Religiotics [that’s my new word for people whose lives are dominated by religion] present the world in a primitive, Manichean dichotomy.
There is Evil. There is Good.
Ho hum. Most of us complex critters don’t see things that way. We consider morals and ethics within ourselves and with a historical and evolutionary perspective upon the human race as it advanced through its more and more intricate civilizations.
Forget it. Today in the New York Times, I saw this first page, A section headline:
“A Flood of Suits Fights Coverage of Birth Control: Mandate is Challenged – Health Care Law Seems to be Headed to the Supreme Court.”
I read the Ethan Bronner piece which that headline announced. And now, ladies and gentlemen — but especially ladies — I give you Evil:
In a flood of lawsuits, Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Mennonites are challenging a provision in the new health care law that requires employers to cover birth control in employee health plans — a high-stakes clash between religious freedom and health care access that appears headed to the Supreme Court.
That was the first paragraph. Here are the last ones:
[Douglas] Laycock [a law professor at the University of Virginia and one of the country’s top scholars on church-state conflicts] said that while judges are supposed to be neutral, they too can get caught up in the culture wars. Judges sympathetic to women’s sexual autonomy would probably come down on one side of the dispute, and those more concerned with religious liberty on the other, he said.
“There is a lot of political freight on this issue,” he said.
By the way, given the “fair and balanced” — and unspeakably anachronistic, inapropos, irrelevant and utterly male — statement by this so-called “scholar,” I’m dumping Mr. Laycock into the semi-Evil garbage bin, with the others. Yo, Mr. Laycock: there is no “church-state conflict.” It is a phony war against women, provoked by men claiming that their gods make them do it.