Those demanding such an exemption initially worked themselves into a lather with the false claim that the law forced employers to provide their employees with health care plans offering services the employers considered immoral. The fact is that employers have the option of not providing any such plans and instead simply paying assessments to the government. Unless one supposes that the employers’ religion forbids payments of money to the government (all of us should enjoy such a religion), then the law’s requirement to pay assessments does not compel those employers to act contrary to their beliefs. Problem solved–except perhaps for an employer who really desires not just to avoid a moral bind, but rather wants to retain control of his employees’ health plans, limit their choices to conform to the employer’s religious beliefs, and avoid paying the assessments that otherwise would be owed. For that, an employer would need an exemption from the law.

Indeed, some continued clamoring for just such an exemption, complaining that by paying assessments they would be paying for the very things they opposed. They seemingly missed that that is not a moral dilemma justifying an exemption to avoid being forced to act contrary to one’s beliefs, but rather is a gripe common to most taxpayers–who don’t much like paying taxes and who object to this or that action the government may take with the benefit of their tax dollars. Should each of us be exempted from paying our taxes so we aren’t thereby “forced” to pay for a war, health care, or whatever else the government does that each of us may consider wrong or even immoral?

In any event, they put up enough of a stink that the government relented and announced that religious employers would be free to provide health plans with provisions to their liking and not be required to pay the assessments otherwise required. Problem solved–again, even more.

Nonetheless, some continue to complain. They fret that somehow religious employers ultimately will pay for the services they oppose. They argue that if insurers (or, by the same logic, anyone, e.g., employees) pay for such services, those costs will somehow, someday be passed on to the employers in the form of demands for higher insurance premiums or higher wages. They counter what they call the government’s “accounting gimmick” with one of their own: the “Catholic dollar.” These dollars, once paid by a religious employer to others, e.g., insurers or employees, should be used only for things the religious employer would approve. The religious employers’ aim, we are assured, is not to control the actions of others, oh no, but rather is merely to assure that the employers themselves have not somehow acted contrary to their own beliefs by loosing “their” dollars into hands that would use them for things no self-respecting religious employer would himself buy. Their religious liberty, they say, requires not only that they be exempted from the law, but further that anyone to whom they pay money also be exempted and thus “free” to act according to their desires.

I wonder what they would say if they knew they had some of my “atheist dollars” in their wallets that can be used only for ungodly purposes, lest I suffer the indignity of paying for things I disbelieve.

Some diagnoses – for conditions like “oppositional defiant disorder” and “apathy syndrome” – risk devaluing the seriousness of mental illness and medicalising behaviors most people would consider normal or just mildly eccentric, the experts said.

http://tinyurl.com/7q5sy72

We all know that free for a liberal means somebody else has to pay for it. In this case the insurance companies will have to raise their rates which means the religious organization will be paying for the services that are “free.”

The question, then, is whether, as a matter of grace, some employers should be given an exemption in order to relieve them of being forced to take actions contrary to their religious beliefs.

So … uh … yesterday that was a “no,” but today that would be a “yes.” Apparenty Soros changed his mind.

Obama has caved.

“The administration will expand the religious exemption for religiously affiliated universities and hospitals, the source said.”

Shades of Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, eh?

But employers should be given an exemption in order to relieve them of being forced to take actions contrary to their financial beliefs, if they have donated heavily to the Democrat Party.

In addition to 722 self-insured employers, 417 multi-employer plans (for unions) and 34 non-Taft-Hartley union plans. The list includes such worthies as

United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund
Teamsters Local 522 Welfare Fund Roofers Division
1199 SEIU Licensed Practical Nurses Welfare Fund
SEIU Local 300 Civil Service Forum Employees Welfare Fund
IBEW Local 3 NYC Electrical Division Health & Welfare Fund
New York City SEIU Local 246 Welfare Benefits Fund
ASEA/AFSCME Local 52 Health Benefits Trust
Local 25 SEIU
1199 SEIU Greater New York Benefit Fund
Teamsters Local 210 Affiliated Health and Insurance Fund

I believe we were discussing exemptions…

Looks like the Pope didn’t pony up, eh? That much is established.

Actually it is not established. You see the penalty that the government charges for non-compliance is a fee or tax to offset government costs. Once you open the door to taxing a religious institution, you are deep in the middle of the first amendment. Were there no financial penalty there would be other issues to litigate, but the penalty amounts to taxing a church which is beyond the power of the state.

P.S. She had no idea who Dietrich Bonhoeffer was and didn’t understand the parallels with this issue and the “Confessing Church” In Germany.