out given the Court’s current makeup.”

All of which is to say opponents of the birth control requirement still have a chance to reverse it through the courts, should Republicans fail to do so legislatively. But one of their two possible routes to achieving that goal has had a huge impediment thrown in its path by none other than Antonin Scalia.