An old friend just invited me to her family seder. I said no and told her why.<\/p>\n
Throughout my life religion and I have had a mutual beneficial relationship\u00a0\u2014 utter indifference. I don’t think about it and it returns the favor and doesn’t mess with me.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, though, that relationship has mutated into mutual antagonism. So I won’t be attending any religious rituals, even one during which I could bypass the entertaining but historically dubious storytelling and just eat.<\/p>\n
I rejected the seder even before I read “Where Divorce Can Be Denied, Orthodox Jews Look to Prenuptial Contracts,”<\/a> in today’s Times<\/em>. What can I say about a religion that allows a husband to divorce his wife, but prevents the wife from a religious divorce, a\/k\/a a get,<\/em> without the husband’s approval?<\/p>\n And what can be said about a wife who obeys this insane law and doesn’t re-marry in the faith because she can’t, without a get<\/em>?<\/p>\n Last week I approved of the movement telling Catholic women it’s time to leave the Church. So here’s my own one-woman movement: Women, it’s time to leave religion. Period. It is lousy for your health.<\/p>\n And on the contraception-abortion-anti-women front, here is Gail Collins, in “Politicians Swinging Stethoscopes:”<\/a><\/p>\n New Hampshire, for instance, seems to have developed a thing for linking sex and malignant disease. This week, the State House passed a bill that required that women who want to terminate a pregnancy be informed that abortions were linked to “an increased risk of breast cancer.”<\/em><\/p>\n As Terie Norelli, the minority leader, put it, the Legislature is attempting to make it a felony for a doctor “to not give a patient inaccurate information.”<\/em><\/p>\n And there’s more. One of the sponsors [of the bill], Representative Jeanine Notter, recently asked a colleague whether he would be interested, “as a man,” to know that there was a study “that links the pill to prostate cancer” …<\/em><\/p>\n Bringing the prostate into the fight was definitely a new wrinkle.<\/em><\/p>\n …<\/em><\/p>\n When faced with a choice between scientific evidence and their personal and political preferences, legislators are not going to go with the statistics. I have warm memories of the committee of the Texas House of Representatives that last year rejected a bill to require that public school sex education classes be “medically accurate.”<\/em><\/p>\n …<\/em><\/p>\n Just try to envision yourself in a doctor’s office for a consult. Then imagine you’re joined by a state legislator. How many of you think the situation has been improved? Can I see a show of hands?<\/em><\/p>\n Thought so.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An old friend just invited me to her family seder. I said no and told her why. Throughout my life religion and I have had a mutual beneficial relationship\u00a0\u2014 utter indifference. I don’t think about it and it returns the … Continue reading