{"id":82983,"date":"2012-02-29T23:20:50","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T04:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/82983\/speak-bluntly\/"},"modified":"2012-02-29T23:20:50","modified_gmt":"2012-03-01T04:20:50","slug":"speak-bluntly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/82983\/speak-bluntly\/","title":{"rendered":"Let Me Speak Bluntly…"},"content":{"rendered":"

My gentle reader is hopefully aware of the recent discussion in our government as to whether or not any and all employers, particularly those with religious affiliations, should be required in their health plans to offer comprehensive coverage for contraception.\u00a0 Freedom of Religion, one side cries, and of course, when the very foundations of our Constitution are questioned, we do need to listen.<\/p>\n

Obama came up with a politically practical settlement to the brouhaha a week or so ago, basically offering institutions, specifically religious ones, an option of putting the costs of a particular type of coverage, applying only to women, onto the insurance provider.\u00a0 So the government says it\u2019s okay for a business to lower costs for religious reasons.\u00a0 What eligible business wouldn\u2019t take advantage of that?<\/p>\n

\"\"Okay, so Notre Dame University, Catholic Charities and the St Vincent DePaul folks, can penalize their insurance carriers for whatever many tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.\u00a0 Umm\u2026 Guess what\u2019s coming up if you\u2019re an employee of one of these Catholic institutions?\u00a0 Rate hikes!! All government regulations which increases the costs of corporate America immediate translate to higher prices to be put on the shoulders of the American consumer.<\/p>\n

So, per the Obama compromise, if you\u2019re a Protestant, Atheist or Moslem janitor for Notre Dame, Gonzaga or one of dozens of Catholic hospitals, your insurance premiums are going up to pay for the birth control pills of your so-workers.<\/p>\n

This is wrong on so many levels.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the bigger problem. Tomorrow, our senate is going to vote on the Blunt Amendment.<\/strong> This law will extend this corporate loophole Obama made available to overtly religious (read: Catholic) organizations to any and all companies that have religious or MORAL objections to aspects of a medical plan.\u00a0 Moral objections?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember there being a \u201cFreedom of Morals\u201d element to the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

This is not only an invitation for big corporations to cut their employee health costs by claiming some moral resistance.\u00a0 Neither General Motors, General Electic nor General Dynamics can claim to be religious institutions, but if more than half of their board of directors would be willing to say they\u2019re opposed to birth control for MORAL reasons (read: profit), than their millions of American female employees could be denied coverage of birth control.<\/p>\n

\"\"I don\u2019t think the Blunt Amendment will pass tomorrow, but if it does, what an attack it would be on the working class by corporate America, disguised under the veil of religious freedom.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, this proposed amendment is a violation of Civil Rights Act of 1964.\u00a0 Under that law, it is illegal for employers to practice \u201cdisparate treatment\u201d on the basis of race, gender or religion. In America today, you cannot overtly say that men can will make $25\/hr at a particular job, whilst women will only make $20\/hr.\u00a0 Or vice versa.\u00a0 Or that blacks and whites will be compensated differently.\u00a0 Just to note, it\u2018s still okay under federal law to discriminate based upon sexual orientation, most states have passed laws that ban that too.\u00a0 In any case, paying women less than men is illegal.<\/p>\n

How many men shell out $100\/mo for birth control pills?<\/p>\n

Mind you, my health insurance doesn\u2019t cover Viagra without a whole bevy of tests to prove that it\u2019s medically necessary, so if I chose to take those pills, I gotta pay for them myself, but that\u2019s beside the point.\u00a0 Being sexually potent and being sexually vulnerable are two very different places.<\/p>\n

Point being, if you exclude a necessary coverage that only effects women, if you make women pay for things that men don\u2019t have to, you are discriminating against someone purely on the basis of their gender, and in my America, that is illegal.<\/font><\/p>\n

What do you think? <\/font><\/p>\n

I can’t help to notice that without the contributions of folks like Moosehammer, John Sawyer and yes, even Vic, the political discussion here on FriendBurst has gotten a little slow… Hey, many kudos to Freebird, D Lemur and Mango for keeping it going on occasion, but what can we do to make it once again the Gang of Ten instead of the Gang of four or five? <\/font>
\nI was thinking about a political Blogtalkradio show… whose with me?
\n<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My gentle reader is hopefully aware of the recent discussion in our government as to whether or not any and all employers, particularly those with religious affiliations, should be required in their health plans to offer comprehensive coverage for contraception.\u00a0 Freedom of Religion, one side cries, and of course, when the very foundations of our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1428],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}