I try to be
fair, I try to be respectful, I try to remember that many of the worthwhile
things that have occurred over the last couple of millennia are the result
either of the church or their believers. And what, I ask myself, have we
atheists ever contributed? Have we started soup kitchens, held the hand of the
dying, worked with lepers? So shouldn’t I give organized religion a break?
Want the
short answer?
Fuck no.
To any
nonbeliever out there, it’s been a bad couple of weeks. Consider, for example,
the famous Hobby Lobby case, and can I convince you, Horrified
Readers, that the religious backgrounds of the five male justices had noting to
do with it? That all five of the justices who voted in favor of Hobby Lobby
were catholic (nope, no capitals today, dammit)—that’s a coincidence? Oh, and
the other catholic on the court who voted in dissent was a woman—Sonia Sotomayor—otherwise,
guess what? It would have been 6 / 3.
Did you
know, Hobby Lobby—as yes, I’m addressing you personally, since that apparently
is what five people in the US have decided you are—what kind of a crowd you
were going against? Because there isn’t one protestant on the Supreme
Court (seriously thinking about those caps, too). So you guys walked into the
lion’s den and came out unscathed—gotta hand it to you.
Of course,
let’s hope your daughter doesn’t work for a closely-held corporation that has
strong Jehovah’s Witness beliefs. Otherwise, that blood transfusion? Or the
vaccines, which oddly enough have gotten prohibitively expensive? Here,
courtesy of The New York Times,
is the lead from an article entitled “The Price of Prevention: Vaccine Costs
are Soaring:”
There
is little that Dr. Lindsay Irvin has not done for the children’s vaccines in
her office refrigerator: She remortgaged her home to afford their rising
prices.
Guys? Can
you imagine what the rest of the world is thinking about us?
Now the
situation is so bad that a rabid little college in Illinois—Wheaton College—has
decided it doesn’t want to fill out a form telling the government that the
college is opting out of the contraceptive clause; here’s
the Columbus Dispatch
on the subject:
The
school had argued that simply doing the paperwork — the form asks only for
name, contact information, signature and date — infringed upon its religious
liberty because it would trigger the employee’s ability to get the disputed
contraception.
What’s this
about? Simple—the Supreme Court has just declared the right of corporations to
impose their religious beliefs on workers.
Nor did the
religious right waste any time, because, the day after Hobby Lobby? A whole
gaggle of religious groups sent a letter asking Obama to not issue an order
directing the federal government to not award contracts to companies; enter
The New York Times,
again:
Emboldened
by the Supreme Court’s addlebrained Hobby Lobby decision, several groups wrote to Mr. Obama on July 1
asking him to allow federal contractors to fire or refuse to hire workers based
on their religious objections to a person’s sexual orientation or gender
identity.
Oh—just for
your information, the article is titled “Tax-payer Financed Bigotry,” a statement
so pithy that it spares you the need to read further.
Well, we
already have the catholic church firing teachers and principals of their
schools who have gotten married—to members of their own sex, that is. Oh, and
by the way, are those schools entirely self-funded? No nickel of the taxpayers
going there?
Here’s
a clue:
More than 80
percent of students receiving federal vouchers through the D.C. program attend
private religious schools with such civil rights exemptions but no opt-out
option for religious instruction.
Oh, and
don’t think, by the way, that all you have to do is worry about federal
money, because you also have to worry about what the bastards in your
statehouse are doing. Because increasingly, that’s where the action is;
consider this,
from The Washington Post:
In
North Carolina,
the state legislature recently passed a bill to divert $10 million of taxpayer
money meant for public schools to private schools, including those
that “provide an education that is Christ-centered” and teach “the truth of
scripture” with “Bible-based facts,” such as: “dinosaurs and humans co-existed
on Earth; slave-masters generally treated their slaves well; in some areas, the
KKK fought the decline in morality by using the sign of the cross; and gay
people have no more claims to special rights than child molesters or rapists.”
Know what?
I’m now radicalized—for (easily) ten years I worked in a company where wearing
a gold crucifix around your neck was almost de rigeur, where saying “bien, gracias a Dios” was the standard response to the
question of how you were doing. And I shut up because I was respectful, though
I admit to fighting the life-size crèche that Human Resources—ladies? Aren’t
you guys supposed to be the experts here?—put up one Christmas. But now?
Now, I wish
I had turned the company into a battleground. I wish I had said, “god doesn’t
exist,” at every turn. I wish I had told everybody that had a crucifix to take
it off, because I found it offensive. I wish the whole company had ground to a
halt, so that 499 people could have been jumping the throat of little me. I should
have duked it out until the end.
Reasonable?
Done with
it!
