Men in Black

[paft.livejournal.com]

Here is a picture from today's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing about the Obama administration's birth control mandate:



The first row are the allowed witnesses.

All those people a couple rows behind them? Well... those witnesses just don't fit in.

That's why most of the Democratic women on the committee walked out of the room.

Just now, Oklahoma GOP representative Jim Lankford implied that these men in black were being "berated" by the committee. In fact, they've mostly been getting strokes just short of full-body massages from most of the remaining committee members. This hearing is such a transparent and over-the-top, right wing extremist attack on the administration (one Representative invoked those dastardly laws against smoking in public buildings as a sign of the slippery slope the administration has set up) that clips from it should be used by Democrats in the upcoming election.

I cannot imagine any reasonable and honest person watching this hearing and not being appalled.


Partially crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

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Comments

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

That's fine. They don't need to take the birth control.

No, see, They do. That's the key problem - when plans are allowed to not cover contraception, then they can choose to not have the coverage with it, not before.

No. You're religiously opposed to it, then DON'T DO IT. But you have no right to tell me what I can or cannot do.

What this does, however, would be the same as going to a church and saying "yeah, Adam and Steve want to get married in your church? You have to provide them with those marriages." Few would think that's reasonable, but somehow this contraceptive rule is? Why is religious freedom okay when it comes to one aspect of society, but not another?

[crystallinegirl.livejournal.com]

Except churches/organizations whose primary purpose is worship of their respective gods are completely exempt, so your comparison fails.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

My comparison doesn't fail, because the idea of being a Catholic does not end at the doors of a church.

[crystallinegirl.livejournal.com]

No, but the idea that everyone around you should follow your religious laws SHOULD. ...religious freedom and all that.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Absolutely, which is why the rule, before Obama changed it, was a good one. Instead of everyone following the laws of whoever's running the show, we rightly treated cases based on the beliefs and needs of the groups in question.

Obama's rule puts us in a one-size-fits-all category in the other direction - that everyone should ignore their religious laws.