I've been saying some rather deliberately provocative things on Facebook recently about thinking out-of-the-box about how to help the poor. The short version thereof is that giving money to humanitarian aid organizations that try to provide the things one might think of (food, water, medical aid, etc.) is by no means the only and sometimes not even the best way to help. One book I have cited is Robert Zubrin's Merchants of Despair, in which he talks about the fact that environmental policies have been absolutely disastrous for the Third World. Hence, I suggest that opposing the imposition of more such disastrous policies might save more lives than giving directly to buy food for people.
Other instances of this trend--leftist policies vs. the poor--abound on our own shores and provide (while I'm being provocative) other ways in which one could intelligently give money with the intent of helping the poor by opposing bad policies, bad lawsuits, etc.
An article that I mentioned briefly in an earlier post here at W4 but didn't say much about is this dreadful piece by Mark Oppenheimer in Time. Oppenheimer says that tax exemptions should be ended for religious non-profits even if this means that soup kitchens and other charitable works are driven out of business. He reluctantly makes an exception for hospitals, but his intention is quite clear. The worst paragraph in the piece is this one:
Defenders of tax exemptions and deductions argue that if we got rid of them charitable giving would drop. It surely would, although how much, we can’t say. But of course government revenue would go up, and that money could be used to, say, house the homeless and feed the hungry. We’d have fewer church soup kitchens — but countries that truly care about poverty don’t rely on churches to run soup kitchens.
The chilling stupidity in this argument makes one almost reel. First of all, notice that Oppenheimer apparently thinks that churches aren't part of the country or society and that their concern for the poor is not a way in which (if not the major way in which) a country manifests the fact that it cares about the poor. Somehow a "country that truly cares about poverty" is supposed to show this in some way other than by a church's running a soup kitchen. Why? Are the people in the church not citizens of the country? Is their action not the action of "the country"? Oppenheimer's patent distaste for religion shows here as well. A country that cares about the poor, he pontificates, does not need churches (tone of disgust) to run soup kitchens. Ick! Why should we let those churches run our soup kitchens? Let's have nice, pure, secular soup kitchens. He is also ignorant about history. He doesn't seem to know that Western society wouldn't have thought about the category of caring for the poor much at all were it not for Christianity. Therefore, societies have for over two thousand years relied heavily on church-run charitable organizations to help and feed the poor. But Oppenheimer doesn't care about any of that. He ignorantly assumes that societies that really care can just do without charitable work organized around religious principles, at least if those principles clash with his and his friends' homofascist principles. His economics are also shaky. After all, if the organizations in question went out of business, would government revenues go up? He says that this is a matter "of course," but that is far from obvious. Still less obvious is the efficient use of any additional government revenue for the purposes the charities themselves were already serving fairly efficiently. Finally, and related to the rest, there is the sheer, breathtaking recklessness with which Oppenheimer proposes driving religious charities out of business. That this would be a major social experiment which would doubtless harm many poor people does not faze him in the slightest. Perhaps he is so foolish that he doesn't realize it, but in any event, he doesn't pause to worry about it. With a wave of the hand he declares himself, in essence, willing to take the risk of abolishing the delivery of help to the helpless, at least during a transitional period while the "caring society" figures out how to deliver that help in a suitably sanitized, secular fashion, and perhaps permanently if the transition is less than fully successful. Ideology over all. His hatred of conservative Christianity trumps his own concern for the poor, calling into serious doubt the success of the secular "caring" project he proposes.
Oppenheimer's arrogant, reckless, and cold-hearted attitude toward both religious people and those they serve has echoes in Western society at multiple points. There is, for example, the Obama administration's relentless, unending lawsuit against, of all things, the Little Sisters of the Poor. Better to drive out of business a group of nuns serving the helpless than to give up the Great Principle that employers must make sure their employees can access birth control and sterilization through their employer's health insurance. There is the Obama administration's denial of a contract for anti-trafficking efforts to a Catholic organization because they didn't provide abortions. There are the multiple shut-downs of foster care and adoption agencies that will not place children with homosexuals.
Most recently (the story that, in part, gave me the inspiration for this post) a chaplain, David Wells, who has worked for many years with young criminals, trying to help them to turn their lives around, has been barred from working as a volunteer with the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice if he won't sign a document promising never to teach in any way that homosexual acts are sinful. Presumably Mark Oppenheimer would sneer that a country that really cares about juvenile offenders doesn't need to rely on bigoted chaplains to counsel them.
The stories I've found about David Wells don't say whether there are any Muslim chaplains volunteering in the Kentucky system and whether they signed the document. I could understand questioning prospective chaplains about their views concerning jihad, but that wasn't what the Kentucky system chose to target, and somehow I doubt that Muslim chaplains will be affected, perhaps because of taqiyya.
The place where ignorance ends and malice begins in such policies is sometimes difficult to trace. One could argue that the jack-booted ideologues in Kentucky are at least sincere in their advocacy of homosexual activism, as the HHS is sincere in its feeling that it is a matter of justice that the Little Sisters' employer insurance pay for contraception, as the environmentalists were sincere in thinking that DDT needed to be banned, an act which has resulted in the loss of many lives to malaria. But I'm inclined only to give a pass, at most, to the last of these on the "sincerely misguided" front. For in the other cases, the attack upon those who are doing real good for the claimed objects of the left's solicitude is too direct, and hence the disregard of their best interests is too blatant. No one could miss it. It isn't just a case of the law of unintended consequences. Hence it becomes clear that the left cares more about promoting a rigid LGBT agenda than it does about, say, helping troubled boys in the Kentucky juvenile system or helping the elderly served by the Little Sisters.
Given these facts, an interesting point emerges about how we can help the poor. Once we realize how bad the left's policies are for the poor (or for those like young criminals who might be rehabilitated), we can start thinking of additional ways to help the poor. Giving to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty (which is defending the Little Sisters of the Poor) or to the Liberty Counsel (which is defending David Wells) becomes a way of helping those in need that one might not otherwise have thought of.
Typically, simple arguments for giving to Oxfam or to various Third World helping organizations take some form such as, you buy a lot of stuff you don't really need, dying of hunger and thirst are really bad, if you can help somebody not to die of hunger and thirst just by giving money that you would otherwise have spent on something unnecessary, you should; therefore, you should donate to Third World humanitarian aid organizations. One problem among many with such arguments is that they artificially restrict their range of "bad things" that we, as good-hearted people, should be out there trying to help or prevent. Going to hell, for example. Getting drawn into the homosexual lifestyle (which has a connection to going to hell). Being a baby and being aborted. Aborting one's baby. Having one's baby forcibly aborted in China. Being a criminal, or being radically uneducated, or dying alone in squalor in one's old age. Committing suicide. Helping someone else to commit suicide. The list goes on and on. Beyond that, they restrict our vision of the many routes by which to help. One of these could be by trying to prevent the enactment of further disastrous policies (e.g., under the "climate change" umbrella) that will restrict the ability of the Third World to develop its own resources. (Funny thought: Giving to the Cato Institute, listed by none other than Greenpeace as "anti-environmentalist," could be a way of trying to help destitute Third Worlders) Another way to help would be by supporting the ability of religious organizations to do all the good they do while retaining the religious character that motivates their efforts.
What is happening to Christian organizations with the homosexual agenda is so bad that sometimes one gets exhausted reporting it. This article mentions that churches' insurance may not cover their being sued for refusing to allow homosexual "weddings" on site. The rainbow thugs are doubling down on another baker, this time in Colorado, with new bad news just coming in two days ago. (He's defended by the ever-present Alliance Defending Freedom, in case you want to donate to them.)
Speaking for myself, I know that I often feel overwhelmed and don't know what new there is to say about such things, except, "Here we go again" or "Isn't it awful?" At least I can muster a "Never give up," but what I have tried to do here, beyond that, is to point out the indirect ramifications of these fights for religious liberty. We already knew that religious liberty was at stake. We already know (if we believe in souls) that souls are at stake, as the homosexual agenda draws in more and more young people. Also at stake in the left's multi-pronged attack are those many, many individuals who are helped by sincere Christians working in an organized form. As Oppenheimer's article makes clear, the left seeks nothing less than the dismantling of most of the safety net that has been carefully built by traditional religious organizations over the centuries. The cost of that dismantling in human misery is incalculable. Among others, that is a reason why we should never, never, never give up.
Comments (44)
(((SIGH))) You put it all very well, although all this information might be best divided up,explained more clearly,less emotively, for the average American reader,and then concluded aimed at those who have been ,perhaps through no fault of their own, unknowing about any of these issues.
I see no harm in donating to CAFOD, or even Oxfam or Save the Children . Hunger,poverty, need, disease, homelessness need to be addressed . The churches fall short. The Catholic church takes these things quite seriously and tries. But they are wrecked by their own hypocritical homosexual (and horrific paedophilia) issues,indeed.
However, abortion : there is not enough ethical education to people, lost in a vapid,immoral culture.
It is the very worst abomination indeed.
So yes the discrepancies are a thousandfold......the complexities are overwhelming.
Churches fall short. Especially evangelical churches, though it is patchy. Christendom has failed Christ and humanity......suicide is a very crucial epidemic important issue, for example, in which Christendom has failed .
But government does have a moral and practical responsibility to look after its society, and the people too.
I need to research regarding situation of the Little Sisters of the Poor!! We need them and more in our society!
We live in a vapid, morally corrupt,secular culture which breeds despair,emptiness,callousness, alienation......
Posted by Susan Atteberry | August 15, 2015 6:12 PM
In one sense Oppenheimer's proposal to change existing tax law is obtuse given the fact the courts have used anti-discrimination means to persecute Christians quite successfully. Changing the tax code in a way that clearly targets religious conservatives would take up so much of the left's political capital that even if it got through there would be opportunity costs for liberals. Talk radio listeners would jam Congressional phone lines, filibusters would drag out the process, liberal pundits would be forced to scramble to defend, etc. Ramming through Obamacare was certainly a gain for the left, but the controversy surrounding it undoubtedly prevented other disastrous laws from being passed and gave back the House to the GOP in 2010 (Yeah, I know, a lot of good that did us). But the courts have clearly been more effective for the left's political victories. The (taxpayer funded) government suing bakers and churches and charities forces the right to use up political capital (through private funds), so even when conservative Christians eventually win a few minor 5-4 victories at the Supreme Court (like Hobby Lobby) what exactly does the left lose? Once the Trumpenkrieg is victorious we need to start hammering back terrorist-defending groups like the ACLU and naked criminal enterprises like Planned Parenthood with the ferocity the Obama administration used to go after the Romeike family.
Of course the secular left doesn't, and has never, cared for the poor. They only pretend to because the residual Christian culture we live in pays lip service to old ideals like charity and compassion. Thus charitable giving and large, visible, secular charities serve only to meet a social need for liberals not a spiritual one. That's why arguing that taxing religioius charities will hurt the poor does not really have an effect on secular liberals. Government charity doesn't need to be efficient--it just needs to be visible and superficial to ease the social worries of a spiritually-dark people taught to worry about poverty only in abstraction.
Posted by GW | August 15, 2015 6:14 PM
GW, unfortunately, Oppenheimer's "vision" (if we can call it that) can be put through by bureau crats alone. No need for legislatures, at least not to pass anything that _directly_ enacts what he calls for. The IRS can withdraw federal tax exempt status from churches, soup kitchens, etc., unilaterally, on the grounds that their policies are "contrary to government policy," forcing _us_ to use capital to go to court to oppose it. Similarly, local "human rights bureaus" have been able to use local gay rights ordinances to shut down Catholic Charities as an adoption agency, without the need for any legislation that, at the time it was passed, clearly and directly targeted Catholic Charities. Just "non-discrimination," y'know, and who but a bigot would object to that?
The playbook is already pretty well written on this, and the ball is in their court. It just remains to be seen how far they will go. Their case against Little Sisters of the Poor (also carried out by bureaucrats--the HHS) shows that they are prepared to go very far indeed.
Posted by Lydia | August 15, 2015 6:24 PM
Oppenheimer is talking nonsense. Church-run soup kitchens and foodbanks are necessary, even in Britain, a so-called secular "welfare state". The "welfare state" cannot replace traditional church-based activities.
http://www.trusselltrust.org/foodbank-projects
In 2013-14 foodbanks fed 913,138 people nationwide. Of those helped, 330,205 were children.
The Trussell Trust partners with churches and communities to open new foodbanks nationwide. With over 420 foodbanks currently launched, our goal is for every town to have one.
The foodbank movement has grown rapidly all over Europe, as every nation has been made to cut back on the services provided by previous nanny states. Churches have been in the forefront of this movement, to the despair of secularists who would rather "tax the rich!" and encourage class war, rather than fostering the spirit of charity.
Posted by Dan Zachariah | August 15, 2015 11:12 PM
Dan Zachariah, minimizing Oppenheimer's seriousness with hand-waving -- oh, those silly old liberals and their zany ideas, gosh, what shall we do? -- only hampers our understanding of the situation. He's no more "talking nonsense" than Robespierre was when he said that terror is the emanation of virtue. The logic of the coercive enforcement of orthodoxy on matters of disordered sexuality is quite plain. Lydia has demonstrated (as if such demonstration were still necessary to discerning men) that they don't care that the welfare state cannot replace Christian charity; they'll extinguish the latter if they can notwithstanding the consequences.
Posted by Paul J Cella | August 16, 2015 12:20 AM
-I must wonder if Oppenheimer got his way, if he would celebrate if an LGBT group was handed a vacant church as symbolic gesture. I have to think he would, and I doubt he would care how they used it. Just in case, I mean a church that became vacant because the congregation could not pay their taxes then given to a LGBT group that is not required to pay any.
-If the bakers case in Colorado would go the Supreme Court and he lost, would this be in effect be roughly the same as if the proposed Equality Act were passed? Would this be a Supreme Court precedent that anyone that does not celebrate a homosexual "marriage" is guilty of discrimination?
-Given that the courts and legal profession are overwhelmingly in favor of the full LGBT cause, are the worst case scenarios inevitable? It seems that the legislatures and executives have no power in these areas that the courts cannot undo. Furthermore, the legal profession can just keep out anyone who is not pro-LGBT, and by doing so forever hold the courts and the courts power over voters.
-Will Christians who help defend liberty be increasingly demonized by the left for not using those resources to help the poor and disadvantaged? I think this question answers itself...
Posted by DR84 | August 16, 2015 1:03 AM
There is, for example, the Obama administration's relentless, unending lawsuit against, of all things, the Little Sisters of the Poor. Better to drive out of business a group of nuns serving the helpless than to give up the Great Principle that employers must make sure their employees can access birth control and sterilization through their employer's health insurance.
The only people filing lawsuits have been the Little Sisters of the Poor, you aren't suggesting the government can't defend itself against lawsuits I hope. Second, their particular claims are extremely bizarre as both matters of law and fact. They do not only want an exception to the contraception mandate, which the government has bent over backwards to give them, they want an exception to the process of getting an exception. It is one thing to say the law doesn't apply to them for religious reasons, and to insist that the form that exempts them of such responsibility supposedly makes them directly responsible, it is an entirely different thing to demand the government pretend the law isn't really a law. The particular matter of fact that pushes it into true theater of the absurd is they belong to a church plan insurance which is immune to enforcement under that section of the ACA. So here is what would actually happen if they fill out the form because it does not in fact lead to any contraception coverage: their insurer receives the form and continues to not provide contraception coverage and if any of their employees desire contraception they pay for it out of their own pockets.
Posted by Step2 | August 16, 2015 8:45 AM
http://www.becketfund.org/faqlittlesisters/#f1
False on multiple counts, Step2. The HHS could have exempted the Little Sisters on any day of the week. The HHS mandate itself was a bureaucratic declaration *by the administration*, unveiled originally by Sebelius in 2012, not a part of "the law" which the poor, little Obama administration just somehow got stuck defending and enforcing. Moreover, the mandate could have had much broader religious exemptions from the first, but the administration insisted that the exemptions be narrow. And they could have backed down since then (e.g., after the Hobby Lobby case), but also refuse, which is why the litigation continues.
Posted by Lydia | August 16, 2015 9:05 AM
The Christian Brothers (the Little Sisters' health insurance company) are also parties to the suit, because it is radically unclear that they would not be required to provide contraception. Indeed, normally if the employer signed the exemption form for itself, the insurance company _would_ be required. That is why Christian Brothers seeks a ruling that they cannot be so required.
http://trcri.org/cbebt-and-little-sisters-poor-lawsuit-update
Notice that Christian Brothers received only _temporary_ relief in 2012:
https://www.cbservices.org/news-room-CBEBT-qualifies-temp-enforcement-safe-harbor.htmla
The very fact that this was explicitly temporary makes it clear that HHS might very well attempt to force Christian Brothers to supply the contraceptives otherwise. Indeed, I know of _no_ accommodation that has been made for health insurance companies themselves.
Posted by Lydia | August 16, 2015 9:17 AM
In this extremely positive-to-the-administration Atlantic article, it is made clear that the signing of the religious objection form would result in the provision of contraception by someone else.
How _precisely_ the administration would arrange this when Christian Brothers is the insurance company is left somewhat up in the air. E.g. Would in fact the Obama admin double down on Christian Brothers, or would they place some kind of rider from an entirely separate third party on the health insurance policy? The fact remains that the provision of contraception would be made _not_ from the employees' "own pockets," as Step2 states, _not_ by going to some local clinic, not by state or federal government direct purchase unrelated to employment, but _related to_ employment status by the Little Sisters.
Posted by Lydia | August 16, 2015 9:31 AM
Here is that link:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/obama-beats-the-nuns-on-contraception/398519/
Posted by Lydia | August 16, 2015 9:32 AM
The HHS mandate itself was a bureaucratic declaration *by the administration*, unveiled originally by Sebelius in 2012, not a part of "the law" which the poor, little Obama administration just somehow got stuck defending and enforcing.
Technically I would call it an administrative policy, and they were legally authorized to make that policy and so it has the full color of law. My original point is somebody is nearly always going to think they are getting a raw deal in any policy decision and they are entitled to file lawsuits all the way to SCOTUS if they want, but that doesn't make the government's defense of such policy relentless or spiteful.
The fact remains that the provision of contraception would be made _not_ from the employees' "own pockets," as Step2 states, _not_ by going to some local clinic, not by state or federal government direct purchase unrelated to employment, but _related to_ employment status by the Little Sisters.
It appears the judges in the case were wrong about that and they were my source. Although by the time third party riders are involved the relationship to employment status is so distant you might as well claim giving employees a paycheck could be complicit in obtaining contraception. Furthermore, under what authority could there be any of your alternatives like local clinics or state and federal government direct purchases? Supposing such authority exists wouldn't the Little Sisters reject that compromise too? Keep in mind what the Becket Fund lawyer stated in the Atlantic article, “Judges aren't qualified to tell nuns what the right answers are on question of moral complicity.” If taken seriously about deeply held religious beliefs, his statement is a recipe for legal anarchy.
Posted by Step2 | August 16, 2015 12:10 PM
Step2, the moral issue is cooperation with evil. As Catholics understand it, it constitutes a moral wrong to cooperate with evil formally, or to do so as immediate material cooperation, or to do so as remote material cooperation without adequate justifying goods to offset the evil thus encompassed. If the Little Sisters in filling out the form would fall under either formal or immediate material cooperation, then their filling out the form is morally wrong full stop, it SHOULD be against their consciences, and the "exception" model instigated by Obama is a mere charade for moral purposes, it achieves absolutely nothing in terms of the necessary "distancing" that might morally allow the Little Sisters or any other Catholic to do what is demanded. If, on the other hand, the kind of cooperation involved in filling out the form is remote material cooperation, you still have to work out the prudential results of THESE goods versus THOSE evils to determine whether the act is morally licit, and to date I have not heard any Obama administrator attempt to make that analysis. Probably because they SIMPLY DON'T CARE about whether the act is moral or not.
The political corruption involved in Obama granting exceptions to the overall health insurance mandate to all sorts of friendly companies, but denying merely the contraception mandate to those who are unfriendly is a truly disgusting spectacle. It is appalling that more media (i.e. left-media) don't mention this, but we have known for a while that they are not neutral and don't report the news as neutral parties.
Posted by Tony | August 16, 2015 12:24 PM
I'm not even sure what you are talking about. The Little Sisters are a non-profit, as far as I know, so qua entity they aren't even paying tax dollars. In any event, qua entity they would not be providing for any of that. Whereas qua entity, if they fill out the relevant paperwork, that _does trigger_ the employees' receipt of the contraception *in virtue of* their employment by Little Sisters. This is actually a pretty straightforward argument as to how their action would be connected to the receipt of the contraception.
Nonsense through and through. First, the mandate *itself*, especially without *full* accommodation for employers with conscientious objections, was spiteful. It was an out-of-the-blue policy, made by ideologues, who are determined to force employers to be complicit. Second,the administration has arbitrarily exempted one after another employer, not even for religious reasons, and could have exempted the Little Sisters, but refuses to. They have instead doubled down.
Posted by Lydia | August 16, 2015 1:01 PM
If the Little Sisters in filling out the form would fall under either formal or immediate material cooperation, then their filling out the form is morally wrong full stop...
The whole point of the form is to express a lack of cooperation. It really is a topsy-turvy view of complicity where expressing your objections and refusal to cooperate is somehow considered cooperation and perhaps even consent. What they are really asking for is a legal power to change policy they don't like, based on a right meant only for making exceptions, and that isn't going to happen. As far as I'm aware they haven't even offered a remedy that might appease them short of overturning the policy, so the courts don't even have an option but to reject their appeal.
Posted by Step2 | August 16, 2015 2:35 PM
Oh, but they have: They (and others with conscientious objections) receive a full exemption across the board, so that contraception, etc., (sterilization, abortion) *are not offered in connection with employment with them*, and the government goes and does its thing, subject to the usual requirements for policy (e.g., being passed by due authority) for providing these "goods and services" in ways unrelated to employment with employers who have a conscientious objection.
Such points are made right in the brief filed by the Becket Fund.
https://www.worldmag.com/media/docs/little_sisters_brief.pdf
The Becket Fund makes the same point here:
http://www.becketfund.org/faq/
Posted by Lydia | August 16, 2015 3:03 PM
Naturally, other than ill-informed caviling about the topsy-turvydom of Catholic disinclination to be coerced to supply what Catholicism forbids, Step2 appears to have no comment on the "no soup kitchens, no problem" callousness of his side's luminaries, in law, administration, media and school, who will happily drive Catholic nuns out of business because they agree with Catholicism.
And then probably blame capitalism for the plight of the poor they have deprived of friends and aid.
Posted by Paul J Cella | August 16, 2015 5:07 PM
Countries that truly care about poverty do whatever it takes to eliminate youth unemployment rates that are over 10%.
Posted by Mike T | August 16, 2015 6:32 PM
I'm going to try an analogy and see if that helps explain things better. Everyone knows about conscientious objections related to the draft, right? Right. So in this scenario the Pentagon makes a policy that all clergy are automatically exempt but everyone else who claims an exemption has to fill out a form. Someone goes up to the draft board and says they want to claim conscientious objector status so the officer asks, "Are a member of the clergy?"
"No."
"You will need to fill out this form."
"I can't do that."
"Why not?"
"It means I'm complicit in letting someone else be drafted."
Officer looks skeptical. "Are you implying we can't have a draft?"
"Not at all. It only means I can't fill out a form that makes my objections official."
"Well you can fill out the form or you can get drafted."
"Can't you change the policy so that I don't have to fill out this form?"
“Are you asking me to commit fraud and fill out the form for you?”
“No.”
"Are you a member of the clergy?"
"No."
"I am not changing the policy."
Posted by Step2 | August 16, 2015 6:58 PM
Step2, here's the bit you don't get or won't get: This whole "fill out the form so we can go somewhere else" thing was a _deliberate set-up by the Obama admin_ and _completely unnecessary_. It would be difficult to find enough words to explain how unnecessary it was. It was the unnecessariest of the unnecessaries. It was set up *entirely* for the symbolic purpose of letting the Obama admin continue to tie this coverage *somehow* to employer insurance plans and employment. That's it. That's it's only function.
You either did not read or did not comprehend the quotations I put up above from the Becket Fund, so let _me_ try to "explain things better" to _you_:
This is not (repeat, not) a matter of _verifying_ that the employee does not have the coverage. Got that? Everybody knows that these employees don't have that coverage. Nobody is trying to hide that. I'm sure the Little Sisters and their insurance agency would be happy to trumpet from the rooftop that their employees do not, through their employer health insurance, have this coverage. Oh. Well. See how easy, then: Woman employee moseys into a federal Title X clinic and says, "I don't have insurance coverage for contraception." Title X clinic checks her insurance card, checks a few databases, says, "Golly, you're right. You don't." Then checks her income level or whatever else it is they care about for eligibility, and if she qualifies, hands her some birth control pills.
At that point, the Little Sisters and co. have not had to fill out anything. They just...didn't provide the coverage. And they made it known that they were not providing the coverage. And that's all.
The entire idea that they "have to fill out the form so that the government is authorized to have a third party provide it" is unmitigated B.S., a term I do not use lightly on this blog. It is an artificially created hurdle, entirely a creature *of the Obama administration itself*, made up in the brains of the executive bureaucrats acting like kings by divine right, so that they could *somehow* tie this in to "insurance" and "employment" rather than having it be an ordinary handout. They *made it up*. They *made up* this requirement, when they could have provided these goods and services in any of a gazillion other ways. And now, _because_ they made it up, they are saying, "Oh, well, you have to fill out the form to show us that you are conscientious objectors, because otherwise we won't be able to provide this to the employees in some other way."
Little Sisters has not hidden that it is not providing these services in its healthcare plan, and that it is not doing so for conscientious reasons. The _only_ thing (I repeat, the only thing) that should "trigger" is their being left alone.
At that point, if the employee walks into some completely separate provider, it can simply be looked up that for _some reason or other_ the employee doesn't have this coverage. Then if the govt. wants to pay for it, and passes paying for it as a policy, that has nothing to do with the Little Sisters.
*Instead of which*, they want to take this form and then *add a separate portion to the insurance policy* from an *insurer* which will be ordered to provide these services. So it's still tied to the insurance which the employee only _has_ because the employee is employed by Little Sisters.
That's the difference. This isn't hard.
And the disanalogy to your analogy is pretty clear.
Posted by Lydia | August 16, 2015 7:20 PM
"Why should we quarrel? They will swallow everything in order to keep their material advantages. Matters will never come to a head. They will recognize a firm hand and we need only to show them once or twice who is the master."
Hitler quoted in Paul Johnson's History of Christianity.
"The Gestapo carried out repression when necessary. It was rarely needed to be severe. Of 17000 Evangelical pastors, there were never more than fifty serving long terms at any one time. Of the Catholics, one bishop was expelled from his diocese and another got a short term for currency offenses. There was no more resistance despite the fact that by September 1939, all religious schools had been abolished. Only the free sects stuck to their principles enough to merit outright persecution.
Paul Johnson
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | August 16, 2015 11:55 PM
Lydia,
It is not homosexual agenda. Gays being uninterested in abortion typically and also lacking numbers to impose anything by themselves. It is the agenda of Sexual Revolution which in turn is part of demolition of the State (GK Chesterton, The Man who was Thursday)/
That is, it is the libertarian agenda to destroy all human society-individual, family and the state.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | August 16, 2015 11:59 PM
Lydia,
As you possibly do realize, it is precisely their strategy to bog down the dissenting elements in futile legal technicalities so as to make the dissent incomprehensible to public-at-large. They would not even mind losing some cases if they could turn the issue from moral and political to legal and technical grounds.
The way to win this con game is non-cooperation, simple and total.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | August 17, 2015 1:14 AM
"Their case against Little Sisters of the Poor (also carried out by bureaucrats--the HHS) shows that they are prepared to go very far indeed."
Ironically, the policy, as far a I know, was put in place by Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic.
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | August 17, 2015 9:31 AM
Here, MC, you dropped your scare quotes around "Catholic." I picked 'em up for you:
""
Posted by Lydia | August 17, 2015 12:08 PM
It was the unnecessariest of the unnecessaries. It was set up *entirely* for the symbolic purpose of letting the Obama admin continue to tie this coverage *somehow* to employer insurance plans and employment.
I don't grant in any way it is a symbolic purpose. The ACA was deliberately designed to be inextricably linked to employment at the behest of conservative Democrats, the two or three Republican Senators they futilely tried to win support from, and the business lobby. Nearly every liberal in the country wanted single-payer national insurance, but that idea was DOA in the Senate so this is what the sausage factory produced. We wouldn't be having this particular debate if it was single-payer national insurance, although I'm sure we would be heatedly debating individual opt-out provisions.
The larger point is that in neither possible version was the law intended to be a simple government handout or some alternate reaction to a lack of insurance. It was always supposed to be insurance; not a different funding source for Title X programs.
At that point, if the employee walks into some completely separate provider, it can simply be looked up that for _some reason or other_ the employee doesn't have this coverage. Then if the govt. wants to pay for it, and passes paying for it as a policy, that has nothing to do with the Little Sisters.
Four of the state exchanges allow employees to buy "contraceptive insurance" at group rates, the federal exchange and the other state exchanges do not. As mentioned before, by design any other insurance is supposed to go through employers.
Posted by Step2 | August 17, 2015 2:55 PM
Step2, it was not written into the ACA that contraception was one of the things that had to be covered. You are, of course, right that the ACA as written was about insurance, a lot of it employer-based (though not all, of course, as the whole "marketplace" and the individual mandate attests). But it was the Obama administration itself that chose, for itself, for its own reasons (the unnecessary of the unnecessariest) to make contraception, sterilization, etc., one of the things that *had to be covered* by employer based plans. They made that up. That was their decision. They didn't have to make that up. Then, they made another decision: They chose to make the conscience exemptions to the first decision narrow and convoluted, rather than straightforward. For example, they could have just put in full-fledged, broad-based conscience exemptions that didn't tie anything back to insurance at that point. It could have just been, "You have a conscientious exemption, here is how you opt out, end of story." *At that point*, yes, the _further_ provision of the contraception could have been done through Title X clinics, etc., and yes, that wouldn't have been _part of_ Obamacare, but who said that contraception had to be provided to everybody (including employees of the Little Sisters of the Poor) through Obamacare and hence through employment-based insurance? Oh, yeah, that was a totally unnecessary, artificial thing that the Obama administration made up, apparently because of some inexplicable OCD they are suffering from with regard to contraception. I dunno, maybe contraception provided in some other way is laced with right-wing cyanide.
But please stop pretending that this was somehow dictated by the ACA itself. It wasn't. It's all an utter invention by the Obama admin. itself, including the Byzantine and rigidly employment-insurance-based provision of contraceptive coverage to employees of organizations like the Little Sisters. It doesn't need to be, and that fact completely refutes your claim that the Little Sisters have suggested no remedy. If you _define_ "the policy" as the specific policy that refuses to permit broad-based conscientious objections, then in that _utterly trivial_ sense they have suggested only remedies that require modifying the policy! No kidding. But there is a straightforward sense in which what they are asking for is a _real religious exemption_ from the policy, even though (gasp gasp) that would mean that the employees would get their contraception in some non-employer-insurance-tied fashion. Which is neither overturning the ACA nor even the _general_ policy that employers who _don't_ have a conscientious objection provide contraceptive coverage.
Again, this isn't difficult.
Posted by Lydia | August 17, 2015 4:31 PM
maybe contraception provided in some other way is laced with right-wing cyanide
Lydia righteous sneer aside, the truth is that chemical contraception is serious business that may affect wildlife and other biotic factors: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/birth-control-in-drinking-water-a-fertility-catastrophe-in-the-making/#.VYOi-_lVhuC
Were private companies using these chemicals as, say, a fracking agent, I suspect Step2 would be much less inclined to think all possible coercion should be deployed to effect full public participation.
Posted by Paul J Cella | August 17, 2015 5:53 PM
I meant, contraception provided in some other way *as opposed to* provided via employer plan. As though providing it via an insurance plan connected to employment is the only way to get "good" contraception. Which is absurd.
Posted by Lydia | August 17, 2015 7:27 PM
I will give you a counter-example to show the difference. Suppose Sebellius had instead written a different rule: If a religious employer (i.e. an employer whose acts of employing are colored by religious tenets) conscientiously objects, they can (a) fill out a form saying that they conscientiously object, and (b) buy insurance from an insurer that in no way participates in contraception. Then those specific employees will be allowed (if they choose) to buy their own contraception coverage separately from another insurer with a government subsidy. In this scenario, there is no participation by Little Sisters in anyone getting contraception coverage.
The fact that the very insurer that insures the Little Sisters is the one that is on the hook for the contraception coverage is what demonstrates that it is the Little Sisters contract for insurance with them that is a critical causal feature of the employees getting insurance coverage from them. The Little Sisters are, actually, material cooperators in the effect. Filling out the form saying "we object" is not, ALONE, the causal feature, that part is true. It is filling out the form TOGETHER WITH all the other aspects of the law.
In fact, there ARE valid ways to carry out the purposes of the ACA without burdening religious groups with this mandate. The LAW says you therefore cannot burden them with the mandate, as Hobby Lobby made clear. I predict that the Supremes will say "re-read Hobby Lobby, and fix it."
Posted by Tony | August 17, 2015 7:27 PM
Getting back to Lydia's point, I have always wondered whether certain aspects of the international anti-pollution laws, and attempts to impose our own labor standards on other countries, improperly target the poor. Back in our own transition from rural to industrial economy, we used the environment in ways that we now think are a bad idea, and men worked long, long hours in difficult conditions that we do not now permit. But as far as I know, there is no way of knowing for sure whether - if you are a poor third world country - you can achieve the move from rural to industrial economy without similar temporary economies from ignoring the environment or economies of long, hard labor. Maybe you can, but frankly the best economical model I know of is that these people have primarily the labor advantage of being ready and willing to work long, hard hours that Americans are not willing to work, precisely because they do not have the infrastructure that allows them to do everything hard and heavy by machinery. Telling them that they are not allowed to use the same stepping stones that took us to wealth is basically telling them they have to remain poor.
For sure, giving money to a good school is another way of helping the poor. Teaching the ignorant is one of the spiritual works of mercy, and poor people usually have a lack of access to good education. So supporting a good school is a mercy to the poor.
Posted by Tony | August 17, 2015 10:08 PM
They made that up. That was their decision. They didn't have to make that up.
They needed to make some decision regarding contraception coverage, right? If it had been a decision you strongly supported I don’t think you would be arguing it was an optional or made up thing. Contraception is a regular and routine aspect of health insurance they wanted to expand. Nearly every policy in government and business can be construed as made up in the sense you are using it; it doesn't imply they are illegitimate.
If you _define_ "the policy" as the specific policy that refuses to permit broad-based conscientious objections, then in that _utterly trivial_ sense they have suggested only remedies that require modifying the policy!
They are being refused a right to overturn the normal process and scope of conscientious objection. You are confusing the narrowly defined blanket exemptions that are part of the policy with the innate legal right of conscientious objection, but those blanket exemptions are not something the courts are inclined to second-guess without explicit guidance from SCOTUS because there are always some groups that aren't included who believe they deserve the blanket exemption. For example, what is to stop Hobby Lobby from turning around now and saying they also deserve to be included under the blanket exemption, the SCOTUS decision granting them a conscientious objection is insufficient and for the exact same reasons given by the Little Sisters?
Conscientious objection is an inherently narrow right; there is no such thing as a conscientious objection that lets you reformulate a policy. It is meant to be an official exemption for that one legal entity and the status does not transfer in any way. The Little Sisters are asking for a right to an unofficial exemption that transfers, which is clearly not a valid objection.
Somewhat more meta, there is an odd disconnect in how this whole debate has been framed. On the one hand, religious employers are upset about being morally complicit in the obtaining of contraceptive insurance; with only some regard for how remote or indirect the complicity may be and despite the obvious fact that insurance does not require anyone to obtain contraception. On the other hand, many of these suggested remedies for directly obtaining contraception by the employee are treated as if the employer clearly has no moral right to interfere, and any subsidy of which remotely and indirectly makes all taxpayers complicit in this activity. It seems strange that there is such a strong dissociative force at work in the first example and then it simply vanishes like it never existed in the second example.
Posted by Step2 | August 19, 2015 4:28 PM
No. This was always left to vary with various insurance plans for umpteen decades. There was no reason at all for it to be a matter for public policy, especially since no policy on it was set by the actual law passed by Congress. (A point that your entire answer studiously ignores.) The administration's HHS could have done nothing and left that benefit, like a gajillion others ("does this policy cover hearing aids") to vary with the plan. The HHS didn't have to do a single thing. That you would say such a thing is pretty gob-smackingly foolish. Generally each and every specific benefit covered in insurance plans is _not_ micromanaged by the HHS, not even under Obamacare. That's so obvious I can't believe I even need to state it.
False, again. The administration's convoluted way of dealing with this does not constitute any sort of normal process of conscientious objection.
As far as I know, subject to correction (with citations), what is happening to Hobby Lobby after they won their case is not what would happen to the Little Sisters if they lost their case. That is to say, their employer insurance is not (as far as I know) being linked to contraceptive coverage which an insurance company is being ordered to provide in virtue of the company's opting out of paying for it. My understanding is that Hobby Lobby's win means that they have a real exemption: Neither they nor their employee's insurance company have to provide contraceptive coverage, period. The employees have to get it some other way unrelated to their employment by Hobby Lobby--be it through government handouts, their own payment out of pocket, etc. If you know something clear to the contrary, please cite.
If I am wrong about that, it simply means that the consciences of the owners of Hobby Lobby don't balk at something that the consciences of the Little Sisters do balk at, which is of course not impossible. But as far as I know, Hobby Lobby has the type of exemption the Little Sisters are attempting to obtain.
Posted by Lydia | August 19, 2015 5:34 PM
And it appears after two minutes' googling that the reason Hobby Lobby had to be given a true exemption or nothing and that this "accommodation" issue simply did not come up was that the administration never offered Hobby Lobby such an "accommodation" in the first place! Which is why what happened to Hobby Lobby after they won was not what would happen to the Little Sisters if they lost. When Hobby Lobby won, it was actually over. They didn't have to give their employees a letter which, as this article puts it, "the organization's employees may use to obtain the birth control coverage."
http://www.christianpost.com/news/what-the-hobby-lobby-decision-means-for-the-little-sisters-of-the-poor-122556/
Keep your eye on the ball. It's not even that difficult.
Posted by Lydia | August 19, 2015 5:39 PM
Tony, thanks for your interesting comment.
I definitely agree that applying WEstern standards of working conditions to the developing world is a mistake. Jay Richards has written a good deal about this, very interesting stuff. E.g. Jay has a useful example in which a "sweat shop" where teenage girls made clothes twelve hours a day in South America was shut down after do-gooder American outcry. Then one of the young women who had been involved in going around talking about the alleged bad conditions under which they worked more or less said, "That wasn't what I meant to happen. Now my friends are having to become prostitutes to make money." Pretty classic case, that.
However, I myself am even more bothered by environmental regulations and other approaches to the developing world which do not even have that much of a do-gooder excuse for them. For example, let's admit that the drive to outlaw DDT was for the sake of "the environment" far more than for any alleged harm it actually did *to the Africans for whom it was being used to fight malaria*. Similarly, regulations proposed to "curb climate chane" are coming from people who are really concerned about "the environment." They don't have the excuse that they arise from a misguided attempt to obtain better working conditions *for the people who fall under the regulations*. On the contrary. They are direct attempts to curb human development worldwide because of the alleged harm that we humans are doing to non-human entities. The same is true of attempts to oppose the introduction of, e.g., GMOs in the Third world, attempts to oppose the introduction of Western-style sewage systems, and many others. Much of this comes out of a straightforwardly anti-human ideology, and the veneer of concern for "unfairness" or what-not is very thin indeed, much thinner even than the (possibly real though misguided) attempts to obtain or impose modern Western working conditions for the poor in other nations.
Posted by Lydia | August 19, 2015 5:45 PM
Which leads me to wonder (again) just what Pope Francis had in mind in his comments about the "northern ecological debt" to the south:
Of course, there was no such thing as the northern USA "rust belt" when US car companies could not compete with Japan in the 70's and 80's, resulting in "unemployment, abandoned towns". There was no such thing as the Love Canal and other Superfund sites, the mercury poisoning of mining areas. There is no such thing as the strip-mine wastes of West Virginia. There is no such thing as the fire hazard Lake Erie.
The damage to the environment caused by excesses of deranged economic activity are bad whether they occur in the north or the south, and to be deplored in both. What I wonder is whether, before the fact, we can clearly distinguish between unpleasant but justifiable using the land for waste products as a critical part of an overall beneficial economic engine of wealth, and "abuse" and "excess" damage to the land that is not justifiable based on the economic return. Or whether the Pope or any other liberal thinks that the issue can be settled without reference to just how much damage is expected to occur and how that harms people in particular, i.e. whether there must be, in principle, damage justified by the economic benefit.
Posted by Tony | August 19, 2015 8:53 PM
Gotta love the pope's use of "generally." Really, this is what "generally" happens? Do tell, in precisely what percentage of cases in which multinational corporations operate in poorer, foreign countries is that the final, entire, and fairly and accurately described result of their involvement? With data. Somehow, I doubt if he could support such a sweeping generalization.
Posted by Lydia | August 19, 2015 11:37 PM
And it appears after two minutes' googling that the reason Hobby Lobby had to be given a true exemption or nothing and that this "accommodation" issue simply did not come up was that the administration never offered Hobby Lobby such an "accommodation" in the first place!
Which is because for-profit corporations had never received a religious based exemption before. This is why Hobby Lobby is considered a landmark case. In the Hobby Lobby decision Alito explicitly mentions this specific accommodation as a way to preserve their religious liberty and government policy interest, although he weasel-worded it enough to give himself an out for later cases.
Posted by Step2 | August 20, 2015 3:25 PM
But Hobby Lobby doesn't need to think about that, does it? Because they were really given a full exemption, without the requirement that they give their employees a letter that "they can use to get the coverage." Which answers the question you asked above. You asked,
What is to stop them is that they got a blanket exemption. The SCOTUS decision did not merely grant them what is being offered to the Little Sisters. So they have no need to argue that what they got was insufficient.
In fact, the shoe is on the other foot. It's the Little Sisters who are saying that what _they_ have been offered is insufficient and that they want the blanket exemption that Hobby Lobby won.
Posted by Lydia | August 20, 2015 3:49 PM
What is to stop them is that they got a blanket exemption. The SCOTUS decision did not merely grant them what is being offered to the Little Sisters.
SCOTUS did not rewrite the policy and say all closely held for-profit corporations must receive a blanket exemption, and they were careful not to do that as their specific mention of the accommodation as a remedy shows. Hobby Lobby's particular outcome was the result of a ruling which established a new precedent, it shouldn't be interpreted as a blanket exemption for that reason. Doing so would be trying to insist upon a retroactive view of the precedent.
Posted by Step2 | August 20, 2015 4:18 PM
Step2, is it really your assertion that Hobby Lobby is being offered the accommodation offered to Little Sisters and has accepted it? If so, please document.
Posted by Lydia | August 20, 2015 4:24 PM
All I could find is an article that is partially behind a subscription wall.
http://www.law360.com/articles/597768/hobby-lobby-can-t-block-new-aca-rules-judge-says
So my assertion is that they are being offered the accommodation, I don't know if they have accepted it or have filed another appeal. It is hard to navigate this through search engines because of all the publicity surrounding the SCOTUS case.
Posted by Step2 | August 20, 2015 5:13 PM
Here is that judge's actual order, which seems to conflict with the summary given in law360, or at least with the spirit of that summary. The actual order on November 19, 2014, enjoins the HHS from requiring either Hobby Lobby or its insurance company to provide contraception. (At least, as best as I can understand it.)
https://casetext.com/case/hobby-lobby-stores
However, brand-new regulations have just come down last month which _do_ appear to require for-profit organizations (which would presumably include Hobby Lobby) to file the same type of letter with the HHS to which the Little Sisters object, at which point (says the summary) the government "may" then "work with" the company's insurance company to provide the coverage, so it appears that, as of July of this year (but plausibly not prior to that) Hobby Lobby is now being told to do what Little Sisters is being told to do rather than being given a more blanket exemption:
http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/07/new-rules-for-aca-birth-control-mandate/
Whether Hobby Lobby objects to that remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen whether the injunction from 2014 will block the enforcement of these new regulations against Hobby Lobby, specifically, in any event, since (unless I am misunderstanding it) the injunction blocked the HHS from requiring Hobby Lobby's insurer to provide contraception!
Posted by Lydia | August 20, 2015 5:53 PM
Lydia, thank you for looking up the court order.
Whether Hobby Lobby objects to that remains to be seen.
Given the reach of both the permanent injunction and the accommodation I don't think they need to object, although they can. They just have to show HHS the court order and that takes care of it. Although keep in mind their injunction uniquely stems from the precedent setting nature of their case, which is inapplicable to Little Sisters even if they end up winning. Going back a little bit to the argumentative point, this means Hobby Lobby is still technically covered under the policy and did not receive a blanket exemption, and their attempt to preempt the policy is presumably because they believed a different accommodation could be offered that would circumvent them, their insurer, and their TPA.
Posted by Step2 | August 21, 2015 2:21 PM