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With the Obama admin­is­tra­tion look­ing like they will be rolling back Bush era poli­cies allow­ing doc­tors to refuse to per­form cer­tain pro­ce­dures and/or refuse to pre­scribe or sell cer­tain med­ica­tions (let’s say RU-486 for exam­ple) the Internet’s polit­i­cal debate hotspots have erupted as expected. Over at the Some­thing Awful forums I saw a great post that com­pletely explains my posi­tion on this issue:

It’s a sad reflec­tion on the influ­ence of the reli­gious right that this is even a note­wor­thy issue. If you work at Burger King, and one day you decide that you don’t like the Dou­ble Whop­per and won’t serve it to peo­ple any­more (say, for rea­sons of their health), you get fired. If you’re an net­work admin­is­tra­tor and one day decide that TCP/IP is the devil’s pro­to­col and you won’t use it, you get fired. The list goes on. Giv­ing peo­ple the legal med­ica­tion they need is the job of the phar­ma­cist and doc­tor. Their job is not “Make value judg­ments about my patients and then pre­scribe what med­ica­tions I per­son­ally believe are good”. We have a cen­tral reg­u­la­tory body that deter­mines what med­i­cines and pro­ce­dures are legal to give out and per­form. Doc­tors and phar­ma­cists are expected to adhere to these. A phar­ma­cist who decided that he would no longer give can­cer patients their drugs or a doc­tor who decided he will sub­sti­tute phrenol­ogy for a gen­eral exam would find them­selves out of jobs in short order. The only rea­son this is an issue is because for some rea­son “It’s my reli­gion!” is taken as a valid excuse for not doing your job.

If you are a phar­ma­cist, it is your job to dis­pense med­ica­tions as pre­scribed. Your per­sonal morals have absolutely no legit­i­mate influ­ence on this. If you do not like this fact, find another job. What the right wing wants here would be equiv­a­lent to a paci­fist join­ing the Marines and then com­plain­ing that they were being sent to war.

If you’re still con­vinced that this “reli­gious free­dom” is the right option, pre­tend you live in a small town with one local doc­tor. Now pre­tend that doc­tor is a Jehova’s Wit­ness. Now think about what hap­pens if you or a loved one needs a trans­fu­sion. Your local doc­tor would then be fully able to refuse to give you/your loved one a trans­fu­sion because it goes against their religion.

If you don’t like the job require­ments, find another job. Don’t whine that you chose a job that con­flicts with your beliefs. Put up or shut up, either way your morals don’t have any effect on me.

Those fun­da­men­tal­ist idiots are at it again, this time try­ing to rile up the red states with an exag­ger­ated let­ter writ­ten from the per­spec­tive of an evan­gel­i­cal in 2012 under an Obama admin­is­tra­tion (PDF).

I hes­i­tate to start on this post because it’s already 11 PM and I have to work tomor­row, but I’ve been think­ing about this since Hemant Mehta posted about it yes­ter­day and I just feel I have to get some­thing out.

I’m just going to start from the top, quot­ing the parts I feel like dis­cussing and fol­low­ing them up with my thoughts.

The most far-reaching trans­for­ma­tion of Amer­i­can soci­ety came from the Supreme Court’s stun­ning affir­ma­tion, in early 2010, that homo­sex­ual “mar­riage” was a “con­sti­tu­tion­al”  right that had to be respected by all 50 states because laws bar­ring same-sex “mar­riage” vio­lated the Equal Pro­tec­tion clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Oh no, you mean Equal Pro­tec­tion means Equal for every­one?  *shock*

Sud­denly, homo­sex­ual “mar­riage” was the law of the land in all 50 states, and no state leg­is­la­ture, no state Supreme Court, no state Con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment, not even Con­gress, had any power to change it.

Well yea, I think that’s the point of the Fed­eral gov­ern­ment, it over­rides the indi­vid­ual states.  As for Con­gress, last time I checked they’ve changed the Con­sti­tu­tion twenty seven times.  It just takes a lot more polit­i­cal will and power than the fundie nut­bags can come up with so they ignore real­ity and lie because it sounds bet­ter to them.

This was a bla­tant exam­ple of cre­at­ing law by the court, for homo­sex­ual “mar­riage” was men­tioned nowhere in the Con­sti­tu­tion, nor would any of the authors have imag­ined that same-sex “mar­riage” could be derived from their words.

Mar­riage as a whole is not men­tioned in the Con­sti­tu­tion.  Would you rather have the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment have no recog­ni­tion of mar­riage at all?  (Side Note, per­son­ally I’d much pre­fer to either split the reli­gious cer­e­mony of mar­riage from couple’s ben­e­fits as the gov­ern­ment sees them or even throw out any spe­cial treat­ment for cou­ples of any kind.  Why should some­one get a tax break just because they signed a paper and pos­si­bly bought a ring?)

Boy Scouts: “The land of the free”? The Boy Scouts no longer exist as an orga­ni­za­tion. They chose to dis­band rather than be forced to obey the Supreme Court deci­sion that they would have to hire homo­sex­ual scout­mas­ters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys.

How is this a bad thing?  The Boy Scouts were once a decent orga­ni­za­tion that has since been taken over by the reli­gious right and unfor­tu­nately due to its past man­ages to con­tinue using pub­lic spaces at lit­tle to no cost and receive tax dol­lars even though it is heav­ily dis­crim­i­na­tory.  Pri­vate orga­ni­za­tion my ass.

As for the part about homo­sex­ual scout­mas­ters sleep­ing in tents with young boys, over­all this is just going back to one of the long-lasting claims of the anti-gay crowd, that gay men are all pedophiles.  Even with that said I could see how one could be uncom­fort­able with that sit­u­a­tion for the same rea­son you wouldn’t have a male lead­ing a Girl Scout troop and shar­ing a tent with them on some out­ing.  The idea that the BSA would be legally required to do that is absurd, but of course absur­dity doesn’t bother the reli­gious when they’re try­ing to make a point.

Gah fuck, I’m get­ting so annoyed just read­ing that let­ter that I can’t fin­ish right now.  I’ll come back to this post after I calm down.