I think pretty soon we’re all going to be able to be arrested on a new charge called “Working while Being Christian.” Look at these two stories about religious freedom and look how they essentially take almost mutually exclusive rulings both against Christians.
This from Lifesite:
The Wisconsin appeals court has upheld the sanctions against a Catholic pharmacist who refused to dispense contraceptive drugs on the grounds of religious conscience. On March 25, 3rd District Court Judge Michael Hoover ruled in favour of the decision of the Wisconsin Pharmacy Examining Board to reprimand Neil Noesen and place limits on his license.
Neil Noesen, a Catholic, was working as a substitute pharmacist at a K-mart department store in Menomonie, Wisconsin in the summer of 2002, when a young college student asked him to re-fill a prescription for hormonal contraceptives. Noesen refused to fill the prescription for the abortifacient drug or refer to another pharmacist who would comply with the request. When the woman took her prescription to a Wal-Mart pharmacist, Noesen refused to provide the Wal-Mart pharmacist with the prescription information.
The woman lodged a complaint and the Pharmacy Examining Board found Noesen had “engaged in practice which constitutes a danger to the health, welfare, or safety of a patient” and had “practiced in a manner which substantially departs from the standard of care ordinarily exercised by pharmacists and which harmed or could have harmed a patient.”
So as much as you might not like it the court ruled that the company has standards and you have to live up to them if you want to work for that company. But then get this:
Yesterday, a new ruling from the New Mexico Human Rights Commission ruled against a Christian woman who refused to photograph a same-sex marriage ceremony. As a Christian, Elaine Huguenin is against efforts to legitimize same-sex “marriage.” The Albuquerque photographer was asked via e-mail in September 2006 to photograph a “commitment ceremony” for two women. The photographer, Elaine Huguenin declined. That was the end of the matter, she thought.
And just yesterday the New Mexico Human Rights Commission held that this violated state anti-discrimination law. Elane has been ordered to pay over $6600 in attorney’s fees and costs.
But wait a second here. This is her own company. Can’t she do what she wants with her own company? No. The real basis for both of these rulings is simply anti-Christian. (Think for a moment if the local KKK meeting wanted some pretty portrait shots and a photographer refused, would a judge rule the photographer had no choice but to take the job? Of course not. So what we’re really talking about is the promotion of state-approved people and groups.)
This is the danger our culture is in. First the secularists said they only wanted prayer out of schools, and out of government, out of adoptions, and now it’s out of the workplace. Quite simply, if these rulings are upheld and taken to their logical end pretty soon it will simply be illegal to act as a Christian in public.
April 10, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Once we gave up on the idea that God can judge communities based on the purity of their actions with regard to His law, we created a neutered conception of what ‘possible’ and ‘acceptable’ religions are; the one that creates secularism as the umbrella for all ‘reasonable’ and appropriately ‘individual’ religions that keep themselves out of our public lives and prevent us from dictating morality based on our own need for self-preservation, let alone love for the public good. The obvious next step is that purity in our own lives isn’t appropriate because God will never judge us for what we have or haven’t done – just for our attitudes, which clearly must be loving because all religion must be reduced to ‘God is Love and He wants you to be Rich.’
April 10, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Then I hope they don’t feed us to lions..
April 10, 2008 at 5:11 pm
According to Ted Turner we’ll all be eating each other in ten years so we don’t need the lions.
April 10, 2008 at 6:55 pm
By what right does that pharmacist keep that girl’s prescription. That is her property. She paid a doctor to get it and he is violating her property rights by refusing to let her use it in a perfectly legal manner. This isn’t a violation of religious freedom, its basic respect for rule of law. Im sure there are a lot of drugs on the market people might take exception to but you can hold someone else’s property from them because you subjectively have a problem with it. What if a Scientologist hel dhostage someone’s prescription for antidepressants. Would you be crying violation of religious freedom then?
Much more, you are beggining to sound like Muslims who want accomodation for their touchy beliefs at the expense of others. A private company has the perfect right to fire someone if they don’t perform the duties of their job. If the duties of the job conflict with your religion then tough. Don’t work there. or start your own company run it as you see fit. Say goodbye to religious freedom? It was never violated. By your lights though we can say goodbye to property rights.
April 10, 2008 at 6:55 pm
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April 10, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Bill,
but how does that go along with telling the photographer what she has to do with her own company? That’s my point.
April 10, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Bill,
I have to agree with you, if you take a job at a company you agree to their terms, but I beg you to respond to Matt’s follow-up. What about a private company refusing to do business on moral grounds, such as the photographer?
In other related incidents, what about Catholic Charities being forced to provide contraception coverage in its health plans? Or Catholic Hospitals being forced to distribute plan B? I ask because I hope we can agree that it is wrong for the state to force these charities to choose between violating their principles or closing, such as the adoption branch of Boston Catholic Charitites.
April 10, 2008 at 8:39 pm
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April 10, 2008 at 8:39 pm
“According to Ted Turner we’ll all be eating each other in ten years so we don’t need the lions.”
Are you serious? He said that? Seriously, that’s amazing.
If you think I’m being sarcastic, I think it’s important for me to point out that a few years back I was working on a concept album based on the life of Ted Turner. No joke. Some lyrics from the song that was going to be about the founding of his media empire:
“You saved some whales and Matlock/
You opened a vault with a proverbial padlock/
Unlocking the room where a thousand classic films sat waiting to decompose….”
It makes more sense when you hear the tune…
April 10, 2008 at 8:43 pm
sounds like a happy little ditty. And yes he did say it. Google Ted Turner and cannibal.
April 10, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Of course the photographer should not have been put through the ringer as she was. My point is that this is not the first time I have heard Catholics try to claim that their religion protects them from termination by their employer for not doing the job for which they are paid.
I don’t have the time to begin a discourse about the nature of hospitals and adoption agencies but it seems ont he face of it that they provide services whose social importance is sufficiently quantitatively different that the government might have a compelling interest in regulating it and compelling the provision of certasin services. After all if a woman is brought to the hospital, hemorrhaging with an ectopic pregnancy, the doctors should be legally allowed to refuse to terminate it on religious grounds, and let her die.
April 10, 2008 at 9:30 pm
“I don’t have the time to begin a discourse about the nature of hospitals and adoption agencies but it seems ont he face of it that they provide services whose social importance is sufficiently quantitatively different that the government might have a compelling interest in regulating it and compelling the provision of certain services.” -Bill
And photography definitely is right up there with those. The point is that the government is regulating everything and everyone leaving no room for Christians.
April 11, 2008 at 12:28 pm
But he was substituting at a store that was carrying the drug anyway; it was available. This reminds me of the Muslim cashier in the UK who refused to check out a children’s Bible. Christian pharmacists should set up independently and not even shelve contraceptive drugs.
April 11, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Bill,
In point of clarification, if an ectopic pregnancy has hemorrhaged, meaning the fallopian tube has ruptured, the pregnancy is already terminated and the child is dead.
In any case, Catholic teaching on ectopic pregnancy is different than that on elective abortion because there is no chance of the child surviving, while there is a large risk of the mother dying of infection or suffering other complications.
In other words, your throwing an apple into a basket of oranges.
Bob Hunt
April 11, 2008 at 3:54 pm
The ectopis pregnancy was an example conjured on the fly. the point is that religious beliefs should not excuse someone from performing their job (especially one as important as a physician”s). A muslim doctor should not be allowed to let someone continue choking because he doesn’t want to touch the pork bone lodged in their asophagus. Its not hard to think up other examples. I quite obviously pay no mind to catholic teaching so my objection was not aimed directly at it. The point is that your obligation to abide by secular rule of law trumps religious beliefs.
April 11, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Bill,
What if we lived in a country where the secular law mandated medical castration for active homosexuals but your religious belief found that prospect abhorrent. Would your obligation to abide by secular rule of law trump your religious belief then?
April 11, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I honestly don’t think one needs to be religious to find forcible castration abhorrent. I think an entirely non-sectarian and indeed secular sense of morality can find this sort of thing distasteful. Incidentally the only places where that sort of thing(and other things an entirely secular conscience will find appalling) happens are countries governed by religious morality. (Mid East and Africa)
April 11, 2008 at 8:20 pm
So you have no problem with morality informing and dictating acceptable behavior even contrary to secular law just as long this morality is in no way informed by a religious belief.
This morality can be informed by belief in some mysterious secular ‘sense’ of morality of one’s own creation but not by one that includes a creator outside of oneself.
Seems like you support morality dictating behavior as long as it agrees with your ‘sense’ of morality.
That doesn’t seem like a very consistent position.
April 11, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Bill,
you wrote”he only places where that sort of thing(and other things an entirely secular conscience will find appalling) happens are countries governed by religious morality”
Hmmmm. China come to mind? We have the secular mindset there in spades with forced castrations and forced abortions.
April 11, 2008 at 9:43 pm
You’re deliberately misreading me. You claimed it was a violation of religious freedom that a pharmacist can be fired for not performing the legal duties of his job for religious reasons. You want exceptions made in the law to accomodate your religious beliefs. Namely infringing on a pharmacy owners property rights and dictating to him the criteria he can and can’t use to fire someone. This is not rule of law as it makes the law subject to the arbitrary whimsy of people’s religious sentiments. A Catholic can’t be fired for not filling birth control just like a Scientologist can be fired for not filling a Prozac prescription (never mind holding it hostage from its rightful owner) It is not a violation of your religious freedom that exceptions are not made for you on an ad hoc basis. I am not disagreeing with you in the case of the photographer but you seem to want intervention from the government when it suits you (the pharmacist) but can’t tolerate interference when it doesn’t (the photographer). If you own your own business I think you should have the right to refuse service or employment to anyone for any reason, and if you saw fit to fire someone because they took issue with the Pope’s shoes I would say “go ahead.” But I won’t grant you protection if you are employed by an atheist who wants to fire you because you keep a defaced picture of Richard Dawkins under you bed. If you think a law is immoral then break it, or undermine it, maybe I’ll join if you’ve got the right cause, but you can’t demand beneficial double standards for yourselves. And it not anti-Christian not to provide them (ie allowing the firing of the pharmacist) We all live under the same laws, which were established by people, many of whom don’t share your beliefs, not to accomodate you when you wish to impose your religious beliefs. And we all suffer the consequences of breaking them, however just you may feel or be in doing so.