This one won’t be polite.
Are you kidding me? Are you freaking out of your mind nuts kidding me?
There is a conservative politician *so* full of anger at the policies and the person of the black man in the White House that he decided to introduce a bill allowing employers to deny any preventive health service they object to.
I’m hoping the thing will get, say three cosponsors and die a deserved death but you never know….
If you want to be a friend to large corporations, making sure they attract valuable employees, you can’t run around writing bills that could technically deny:
Mammograms
Cancer screenings of all kinds for either sex.
Diabetes education (!)
Stress tests for heart disease.
All of these fall under the ‘preventative’ tag.
Come on, you say, no one would be that nuts…
Write a bill as a dog whistle and it could come back to bite you.
Because of course this is a dog whistle: an annoyed response to the move by President Obama today to alter the HHS rules regarding requiring employers with conscience objections to contraception to provide preventative services including contraception.
President Obama’s change today, simply wrote a requirement that means the insurance company, instead of the employer, would be the one required to provide such preventative care (contraception).
Of course there are conservative opponents of the original requirement [for example the author of the above completely dumb bill] that won’t let go, not because this isn’t a rational solution to the problem, but because they hate the policies and the person of the black man in the White House.
One of the president’s most severe critics Cardinal designee Dolan, admitted this is a step in the right direction…and moderate or liberal Catholic organizations are happy with the change, as are Catholic Democrats such as Tim Kaine who had raised objections to the original requirement.
The danger of writing crazy legislation as an annoyed response to a thoughtful compromise by the President…
Is that the crazy legislation could actually pass.
This is going to be a repost of some ideas…because
I’ve just had another longtime acquaintance diss my political and religious choices.
Sorry for the rehash, but I’ve just got to lay it out one last time so people get it.
Politically:
We now live in a society where corporations are people, according to the Citizens United decision.
If they are people, they aren’t the kind I’d invite to dinner.
Republican, Tea Party, Independent, Liberal, Progressive friends/family listen the heck up because I’m tired, tired tired of laying this out in gory personal detail for you.
I cannot trust any big corporation ever again. If someone else wants to, or believes they must because it’s in the Constitution that they have to love big corporations or they are a traitor to the Great God Capitalism…then go ahead.
I cannot trust any big corporation ever again because in the 24 months from summer 1982 through summer 1984 corporate decisions were made that allegedly caused the death of my HIV positive hemophilliac husband. He was a difficult man.
[for the record I’ve recently found out through medical research and checking his record that it’s extremely likely that the degree of his legendary temper was caused, in part, by HIV related brain lesions. Changes the picture yet again. I just wish I would have known more about the lesion thing early on. ]
I loved him. He loved me. He told me I was beautiful every day. And meant it. The disability, the weight, were unimportant to him. He married me when he could have married an able girl.
He was the *only* man to stand up to my father in my name, to tell him to go to hell.
We had that chemistry thing. That was why we made the WTF decision to marry in the first place even knowing the ‘risk group’ he was in. (doesn’t ‘ risk group’ sound damn antiquated now?) We finished each other’s sentences. We played a lot.
And allegedly because of a decision meant to help the ‘bottom line’ by a number of big pharmaceutical companies to not retool and make the production of a life sustaning medicine safer as early as they could have…he’s not here anymore. It killed him by inches and he was fcukin’ brave about it…especially at the end. No human being should have to go through that and so many still do.
I. cannot. trust.any.big.corporation.
Another reason not to trust them that affected me quite personally.
Rick Scott, the current governor of Florida, was making big money in the eighties/nineties running a company that was busy defrauding Medicare.
My boss at the time thought that that company Columbia HCA, ought to be allowed to merge with his company in a Kaiser Permanente type mix. He wanted to change to a for profit company.
Well, long story short, that boss got fired for pursuing that, and my company was uncertain, unsettled and in transition for awhile.
This was one of the factors in my (looking back) unwise decision to relocate westward. It spooked me. I got afraid the company would vanish.
So, there is just no way I can support a party that supports big corporations.
Can’t do it. Will. Not. Do. it.
I can abstain from discussing politics offline. I’ve done that and will continue to. I love my family, they love me, and we do have bunches more to discuss than politics, and we don’t want to become estranged. So we make an effort.
Religion:
Why did I go there at all?
Well, a purely pragmatic need for a support system became clear. In 2008/2009 I discovered a great nearby church that happened to be Catholic.
My decision was, “I’ll go, get quiet, meet some people, listen to the music…get a bit of help when I need it.” It’s five minutes away from my house. (I was still in Denver at the time.)
And then, God showed up. It was annoying really. I hadn’t had the best relationship with God. God got ditched in ’93 and I had no plans to actually reconnect.
“What in the heck are you doing here? You’re supposed to know everything, so you know I’m just here for regular reasons…not really looking for you. So leave me be!”
Too late. It was and is a profound experience. Uniquely personal. And that’s it.
Has this religion, have all religions made huge mistakes? Heck yes. Are there specific parts of the theology that really make me nuts? Heck yes. Am I going to use my brain to work out my day to day practice in a way that doesn’t make me nuts? Absolutely. I’m no mindless sheep.
Do I have to answer to friends/family/nosy-ass strangers for the mistakes or the parts of the theology that make me nuts?
No.
And again, I think it’s the rudest thing in the world to go door to door for Deity. Won’t be doing that.
Have I turned into the Church Lady?
Heck no.
So to summarize.
Not supporting a particular political party because they support big corporations that *will do harm* financially or physically if let off their leashes does not mean I’m going to hell.
Being Roman Catholic does not mean I’m going to hell. Or Heaven either. It gives me no superiority or inferiority. It’s just one of my choices.
Good grief. Democracy and religious freedom. Ever heard of them?
PS. And by the way. Just by the fcuk way. It’s “Democratic Party.” not “Democrat,” party. Give us our full list of syllables, even if we are “animals,” threatening to “destroy the country.”
A bit of light
Re: The Founding Fathers and their religions because I can’t stand people who rewrite history for their own ends.
Here’s a quote from a treaty signed by George Washington:
A 1796 treaty he signed says “the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
But go read the whole article.
Mr. Beck believes
that his radio for talking to God is better than mine, than yours, than anyone else whose beliefs differ from his, or those who believe the whole notion of God may not be worth a darn.
I really never thought I’d be taking a pro-religion stance on anything, but here the frack goes:
Mr. Beck? Before you encourage people who’ve already signed up for a belief system to ditch their local pew post haste if their church works actively with poor and disadvantaged folk, under the idea of social justice…that that’s not a ‘real’ path to living out Christianity…..
[Don’t you wish these people that blow off like this would READ THE BOOK they claim to venerate? I do. More and more every day. I knew there’d be a downside to searching out a church to worship in, and I’ve now found it. It’s not the church doctrine, although that’s another can of beans, it’s that I think believers in a certain text, whatever the text might be, should have to read, and attempt to comprehend the whole thing before they start braying about it. And not just the parts they’re warm and fuzzy with either…even the parts they disagree with.]
The part about caring for ‘the least of these’ being one and the same as worshipping God.
The part about it being tough for rich folk to get to Heaven.
The part that says faith without works is dead.
The scholars that have said that if you identify as Christian, it is the words of Christ, and the rest of the New Testament New Covenant that is your primary guide for how to live a worthy life.
The Old Testament is illustrative and important surely…
But if you’re a Christian and you throw out the words of Christ and the New Covenant….
Isn’t that a fundamental flaw?
I’m not attacking Beck’s Mormonism, so much as telling those who seek his opinion out to use the words of their defining books, and their religious advisers as their touchstone. Trust those, and believe in those more than this modern day hybrid of Chicken Little/Elmer Gantry and John Birchers.
I’m pretty confident you don’t find ‘God’ in a personality.
And worshipping personalities only leads to disappointment.
I am remembering fellow Foxoid Brit Hume’s comment about Tiger Woods needing to become a Christian in order to get his life together…I’ve an odd image in my head:
Cartoon…Brit Hume shoving Tiger Woods through the door of a Christian Church that is secure in it’s adherence to social justice, and Beck, just inside the doors frantically shoving Tiger back the other way…
The search for faith….
I implore anyone who is offended by my discussion of religion or religion in general in this next post to skip it.
This is not meant as a place for me to impose my admittedly patchwork experience of religion or *my* particular beliefs on anybody.
It started as a comment over at bridgett’s place, and I feel the need for some expansion…
- I am on the way to solving my (lack of/wish for/pragmatic *need* for) a spiritual place….
Things that were deal breakers for me ten years ago are deal breakers no longer….
I have to consider parking and access issues *first* If I can’t get *into* a building and talk to Deity in my way…then ferget it.
Then, I think of music, and *after that* doctrine….
The last very lovely, very accessible Protestant place was frighteningly evangelical, and I got dissed for not getting healed, so…huh uh….nope. (and just this morning on the news, one of their [former] ministers of music was brought up on charges for alleged misconduct with a minor…)
The local UCC’ers went from progressive to archly conserviative with a retirement of the minister…..
So, unbelievablly….
I found a church fifteen minutes away that is modern, accessible, great music doesn’t require imposition of my belief system on someone else…. and is more okay with singletude than any other place I’ve been….
I have *serious* doctrinal issues there relating to communion and the role of women but, to be fair only the UCC’ers more progressive congregations and the UU’s recognize women as first class congregants) It’s not just this new place that bars women from full participation…many doctrines in the evangelical churches do the same.
but I’m going to have to suck it up if I am never able to leave Denver and and have to rely on the “kindness of strangers” to help out when the roomate cannot do PCA stuff any more….and this denomination has at least a *framework* for real world outreach and aid to members who are elderly and/or impaired…. Whether the local congregation lives up to that??? we will see.
There are three categories of reasons I’m considering this….
Category I.
The spiritual part takes a good deal of learning and study and I’ve missed that.
I’m hoping to find a place where just *being* and also praying (quietly, civilizedly *internaly* for hopes sake) are accepted. Public humiliation for percieved sin is not presently a part of the liturgy…I will *not* miss that particularly prevalent aspect of many evangelical churches.
Personally I find such praying a powerful thing. I’ve been looking to do that.
Category 2.
The building is extremely accessible and modern, and I am going to get a charge out of that. (the more consistently faithful might point out that Deity is teaching me some humility and sacrifice [smile]– the only profoundly *inaccessible* part of the building? The choir loft…)
The downtown churches please me the most doctrinally, but there are minimal accessibility provisions and no parking anyplace….my scooter can’t get into some of them…and even the manual wheelchair was damaged when I tried to wrestle myself into the foyer of the downtown UU’s….
While I’m aware that *every* denomination has its bad actors…I’m quite certain that I’m capable (at least for now) of discerning any threat to my physical and intellectual autonomy…
I can’t stand it that my level of impairment has gotten to the point that such pragmatic and difficult issues *have to begin to direct* which pew I decide to sit in.
But, there it is.
The third category is private and positive, but has to do with the spiritual side as well…and the stubborness I cannot let go of…just yet…
Midlife And Treachery 
