Over at Daily KOS I see Senator Blunt has gotten a little more…well…blunt about it…
Enter Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and his new amendment to the Affordable Care Act which would allow any employer or insurance company to “exclude any health service, no matter how essential, from coverage if they morally object to it.”
You might be thinking this is a tactical move simply to deny contraceptive coverage without it looking like they’re going after something most Americans believe their health insurance should cover. Think again. This isn’t a smokescreen, it’s the next step down a road they began doggedly dragging the nation when they started bellyaching that pharmacists shouldn’t have to dispense Plan-B if it went against their sincerely held religious beliefs. Some people were asking even then what the limits were to an exemption for sincerely held religious beliefs. Silly them.
So what else goes against their sincerely held religious beliefs? Well…goddamn near everything actually…
Igor Volsky explains:
Under the measure, an insurer or an employer would be able to claim a moral or religious objection to covering HIV/AIDS screenings, Type 2 Diabetes treatments, cancer tests or anything else they deem inappropriate or the result of an “unhealthy” or “immoral” lifestyle. Similarly, a health plan could refuse to cover mental health care on the grounds that the plan believes that psychiatric problems should be treated with prayer.
Individuals can also opt out of any of that coverage they find morally objectionable…
Immoral lifestyles. Immoral lifestyles. Get the picture yet? I know…I know…you think that means someone else. And anyway, they’re just asking for the simple right to live by their own conscience. Except for the part about them getting their hands on enough political power to make sure you by their conscience too.
“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” -Rick Santorum.
Understand this: the religious right isn’t asking for an exemption to anything. They want to take your exemption to God’s Law away because nobody gets one of those. And if this primary season has told us anything, it’s that the old republican establishment has lost control. The kook pews are in charge now, and they’re on a mission from God. They are not asking for exemptions, they are closing a few loopholes. You may have thought of those as your rights.
This is their America…where things we take for granted every day, like the right to marry, hold down a job, have a roof over your head, seek justice in a court of law, get medical care, is permitted only to the righteous. The culture war isn’t about sex or homosexuality, or even about religion. Are you heterosexual? Christian but not fundamentalist? Politically centrist? Conservative but socially liberal? Like to make up your own mind about things and don’t care much for political labels? Think it’s not about you? Think again.
Listen to them talking about us gay folk. Listen to how ugly it gets. Listen to it. If you think they’re not talking about you too you are sadly, profoundly, mistaken.
