The ban on contraception is a hangover from the period when the body itself was considered unclean
jaunte Opinion • Feb 15, 2012 at 11:34 am PST • Views: 466
Garry Wills:
By a revolting combination of con men and fanatics, the current primary race has become a demonstration that the Republican party does not deserve serious consideration for public office. Take the controversy over contraceptives. American bishops at first opposed having hospitals and schools connected with them pay employee health costs for contraceptives. But when the President backed off from that requirement, saying insurance companies can pay the costs, the bishops doubled down and said no one should have to pay for anything so evil as contraception. Some Republicans are using the bishops’ stupidity to hurt the supposed ‘moderate’ candidate Mitt Romney, giving a temporary leg up to the faux naïf Rick Santorum; others are attacking Barack Obama as an ‘enemy of religion.’
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The bishops’ opposition to contraception is not an argument for a ‘conscience exemption.’ It is a way of imposing Catholic requirements on non-Catholics. This is religious dictatorship, not religious freedom.
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Catholics who do not accept the phony argument over contraception are said to be ‘going against the teachings of their church.’ That is nonsense. They are their church. The Second Vatican Council defines the church as ‘the people of God.’ Thinking that the pope is the church is a relic of the days when a monarch was said to be his realm.
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The bishops’ opposition to contraception is not an argument for a “conscience exemption.” It is a way of imposing Catholic requirements on non-Catholics. This is religious dictatorship, not religious freedom.
Rick Santorum is a nice smiley fanatic. He does not believe in evolution or global warming or women in the workplace. He equates gay sex with bestiality (Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum). He equates contraception with the guillotine. Only a brain-dead party could think him a worthy presidential candidate. Yet he is praised by television pundits, night and day, for being “sincere” and “standing by what he believes.” He is the principled alternative to the evil Moderation of Mitt Romney and the evil Evil of Newt Gingrich. He is presented as a model Catholic. Torquemada was, in that sense, a model Catholic. Messrs. Boehner and McConnell call him a martyr to religious freedom. A young priest I saw on television, modeling himself on his hero Santorum, said, “I would rather die than give up my church’s principles.” What we are seeing is not a defense of undying principle but a stampede toward a temporarily exploitable lunacy.
The manner in which Americans "consume" music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie -- it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it was made. -- From "The Real Frank Zappa Book" (ch. 11)
Frank says: