Here's a judge's decision for a temporary stay on the application of Tyndale, the Bible publisher. The judge sides with the Christian company for now on the issue of not forcing ObamaCare's mandate established by Health and Human Services (HHS). Good!
This is an important check and balance on President Obama's overreach and violation of separation of church and state and the First Amendment. I'm very happy to see this and I hope the stay will turn into a permanent ruling, and if not, the next case will see the Catholics step up.
A court has ruled that Tyndale Publishers, printers of the Bible, a Christian business, is not required under ObamaCare to pay for contraceptives that it views as abortion-inducers.
This is very good news, as it is going to be a very important pushback against Obama's effort to smash Catholics and Christians as constituents, to get the machine demographics he needed to win the elections.
There was never any need for Obama to cross the street to bloody the Jesuits' noses in the incident involving Sandra Fluke, who felt her Jesuit university should cover her birth control. Sandra Fluke can get birth control from Planned Parenthood if she can't afford the $9/month cost at Wal-mart or whatever -- she waged this lawfare as part of the feminist cause.
That was what always struck me about this, after the fundamental First Amendment issue at stake -- that in a pluralistic and diverse society with all kinds of faith-based and secular-based institutions, you have choice. Leaving aside the matter of your choice of employment -- you don't *have* to work for Jesuits or Bible publishers -- there's the question of your choice of other providers for abortion or contraceptives. You don't *have* to force your conscientious employer to go against their conscience.
That Obama did wasn't because of tone-deafness or a lack of religious fervour (he is a Christian and goes to church, although I've always felt his religion was more of a form of community-organizing than anything else).
Rather, it was about striking a sledge hammer against the Catholic demographic to break it up and make part of it not only vote for him, but swing their fellow parishioners along with them. I'm convinced this was very, very planned and very deliberate, as part of the whole contrived war on women narrative to spook women into voting for Obama. And it was so unnecessary because they do have CHOICE. Remember when CHOICE was the mantra of the left? Boy, they dropped that in a New York minute once they had their machine demographics edge! Yet it is what fundamentally cost him my vote, not that he cares, as he already has other demographics now without me. He has my friends and neighbours right next to me in the pew in my church.
What's so interesting about this court case is that the judge ruled as follows:
Walton acknowledged that the government has broad, compelling interests in promoting public health and ensuring that women have equal access to health care, but he said the question "is whether the government has shown that the application of the contraceptive coverage mandate to the plaintiffs furthers those compelling interests," underlying "to the plaintiffs" in the text. Nothing in Walton's order applied to anyone other than Tyndale.
Walton said that the government hasn't offered any proof that mandatory
insurance for the specific types of contraceptives that Tyndale objects
to furthers the government's compelling interests.
Despite the reporters' -- and possibly the judge's -- desire to make this ruling apply to these particular plaintiffs -- who happen to allow some forms of contraception in their beliefs and would provide them, unlike Catholics, in an insurance plan -- other litigators and judges will look at this decision carefully.
Naturally, the lefties will swear it's all about a Bush appointee. I don't see any indication of that. The judge interpreted the law about compelling interests. Indeed, Obama and HHS really have no compelling interests in FORCIING particular religious groups to go against their conscience -- even if federally funded -- when there are available OTHER federally-funded entities like Planned Parenthood.
PP itself should get out of the business of hammering on others like Komen to make them do their ideological bidding and remain conformist to their "progressive" line under pain of losing their funding -- there's enough funding to go around, federal and public and private, that they should compete in the marketplace and stop harassing others who don't believe as they do. Again, the Komen campaign was also deliberate and also about driving wedges among constituents, blasting open demographic blocs and forcing some to publicly side with Obama, dragging others with them in a bid to win. Divide and conquer.
Now, there's always a Twitterer who says at this point that if the Catholic Church doesn't want to supply contraceptives and abortifacients in health coverage, it should not accept federal funding.
That's a particularly snotty and nasty approach to take, you know? Because it implies that it is okay for the state to discriminate in its funding on the basis of religious belief. That also ends the separation of church and state, too.
Something like 12 percent of America's hospitals are run by Catholics. So it's not the horror that some imagine on either side of the debate, but it's significant -- why put out of business nonprofit organizations that run on more modest budgets because staff include low-paid or volunteer religious people?
And if any smug secular sort who thinks people should be punished in this way for their beliefs, I can only turn around in horror and ask what next -- and when the bell will toll for you with this kind of radical social experiment? You're absolutely sure you want a state that can fund or defund groups on a whim based on their reading of what politically-correct belief they should have?
And again, it's so unnecessary. Obama does not have to break the back of the Catholic Church for this. He had many socially-active people supporting ObamaCare in principle. He had my vote in his first election in 2008 for this reason.
So he needs to drop this one and not be ideologically-wed to old DSA agendas or other socialist cultural mandates and advice from demographic bloc-busters in his machine. Really, it has to go.
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