OK the treatment in 3 might not be *free* but the point still stands.

I'm surprised that the Church of Christ, Scientist hasn't already brought that suit.

And re: Obama, the man said in 2008, " I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life."

Unless that's a complete fabrication, that the definition of being a Christian. And the act of professing that faith, even if you think it's a lie, by definition disqualifies him from being called a Secular Humanist.

"One should be tolerant and respectful of all people and their beliefs.

Unless they're Christian, conservative, white, or traditional in any way. Then they are free game, obviously."

I know right?

Why is there no *white* history month?

Shouldn't we stop focusing on race and all these other things that divide us? Isn't about time we became a *truly* tolerant society??

Next thing you know they're going to be rounding up WASPS and putting em in camps I tell ya what

What's the world comin' to man

O'bama has been spouting lies since 2008 he's no Christian. Haven't you seen his ring he always wears the guy's a Moslem

LA ILAHA ILLA I-LAH MUHAMMADUN RASULU I-LAH

educate yourself.

follow me @thucy_tcot twitter dot com

http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/obamas-ring-there-is-no-god-but-allah/

some facts for you sheeple

Uh, Oh, thucy has lost it.

I'd love it if Obama were a secret muslim. That would be hilarious.

@thucy
A Jerome Corsi article? This is what you offer me? It's Friday. I haven't the patience to come up with a scathing reply sarcastic enough to befit the outright fiction that is Jerome Corsi's career. Fill in the blanks yourself.

Ah, catholic bashing, a popular sport among the great unwashed. Just because your slutty whore of a great-great-great-grandmother got "raped" by a human of some actual intrinsic value and the Church didn't allow your retarded great-great-grandfather to be aborted (sadly for us, since you wouldn't plague the lives of rational and productive law-abiding citizens in that case) doesn't make your butthurt any less ridiculous. By the time you will rot in Hell and your pointless fads of a belief will be long forgotten, Ecclesia Catholica will still be the shepherd of billions of people. While your privileged first world ass goes around mocking religion because that's what's currently cool among the elites you're so religiously parroting, hundreds of millions of people with next to nothing to eat or drink draw the strength to endure their hardships from the teachings of Christ. While you will never admit it because the mantra of tolerance is one of your holy cows as well, you hold these people in the utmost contempt - superstitious, irrational, unmodern. They remind you of the ugly world outside of your precious little bubble. Too bad they are the ones actually living, instead of pretending all the time - like you.

^^ insane? Or trololol?

I actually can't tell :P

+1 either way.

I love the "- like you" at the end. Just it gives it dat feel.

Too bad all other people are actually debating Yellowjacket, instead of throwing mud at semck - like you.

I don't think ulytau's comment was directed at semck... or am I totally missing everything?

Leave the debating to the people who are paying attention and not the ones trolling - like you.

now I'm not sure if redhouse is talking to me or ulytau... ahhh!

+1 ulytau

/thread

I've never been so thoroughly lost in such a short time.

I declare victory for ulytau.

What the fuck is going on?

I don't think anybody knows anymore. too much vagueness with the pronouns to be sure.

@Yellowjacket,

The argument you're making now is an interesting and important one, but it's not the same argument that you were making before, so I stand fully by my remarks. In particular, due to your addendum -- where you admit that the care in point 3 is not actually free -- the issue of how many of this hypothetical group's members end up getting medical care anyway completely decouples from the interesting part of the question, which is whether such a group should have to pay for medical coverage.

In other words (to de-analogize), there is an interesting question about whether the RCC should be allowed to opt out of coverage it believes is unethical, on general Smith v. Employment Division grounds. But that question has nothing whatsoever to do with how many Catholics actually do violate their church's moral teaching on this point. Your attempts to link the two fail, and your earlier argument was as terrible as I helpfully pointed out.

For a more relevant analogy to your original argument -- suppose I said, "A good few atheists and agnostics send their children to Catholic schools because of the strong academics. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with making everybody, including atheists, pay money directly to the coffers of the local Catholic school." Would you find any relevance of the hypothesis to the conclusion?

All I've been saying is that if you buy the legitimacy of the mandate in general (you might not, but that's a different discussion), Catholics are on no grounds to refuse it, since they don't practice what they preach. I pay taxes on shit I personally find morally reprehensible all the time. I don't see how you can just declare that link a fail without further elucidation. Anyways, it doesn't matter - if I'm up on current events they got their way, and tbh I don't have a problem with it from a legal standpoint - I just think it's hypocritical.

To your second point, I think its a good one. You are guiding me towards saying, "Well that's SILLY, only those individuals who USE the service should have to PAY for it!" Which would seemingly net me right into your trap. The real comparison would be if the government mandates an *option* for a Catholic education for everybody, and thus everybody pays just a bit more in taxes to cover those who wish to have that option. But to truly make it equal to the real life example, the secular community would then have to declare, "No! Every single one of us rejects Catholicism, and we want to be able to forbid all of our services from even providing the *option*."

Now, we might both think in reality, that's a damn good thing. If those individuals want that type of education, they can just pay for it themselves. But again, the mandate is what's central here. It's the only thing that is lacking from your point, but it is an important distinction. Because to get this type of "Catholic education option" mandate passed, the prevailing attitude in society must be that an option for a Catholic education is an absolutely *necessary* thing to our communal well-being (much like abortion is considered by most people, yes, statistically, even Catholics).

So again, I think your argument is not, in fact, rejecting mandated abortion coverage for Catholics, but rejecting the mandate itself.

http://news.yahoo.com/did-cross-dressing-priest-sex-ring-bring-down-174300640--politics.html

Pope Brenda

Yellowjacket,

With respect, I find a lot of confusion in your posts, and my critique of what I understand your central argument to be remains what it was in my first, brief post. Specifically, let me focus on this:

"Catholics are on no grounds to refuse it, since they don't practice what they preach."

The big problem is your treating "Catholics" as a behemoth, a single large conglomerate. It makes no sense to treat freedom-of-conscience issues that way. If every single Catholic but one were marching daily in the streets for abortion, but that one had a credible religious objection to it, then that one would have a good argument for getting an exception to the mandate. Your argument appears to be, "20% of Catholics don't follow this teaching, so all Catholics are hypocrites and don't merit a conscientious objection." It has been, and remains a terrible argument.

Now you throw out what I would consider to be a few red herrings along the way, which would muddy the above point in its application, so I'll briefly respond to those as well. You say,

"I pay taxes on shit I personally find morally reprehensible all the time."

So does the Catholic Church. But this isn't a tax: it's a requirement to buy a product directly. That's quite a difference. It also means that your suggested amendment to my analogy doesn't work. It's not just higher taxes to support an option. It's paying money directly to the objectionable school. And again, it couldn't matter less whether 100% of atheists or only a single atheist objects.

If there were a TAX that then went to fund universal access to abortion, then we would be in the situation you are describing.

A final point: the Roman Catholic Church isn't even asserting that EVERY CATHOLIC opposes abortion. At issue are OFFICIAL Catholic institutions and whether they must, against conscience and their teachings, fund abortion.

"So again, I think your argument is not, in fact, rejecting mandated abortion coverage for Catholics, but rejecting the mandate itself. "

I of course do oppose the mandate, but my opposition to the mandate is logically distinct from my beliefs about how, if there is going to be a mandate, religious objections should be handled.

(When I say I find a lot of confusion in your posts, of course, I don't necessarily mean that you are confused. You may or may not be. I just mean that your take on this issue appears to me to confuse or conflate important distinct concepts).

No, after I posted I realized it could have been a lot more succinct. But then it was bedtime.

The main point is that the argument you've made so far could just as legitimately be made against the mandate as a whole - there is no need to enter this specific permutation. Catholics don't deserve special treatment.

The argument I've been making has been directed at your argument. It has been focused on the fact that the behavior of some catholics (whether 1% or 99%) has nothing to do with the legitimacy of other Catholics' conscientious objections.

How that is a critique of the mandate as a whole, I have no idea in the world. It's possible though.

It's a critique of the whole because you could apply the arguments you've presented to any demographic subset of the population. You've just chosen Catholicism as a specific case. I fail to see why they in particular should be exempt. Their conscientious objections are not more valid than mine.

But you know what? I think arguing against the mandate itself is very legitimate. We all know what happened here. Left wanted government health care. Right didn't. Left couldn't get that going, and they can't MAKE people buy health insurance, so instead they issue a tax on anybody who chooses not to buy their own. It's pretty b.s. in principle and I fully admit that. I still like it IN THIS APPLICATION, but I do think it's a precedent we might not want to have made.

However, this whole argument could have been avoided if the right (and yes, many elements of the left) had just done the proper thing and not fucked up the original plan. If universal healthcare was in place then it would be a tax, not a mandate, and both the general argument and the specific application re: Catholicism would be moot.

YJ,

Well, because it's a mandate, and not a tax, I think it can only really be applied to subsets of the population that have _religious_ objections, which is distinct from those who might have other objections. It's true that's much broader than Catholicism, but it's also much less broad than anybody.

Anyway, the rest of your remarks seem fair, except of course that I wouldn't support universal healthcare either. (But it is true that it wouldn't raise the particular religion issues that the current system does).