I'm watching Morning Joe on MSNBC this morning, and while Joe Scarborough is usually fairly moderate, this time he is on the wrong side. He is defending the Catholic Church in their outrage that the Department of Health and Human Services has decreed women who work for Catholic schools and hospitals should get the same access to birth control that women who work for any other organization do.
This seems like common sense to me; after all, don't the Republicans want to wipe out unwanted babies and abortion? But the Catholic Church is crying foul because the Vatican has decreed that birth control is evil. Well, guess what, every Catholic I know is either on birth control or has already been snipped. The Vatican just refuses to acknowledge that fact. Even uber-Catholic right-wing Presidential candidate Rick Santorum and his wife use the so-called "rhythm" method, which in fact is a form of... birth control!
But this is more insidious... the Catholic Church has always refused to acknowledge that any other religion is valid. You only have to look at their bloody history for proof of that. So Joe Scarborough is defending the Church's right to discriminate against the Baptists they employ, the Methodists they employ, or anyone of a different religion at all. How is that defensible? I thought we had freedom of religion in this country. The Catholic Church wants to force women they employ who are of different religions to either pay for their own birth control instead of having it be covered by medical insurance, or have unwanted children. Nice.
My suggestion to the Vatican is this: if you want to discriminate against women of other religions (as well as Catholic women who take birth control on the sly), why don't you employ only men and women who are past menopause? Problem solved.
