Intolerance on Its Head

A judge says to a New York couple, “Open up your home to provide a gay wedding or face $10,000 in fines plus $3,000 in damages.” Not kidding. 

There must be more to the story. Yes, a bit. But this is the basic truth of it. (Read more here and here.)

Photo originally screen capture from website,
found in this story

The New York couple, Robert and Cynthia Gifford, own a family farm. As you might imagine, making a living from a family farm is tenuous. But the location is rustically scenic. So they do additional business by allowing events there. These include various kinds of events: business parties, school events, birthday parties, and sometimes weddings and receptions.

The main covered venue is a large barn, above which is the couple’s living space, where they are raising their two children. When the Giffords consent to do a wedding, they do the decorating, the food, the setup…. Some events they are less involved in, including receptions elsewhere on the property. But a wedding, in their home—their rustic barn home—is something they take on as a partnership with the couple being married.

You can imagine they can’t take on that kind of event every day. They have to want to celebrate with the couple. After all, this is in their home, and it’s taking up their life and livelihood for some significant amount of time.

So, along comes a lesbian couple who want their wedding in the barn/home. The Giffords are religious Christians. They are not comfortable putting their heart and soul into something that goes against their belief in traditional marriage. So they suggest lesser services, such as a reception on the grounds. Not good enough. The lesbians insist they want the whole shebang or nothing. So the farm owners shrug their shoulders and say they’re sorry they can’t help.

What would a tolerant engaged couple do? Respect the kindly and respectfully offered decision, and go find another venue. Not this couple. They insist it is their right to force this farm family to open their home and give them the full-service wedding. Or else! And the or else was a lawsuit. With a liberal judge, who thinks it’s OK to enslave someone into servitude, not just in their own business but, in this case, in their own home. He gets away with this travesty by claiming the lesbian couple is “suffering” intolerance from the farm owners.

The entire exchange happened in a “recorded” three-minute phonecall.

I have handled wedding events for all three of my children, with receptions in Texas and out of state. These required a lot of phonecalls, plus some in-person visits. I never once considered recording a phonecall. Why would I? If service couldn’t (or wouldn’t) be rendered by a particular vendor, I’d simply go elsewhere. And if there were details that needed to be remembered, I wrote notes, followed up with emails, or called again to clarify. I think that’s normal.

There was a business that turned us away, with prejudice. This was some months before daughter Social Sphere’s wedding. Just a couple of weeks afterward was the wedding of my daughter-in-law’s sister, who has long been a friend of Social Sphere. So the girls all got together, over Christmas break, to do some wedding exploration. Between our houses (about 40 miles apart) there’s a business we see from the freeway that does wedding-related business. We hadn’t ever been inside, so I wasn’t sure if they did dresses, had a reception venue, provided decorations for your venue, or a variety of other services. So I suggested the girls stop in and find out what they offered. They had granddaughter Little Political Sphere with them, at age 2 ½. She can be a handful, but at the time was clean and fed and under control. I think an older sister, with babe in arms, was also helping. The proprietor came up to these girls—two of them wearing engagement rings and ready to explore all kinds of wedding spending—and sent them out of the place because they had children with them. Talk about prejudice. We think that the proprietor didn’t believe the girls were seriously shopping. But the message was clear: people like you (people who have the nerve to bring a child with them) are not welcome here.

So, Weddings by Debbie, in Katy, Texas, gets no recommendation or business from us. Ever. In fact, after knowing how strongly they preferred not to do business with us, I wouldn’t want their services. The idea of forcing them to do something for us, through the courts, never came up.

The fact that it came up for Jenny McCarthy and Melissa Erwin, after a brief—recorded—phonecall, leads me to believe they were seeking a chance for a lawsuit more than then were seeking a lovely, rustic wedding venue.

What we don’t know is how many venues they contacted before they could find one that would offend them suitably for a lawsuit.

The fines might not put the Giffords out of business, but that is a risk. And in their case, losing the business could mean losing their home. Their options are to appeal to the state Supreme Court, or to countersue for violation of their religious freedoms. Either of those options requires money, which they may not have access to. Another consideration is hiring an event planner to separate them from participating in any event they might not want to be involved in. This would also cost them.

None of their options—for living their lives according to valid religious beliefs, in their business and in their home—is easy or inexpensive.

But it’s better than being beheaded, right? Yes. ISIS is moving through the Middle East, summarily executing anyone who holds religious beliefs not meeting ISIS approval. They don’t tolerate dissent.

Neither do the lesbian couple and the New York Judge. If execution were an optional punishment for failure to agree with the homosexual agenda, would they seek it? I don’t know. I hope not. But enslaving someone into service in their own home—because of the pain and anguish you suffered from a three-minute phonecall in which they said they were willing to serve you in other ways—is pretty spiteful. It is not, by any stretch, tolerant.

In the Spherical Model world, honoring family and living according to the Ten Commandments are two components necessary for freedom, prosperity, and civilization, found in the northern hemisphere. Tolerance where there is disagreement, and respect toward all people is part of civilization. Forcing someone to violate their religion is southern hemisphere savagery. ISIS is clearly savage. The difference between their intolerance and that of the Giffords’ opponents is a matter of degree. The more savagery is tolerated, the more civilization deteriorates into more severe savagery. There is no civilization to be found going in that direction.

First Amendment Freedom of Religion vs. Obamacare

The question is not whether people should be allowed to use contraceptives and other sterilization methods; in this debate there is no attempt to curtail what is currently legal. The question is whether paying for such products/services or not is a private decision or a public one. 

Is a person allowed to say, “I personally believe it is wrong to artificially limit fertility, and it goes against my conscience to pay for such things,” or can a person with those beliefs be forced to spend money for those products/services? Obama and his Health and Human Services enforcers have decided it is their decision. What is their rationale for taking that decision away from private citizens and groups? 

There seem to be two main points:

·         Churches employ people who are not all of their religion; they shouldn’t impose their religious views on their employees.

·         Churches should expect to do what the government mandates, since they are receiving government benefits. 

Joan Vennochi puts these together in one paragraph in a Boston Globe piece: 

But not all employees of Catholic institutions are Catholics. Why should their employers impose their religious beliefs on them and deny coverage for birth control and other medical care? As long as those Catholic institutions are getting taxpayer money, they should follow secular rules. That’s the Obama administration’s argument, and it makes sense.  

Maybe it makes sense to her, but not to me. If I hire someone to clean my house who happens to be a smoker, and I have a religious proscription against smoking, for example, am I required to accommodate smoking in my home? If that were true, I would never hire a smoker. I do not allow smoking in my home for many reasons that have nothing to do with government interests. I would very much resent having government interfere with that decision in any way. And if government insisted I allow smoking in my home by any employee, I simply would hire no one. (In fact, I do my own housekeeping, thank you. Smoke free. And cheap.) 

As for taking government money, that’s interesting. Obamacare is imposed on us, so if that is the “benefit” referred to, then forcing someone to take a “benefit” and then forcing them to do something even more repugnant because they had accepted the first “benefit” is pretty twisted. This is a no-win situation for anyone with a different opinion from the President. 

But I think the reference is to joint ventures between government and churches. These were efforts put forth by Pres. Bush, and probably before that. Have government support those entities already doing charity; it’s an effective and efficient use of government benevolence. [I know, benevolence is not actually a proper role of government; I am simply describing the situation.] So government reaches out, offers support for good the religious entity was already doing, and then claims the right to control the organizations beliefs? That looks like manipulative entrapment. 

I went to a very large church-owned university that does not take any government money. The reasoning is that it does not want to give government any leverage in controlling what is taught and how. Still, government has tried to argue that taking student tuition money that the student gets from a government grant or loan is taking government money. While that would be a stretch, it shows how much vigilance is required to prevent government usurpation of our private lives. 

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Dem., Connecticut) suggests not only that compromise on religious issues vs. government-invented “rights” to free contraception are a good thing, but that the president already did enough compromising: 

With this well-crafted balance, the religious liberty of our churches and other houses of worship is respected. They are exempted from the rule, as they should be. There is no mandate that individuals use contraception or that anyone dispense contraception, and there are no changes to existing conscience protections. At the same time, the nearly 800,000 employees and dependents of employees at Catholic hospitals can still benefit from access to these services if they desire them, a good compromise that maintains access while respecting religious liberties.  

Sen. Barbara Boxer (Dem., California) also supports the president’s supposed careful compromise: 

The truth is, the president's decision respects the diverse religious views of the American people, who deserve the right to follow their own conscience and choose whether to obtain contraceptives, regardless of where they work. And that is what this policy guarantees—with one carefully drawn exception. This decision respects the deeply-held views of religious institutions. If their mission is primarily religious and the majority of their employees and clients share that faith, religious institutions do not have to provide contraceptive coverage to their employees.  

Actually, the truth is it isn’t up to the president to decide how and whether American citizens are allowed to live their religions. That is a Constitutionally guaranteed God-given right, no matter what he says, or how much tyranny he imposes. She’s also wrong about how the government has gone about determining what is a primarily religious mission. She doesn’t understand that, while hospital care to her might seem secular, to the church that set up and supports the hospital, that is an act of goodness that is religious at its core. The same can be said for schools, where certainly many secular things are taught, but the purpose is to have those things taught in an environment that encourages the church’s beliefs.

I think she may also be wrong about the “majority” of employees phrase. I think it is likely that most (a majority, over 50%) of teachers at Notre Dame are Catholic. The argument elsewhere has been that if they hire any employees not of their faith, they must provide a form of coverage that allows that employee whatever the federal government prescribes. 

As I listen to news today, I hear the president has added a little extra twist. He claims that churches aren’t actually being forced to pay for something against their beliefs; they’re only required to pay for medical coverage as the federal government mandates, and it is actually the insurance companies that are providing the services. Our president doesn’t think that should affect anyone’s conscience. This is evidence of how very different he thinks from the average American—and certainly different from the average religious American. 

If you’re reading this, chances are we’re in agreement the president is wrong on this issue, and we are pulling for the Catholic Church and others to resist. 

I want to take just a minute to cover a tangent. Rick Santorum (and others) have tried to claim that Mitt Romney’s position is no different from Obama’s. That is patently untrue. Here is a brief explanation of the controversy by Ryan Larsen (WhyRomney.com on Facebook, February 8):

Romney spoke with his veto pen—he vetoed the legislation which would require hospitals to provide “morning after” pills. But the legislature overrode the veto. 

The only role Romney had in the matter was enforcing the law, which he was bound to do by his oath of office. 

The confusion results because Romney tried to craft an exemption for Catholic hospitals but ultimately realized that the exemption was not legally sound. There was one clear obstacle to Romney’s preferred exemption: the legislature has authority to supersede any contradictory statues or provisions rather than to work in harmony with the older statue. Thus, if Romney were to challenge the intended effect of the law, he would have had to argue disingenuously in court that the older provision and the new provision could be reconciled when that was likely not true. It is perhaps not surprising that Romney felt bound by the new law and it was in this context that Romney told the Department of Public Health they had to enforce the intent of the law even though he disagreed with it.

Clearly Romney’s effort to provide exemption for the Catholic Church is in direct contrast to Obama’s insistence on imposing his will. He has actually faced the problems of working as an executive with a liberal legislature, and will have been working on ways of avoiding those problems in any future opportunities. Santorum may claim he would always stand strong, but he has not had the executive experience so we can see what he would have done. Concerning Santorum’s integrity, does he know this and lie about it? Or does he not know it and yet makes the accusation based on faulty information? Either way, that lessens my respect for him. 

This gives me one more reason to pause about Catholics, however. This controversy happened in 2005. Catholics have tended to be strongly Democrat, so it was their own political choices that directly led to the imposition of the law against their religious freedom at the state level. It was 2010 when Obamacare was pressed through. They knew what the Democrat view was, how it would play out—yet they supported Obama and Obamacare, and trusted that this time things would be different. May I suggest it is time for Catholics in general to seriously rethink their long-held political positions?

Two Hundredth Post

This is my 200^th post at the Spherical Model blog. I had intended to celebrate by posting a short video explaining the Spherical Model concept. However, due mainly to my lack of technical skills, that is still in process. (My sons, Political Sphere and Economic Sphere, are encouraging me that this little project is doable in the near future.)

So, instead we’ll celebrate the unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court Wednesday in favor of religious liberty.

First, let’s do a little grammar practice. This is what the 1^st Amendment to the Constitution says concerning religion:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

There are two parts. So how would it read if we clarified by making each part its own sentence?

·         Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

·         Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

It’s not really that difficult, grammatically. The second has been violated many times because of some twisted misunderstandings about the first. What would it mean for Congress to establish a religion? It would mean that they would make one particular religion (sect) the preferred religion—they would “establish” that religion as “the” official religion of the nation. Adherents to that particular faith would have preferred status under the law. Our founders didn’t prevent particular states from establishing their own state religion, and in the beginning several did indeed have state religions. But the Constitution prevented that from ever being done at the federal level. (And states figured out on their own it wasn’t a good idea at their level either.)

There is nothing about getting all religious expression out of public life. In fact, getting religious expression out of public life would indeed violate the second part; it would be prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

So what about non-believers, or different believers? They get to tolerate differences in religious beliefs, just like the rest of us. Simple, right?

The ruling this week was related to a particular issue, with a teacher at a parochial school who violated her contract with the church and then tried to get the courts to rule that the church didn’t have the right to terminate her because of her violation. The courts were unanimous in saying a church could decide who it hired based on their own religious criteria. It was somewhat technical; more info here.

But it was good to see the courts could be both clear and unanimous when the administration was lobbying against religious freedom. Let’s hope this is an indicator of more such clarity to come.