Talking of America's dysfunctional health care system:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2009/db2009064_666715.htm

*American women, including the 98 percent of Catholic women who have used birth control, have every right to be outraged by the disproportionate political influence of the handful of men who run the Catholic Church and the Religious Right." *

A great point, in the article which you quoted, Poirot. The compromise
means that women will receive family planning as part of their
healthcare and the stingy Vatican can save a few pennies.

Mishka, you seem to think that its fine for the church to only
employ people who accept the Catholic dogma, yet if I posted an
advert looking for employees who were specifically non Catholics,
you people would no doubt be jumping up and down about religious discrimination.

Freedom of religion is all very well, but so should be freedom from
religion.

Poirot, the 'HHS issued a regulation finalizing the rule first issued in August 2011, “without change.”' http://usccbmedia.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/six-more-things-everyone-should-know.html

stevenlmeyer, yes i did. Perhaps I didn't make my point clear. No one's disputing that the Pavilion was open to the public without reservation. B&P weren't turned away because they were homosexual. I said: "I very much doubt they would have accommodated a wedding between two Satanists, whether they were heterosexual or homosexual, ... Had the couple in question merely wanted to rent the venue for a party and been refused, then it would certainly appear to be a case of discrimination, but the issue was not who was renting the facility, it was what they wanted to do in it." It's not that the UMC had a policy of not hiring the venue to homosexuals - that would be wrong - they merely had a policy of not allowing incompatible activities. If a public gymnasium doesn't allow fencing it doesn't mean they're discriminating against fencers as long as they admit fencers to do other activities. Disallowing an activity is not discrimination. The judge also said there was no "malice" on the part of Ocean Grove. The other weddings you refer to weren't Methodist, but they would have been recognised as marriages and are therefore compatible with the Methodist creed. Methodists don't go around saying Catholics aren't really married, or vice versa, but both do not recognise SSM. Whether you agree or not, however silly you may think it is, they see SSM as no more valid than a marriage of a man and a sheep.

Yabby, for argument's sake let's say you're a humanist. If you run a humanist organisation and advertise for employees who only support your humanist doctrine, no one will accuse you of discrimination. That's all the Catholic Church is doing. It's not advertising specifically for Catholics, just for those who can work within its ethos. And if American Catholic women have a problem with the Church's dogma on birth control, they can leave. It's a free world.

*If you run a humanist organisation and advertise for employees who only support your humanist doctrine, no one will accuse you of discrimination*

Last time I checked Mishka,it was illegal to discriminate on the
basis of religion.

*And if American Catholic women have a problem with the Church's dogma on birth control, they can leave.*

Lol, if they did that, then there would be no Catholic Church,
because as the stats show, nearly all of them ignore church teachings
on this one. They correctly point out that its none of the church's
business as to what goes on in their bedroom.

Fact is that Rome has painted itself into a corner on this one and
they can't really get out of it without admitting that the pope
is not infallible. So they plod on regardless.

Martin ibq Warriq, your response to my simple question (note, it was only a question, not an assertion), was, "Credulous GlenC. People like you vote in tyrants." I've now read the strange post you provided a link to and assume you think that what it said justified your intemperate categorisation of me. It didn't. If you found credible its attempt to invalidate the research finding that 98% of Catholic women have used contraception at least once then it's your incredulity on display here. Of course the survey results do not mean that almost every Catholic woman is using contraceptives as we speak. That would be incredible. It means that every American Catholic woman, whether 15 or 95, married or single, heterosexual or homosexual, nun or lay, admits to having used some form of contraception at some stage during her life. And that means that almost every American Catholic woman has, at least once, shown that she does not take the Vatican's ban on contraception too seriously. So who does? Presumably, it's mainly the priests and bishops. And their seeming penchant for getting about in long robes does not, I suggest, make them more entitled to decide what women should do with their bodies than the women themselves. So why don't the be-frocked religious and the (mainly) be-suited company bosses step aside and let women lead this argument?

Dear Mishka,

The cases you brought are very disturbing.

Now there are two lessons to learn:

1. Leave the U.S.A - it's a bad place!
(though I don't recommend moving to Saudi Arabia instead...)

2. You cannot make it alone!

We cannot demand that only religious people and organizations get special exemptions from the law. It doesn't work to hope for special dispensations for religion while allowing the state to prosecute others whose reasons for breaking the law are un-religious.

In order to succeed, stop totalitarianism and allow freedom of conscience, we MUST stand together in coalition to protect our inherent freedoms, religious (of all orders and denominations) and non-religious alike. While we may personally feel disgusted at what some of our coalition-friends may do with their freedom, we must nevertheless respect their choices and keep their judgment to God alone (remember that some of them are just as well disgusted with what WE do with our freedom!). It is not for us to try taking their free choice away.

When applied to the cases you brought,

A. Any property owner should have complete sovereignty over their land, including the ability to choose AT THEIR PLEASURE whom to invite and whom not to invite, which functions to allow and which functions to forbid, etc.

B. The word "employment" should not even be mentioned in legislation. There are only deals entered freely between two individuals (which the current law stamps as "employer" and "employee"), and whatever they agree between them should be legal. Specifically, there should be no requirement that one of them should provide the other with a medical insurance.

Together we can win, apart we will be broken.