Rush Limbaugh needs our prayers. The man is sick or demented — or both.
Limbaugh’s incendiary, vulgar, demeaning comments last week about Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke being a “slut” and a “prostitute” because she wants contraceptives included in her health care coverage fed the firestorm that was already raging in the debate about a religious institution’s rights and obligations concerning employee benefits. Limbaugh apologized. Said he didn’t mean to make a personal attack on Fluke and his intent was to be humorous. No one’s laughing, Rush. Not even your former sponsors.
When the oppressed immigrants sailed across the Atlantic Ocean lo those four centuries ago, it was largely because they wanted the freedom to worship as they deemed proper. Or so we’ve been told. Unfortunately they brought religious pride and prejudice right along with them, for such things reside in the human heart.
So our forefathers, in their infinite wisdom, included in the Constitution a limitation on government’s ability to establish a state religion and meddle in the affairs of religious organizations. In the context of the current argument we must ask these questions: At what point does a religious group’s venture become a business? When a religion enters the free market, should they or should they not, within those money-making ventures, be subject to the same laws as every other business owner in the USA and “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”?
When religious organizations choose to move into the world of commerce, be it health care, education, or what have you, they change games, and when the games change, so do the rules.
Hospitals and schools are not houses of worship, and therein lies the rub. By venturing into corporate America these religious groups enter secular society and forfeit their right to certain protections afforded their ecclesiastical wings.
Some say this is an infringement on religious liberty itself. Hogwash! A requirement that insurance cover contraceptives for women employed in a religiously based business in no way hinders anyone’s right to worship as they see fit.
I suppose a case could be made for a church, synagogue or mosque being exempted from providing birth control for employees working in their priestly quarters. But a line must be drawn somewhere. Otherwise we allow some major players in industry to continue to treat women as second-class citizens under the red herring of moral values. Something about that smells awfully fishy.
Women’s reproductive rights have long been legislated by men who can impregnate a woman but can’t birth a baby. (But this is not just about reproductive rights, for contraceptives are prescribed for a number of medical reasons in addition to birth control.)
If a business doesn’t have to offer contraceptives for women in their health insurance, how does it make sense that the same firm would provide coverage for vasectomies? Can you say “double standard”?
Optimistically, today’s controversy could be a gigantic growing pain similar to the civil rights movement, as our culture evolves to eventually insure justice for all — a hallmark of pure religion and a central theme of our Pledge of Allegiance.
This is still a free country, though I sometimes fear we could easily become more of a Cromwellian state, were certain politicians to have their way.
Health care is not a right — yet — and no one has to take a job with anyone they don’t want to. Churches, synagogues, and mosques don’t have to offer birth control coverage for women if to do so would conflict with their theology. But inequity in coverage within the parameters of a free-market corporation just seems wrong to me — even un-American.
I believe it is inconsistent with the message of every faith that teaches justice, healing, mercy, and compassion.
That should bother us all — even ranting Rush Limbaugh. Let us pray.
