Welcome to Buster's Blog

Irregular commentary on whatever's on my mind -- politics, sports, current events, and life in general. After twenty years of writing business and community newsletters, fifteen years of fantasy baseball newsletters, and two years of email "columns", this is, I suppose, the inevitable result: the awful conceit that someone might actually care to read what I have to say. Posts may be added often, rarely, or never again. As always, my mood and motivation are unpredictable.

Buster Gammons















Monday, January 28, 2013

Follow Your Own Beliefs (And Keep Them To Yourself, Please)

The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) requires that almost all employer-offered health insurance plans must include birth control coverage.

Certain conservative Catholic and Evangelical institutions, mostly schools, have been filing lawsuits like crazy because their stupid but official church position is that birth control is a sin, and that means they don't want their health insurance to cover or pay anything for contraception. 

These schools employ many of their own "faithful" -- people who supposedly share the church's opposition to birth control, and would therefore never want it or use it even if it were available in their insurance plan.

But the schools also employ others who may not be of the particular faith and who may indeed want to use contraception, and it sure would be nice to have it be covered by insurance.  Intelligent, planned use of birth control is a public health benefit and a damn good idea on our over-populated planet.  (And let's be honest -- there are boatloads of Catholics and Evangelicals at these places who are on the pill or routinely wear the party hat.  Duh!)

It's not a cost issue for these religious institutions.  The cost of adding birth control coverage to a company's health insurance plan is next to nothing.  And bear in mind that whatever the coverage includes, most of the premium cost is still being paid by the employee, not the employer.  As always, no free lunch, just access.  

So, all you disagreeable parochial-type schools . . . The law says ya gotta make birth control coverage available, and you say you don't wanna 'cause . . . why?  Some sort of "religious belief"?

Your position is weak.  Following the law does not harm your institution in the slightest, and doesn't prevent you from personally following your own religious belief.

This is one of those cases where your "belief" is like a penis:  It's fine that you have one, and it's fine that you're proud of it.  But don't take it out in public and wave it around.  And don't try to stuff it down my throat.

I think we're done here.

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