Religious Liberty Only for the Majority and the Mainstream
Kevin Drum captures what I take to be the thinking of the Obama administration regarding conscience protections in the HHS mandate: “Americans don’t have any problem with contraception. American Catholics don’t have any problem with contraception. And on a public health basis, requiring healthcare plans to cover contraception is common sense. No one — almost literally no one — thinks there’s any problem with it. It’s a non-issue.” He’s right that most Catholics have no qualms about using contraceptives, but wrong to think the church hierarchy’s objection to contraception is a non-issue.
I can testify to the fact that there is a small minority of Catholics who live according to the teachings of a “tiny number of men in the formal hierarchy of the Catholic church.” And no, contra Drum, this minority isn’t ideologically driven. Drum mistakes assent to orthodoxy for adherence to ideology; that those who object to birth control tend to be Republican is not a sign of ideological motivation, necessarily, but rather the consequence of the Republican Party’s general hospitality to religious and social conservative values. But I digress. Some Catholics—not many, but some—have a deep moral objection to contraception. They object to it on moral, metaphysical, and religious grounds. Contraception is a matter of conscience for a minority. So is material cooperation with it.
Drum’s position here is that the conscientious objection of this minority shouldn’t matter because it’s a minority, fringe view: “it’s arguably reasonable, I think, for the government to tread carefully in areas where there’s substantial, highly-charged controversy, such as abortion. But contraception just isn’t one of those areas.” In other words, hey, there’s a consensus even among Catholics in favor of contraceptives, so there’s no need for the government to tread carefully, i.e., protect the conscience rights of those few who dissent from the consensus. I’ll be blunt: if religious liberty is recognized only for the majority and the mainstream, then it ain’t worth a damn.
Drum may be on more solid footing when he says that the church’s policy on contraceptives has “caused incalculable pain and misery for millions of women around the globe.” I’ve no doubt a few Catholics would disagree with this assessment, but there’s no contesting that Drum is here arguing against the orthodox Catholic position on contraceptives because of the evil consequences he attributes to it. This is a better argument. However, even if we assume Drum’s assessment of the church’s policy is accurate, it doesn’t on its own establish grounds for forcing Catholics and Catholic institutions who freely wish to follow the church’s teaching to violate their conscience or suffer the consequences under the law. It would establish reasonable grounds on which to oppose any attempt by the church to use, say, the force of law to coerce people into following its teachings, but that’s a separate issue.
There all sorts of “fringe, minority” views that get squished. I have no doubt there are plenty of birthers in the military who don’t think they should have to follow the Kenyan usurpers orders or peeps who don’t want to rent/serve/hire people who are in interracial marriages. I agree religious liberty shouldn’t be just for the majority or for mainstream beliefs. However there are always grey areas where somebody is going to have a situation they don’t like. The question is how we figure out those grey situations.
However there are always grey areas where somebody is going to have a situation they don’t like. The question is how we figure out those grey situations.
I agree. Religious freedom should be an absolute license to do anything one pleases on religious grounds. There are prudential reasons to, say, prohibit behaviors that have some kind of religious backing, but I don’t see how the Catholic Church’s demand not to cover the costs of contraceptives qualifies, especially since there are alternatives to achieving universal access to them that do not violate religious freedom.
I would have focused less on the birthers and more on, say, Rastas. So, yeah, religious freedom, at least as defined by “exemption from general purpose laws” is only for the majority and the mainstream, and this is not new.
I wonder if this was a way for Obama to appease his liberal base after saying “No” to allowing emergency contraception to be sold OTC for 16 and over. If so Obama got it backwards, he should have allowed OTC and perhaps other hormonal contraception to be allowed OTC to increase access and decrease costs; instead of using and forcing the Church to go along to accomplish those goals.
Maybe. He would have received less outcry from the Catholic hierarchy and orthodox. Some, still, but substantially less.
Exactly right and pitch perfect, Kyle.
Thank you, Tim.
It seems to me, this would have a simple solution if “material cooperation” is really the reasoning.
Have it be part of the interview process for hiring any staff member at any institution that wants to follow these moral dictates and refuse to hire people who’d use any form of compensation they receive in the pursuit of “immoral activity”.
Look, the “material cooperation” thing is a complete cop-out when we’re talking health INSURANCE and not actual health provision. The moment you pay people, either with providing group insurance or by simply giving them money, you’re providing material cooperation.
If Catholic institutions don’t want to deal with this, they could of course, opt out of providing employer provided health insurance at all and instead simply provide additional pay to their employees to buy private health insurance on the new health care exchanges.
They won’t because that makes them less competitive in the market place in terms of compensation packages. But if it really is a moral issue, they have the option of not providing insurance. The individual mandate is an INDIVIDUAL mandate. It doesn’t mandate that employers provide insurance.
I have actually fallen off the fence and onto the side of the Administration on this*. However…
Theoretically, at least, wouldn’t the failure to provide contraception as part of the insurance package in itself make them less competitive? As a doctor, Catholic employment is an issue that’s very real to us. And the willingness, or not, to include contraception would play a role in our decision-making process.
The requirement would suggest, at least to some degree, that people (excluding my wife and I) aren’t so much into contraception coverage as for it to affect their decisions. Only so much as to force someone else into paying for it.
That strikes me as a weakness in the Moral Imperative that it be a part of the package. If everyone *but* the Catholic Church (more or less) were providing this, that would put them at a real disadvantage to the extent that people are actually concerned about it. No?
* – As an up-or-down proposition, and given the givens. I think that a better compromise might have been available. But I think a better system in the overall could be managed. But with our system, and with PPACA mandating coverage from everybody, I’m having difficulty with the Church being specifically waived while a Catholic employer with his own business has to do it.
Being a bit less pithy, in theory employer provided healthcare without contraception coverage is likely to be a competitive disadvantage. In practice the simple fact is that employers are increasingly providing less health insurance and some are outright dropping it altogether. To the extent then that this is an attractive benefits feature for large organizations like a Catholic University.
In addition for 50% of the potential workforce, contraception coverage isn’t an actual issue. Therefore its potential to serve as a market disadvantage is decreased in comparison to what it might be under the circumstances.
I still think if this is such a big moral issue, then simply not providing health insurance isn’t a terrible leap. Or at least providing an HSA in lieu of insurance. I’m just baffled when people want exceptions carved out for them when it becomes inconvenient.
bear in mind that health insurance is for Families, and many women dont’ work for a significant period of time around having children.
so less than 50%, I’d say.
“I’m having difficulty with the Church being specifically waived while a Catholic employer with his own business has to do it.”
For me, this is the heart of the matter. Why is it that Catholic business owners don’t get conscience exemptions? Should Domino’s Pizza get an exemption? Why or why not?
Because they don’t claim their businesses are instances of their practising of their faith in all its completeness. The Catholics’ claim is that they would not be practicing their religion fully if they did not establish hospitals and universities that serve the general public, etc. Catholic business owners are just running businesses, but bishops who are in charge of those who are in charge of Catholic hospitals are practising their faith, and thus any provision of law, even if it would generally apply to all similar organizations that weren’t Catholic-controlled (or is it merely -sponsored) that forces them to do something they say would be in conflict with what their religious conscience dictates, is infringing on their free exercise of their religion (rather than merely of their prerogatives as business owners/executives/administrators). That’s why.
Wow, I’m happy this went through. Connection crashed and I thought I lost it.
“that forces them to do something they say would be in conflict with what their religious conscience dictates”
…as a condition of being free to exercise that aspect of their religious practice…
When I worked at the restaurant, they didn’t have an insurance plan available.
I had the opportunity to buy my own insurance.
Now, were the restaurant owners somehow violating some principle here?
(How about if I told you that they were Catholics and all of the insurance plans covered birth control?)
Well, this does remain an option, if your employer wants to let you join one of the exchanges instead, unless I’m mistaking the requirements of the ACA.
But that’s not really the question I asked.
The moment you pay people, either with providing group insurance or by simply giving them money, you’re providing material cooperation.
Both can be understood as material cooperation, yes, but there’s a morally relevant (in Catholic thinking, at least) difference between paying an employee for her doing a job and covering the costs of a specific good or service. The former is what Catholic moral philosophers call remote material cooperation, and such cooperation can be morally licit even when the object with which one remotely cooperates is something immoral.
If Catholic institutions don’t want to deal with this, they could of course, opt out of providing employer provided health insurance at all and instead simply provide additional pay to their employees to buy private health insurance on the new health care exchanges.
They could, yes, and that’s probably what we’ll see if the mandate stands.
But again, you’re not providing them something that covers the costs of a specific good or service. You’re providing them compensation in the form of a voucher that can be redeemed in the same way as a dollar bill, but in a limited range of options. I don’t mean to be obtuse here, but I really think this is six of one and half dozen of the other. In the end, so long as the institution isn’t the one actually providing the service (ie. handing out the Pill and putting in IUDs) this is no different than providing someone a gift certificate which they then go and use at a discount pharmacy chain to buy OTC morning after pills or get condoms.
As for opting out of providing employer provided health insurance, I think that’d be a benefit (and thus a feature) rather than a bug.
But the limited range of choices has to include contraceptives, no?
It does, but it’s a choice.
I guess what I’m asking is…
Let’s say employer provides a holiday bonus to his employees in the form of a big discount coupon and gift card to his local CVS pharmacy. It can be redeemed on anything in the store. Does this make him morally culpable by Catholic standards if his employees then go and buy condoms and Plan B?
It may. I’m not sure this analogy quite works, but let’s go with it for the sake of argument. From the Church’s standpoint, the gift card bonus to a pharmacy would at a minimum be morally problematic given the likelihood that it would be used for illicit purposes. A grocery store gift card would be less problematic, a gift card to Planned Parenthood much more so. I imagine most individual parishes would be okay with giving the grocery store gift card as there’s only a very remote possibility it would be used to purchase bad stuff. They definitely wouldn’t go with a Planned Parenthood gift card even though the organization does plenty of things the church is just dandy with. The pharmacy gift card is trickier, but I’m thinking they wouldn’t take the moral risk of distributing it.
To some extent, you could argue that if it’s Only Money then the choice (and the consequence) rests entirely on the individual.
On the other hand, people argue that school vouchers used for Catholic schools constitute government support of religion, so maybe we’re actually okay with arguing based on second-order effects.
Let the Catholic institutions pay the fine. Let the money collected in the form of fines establish a fund with which to purchase birth control services for the employees of those Catholic institutions who want and/or need those services. The Catholic institutions will not have cooperated; the employees will not have been punished; the politicians will be able to go back to talking about things that matter to everybody and not only to a minority of a minority.
Now, now, Rodak. You know politicians just love talking about wedge issues that fire up a minority of a minority.
So… we’ve got nearly 1% of the united states population in favor of multiple-marriages (one man marrying multiple women, most often), by reason of their faith.
I guess this whole thing about freedom of religion is really just for the majority after all…
Is it even possible to get a Quaker marriage in most states?
It’s not even possible to get a Quaker marriage in all counties in Pennsylvania.
Dude, did they win that fucking lawsuit? (which counties?)
I WANTED a quaker marriage, but some dick had it held up in court.
Wound up getting married at the jail instead (made the judge’s day)
I still think we’re dancing around the fact that calling this an imposition on religious liberty is an unproven assumption. I need someone to demonstrate to me that running a hospital is a religious activity.
It’s a religious activity to the extent that the organization’s running is a) motivated by religious beliefs and values, b) done in accordance with these religious beliefs and values, and c) more than nominally associated with a religion or religious institution.
What about the doctors, nurses, and janitors who aren’t doing it for a religious reasons? Should they be discriminated from the same access to birth control as the employees across the street because that hospital is ran by Blue Cross?
Why don’t we just admit that this whole controversy is motivated by anti-abortion/anti-liberal politics, and speak about it in real terms. I keep hearing that 98% of Catholic women use birth control, either sometimes or continuously, during the reproductive years. I hear that 28% have enacted similar regulations at the state level–but there was not controversy raised by the Church in those cases, simply because those cases could not be used to attack the federal government, or the President of the United States. The Church, functioning as a conservative lobbying organization, wants federal power to shift entirely over to the far right side, so that abortion can be criminalized and, ultimately, birth control can be severely restricted, if not elimated altogether. This is not the desire of the Catholic laity, but of clerical hierarchy looking to consolidate its power, which it sees slipping away. That is the real situation. It is politics, plain and simple. And it’s unAmerican.
I don’t know how that “28%” happened. I typed “28 states”