Painted Nails, Espionage, and Confusion

Fear the Bunny!

I'm digesting a large number of separate news stories right now, and I'd been planning on talking about them individually, but at the moment, they've become entirely too interconnected in my mind because they share a single thread - rabbits.

No no, lagomorphs aren't taking over the world, running people into jails, tapping your phone, and giving Swiss track athletes fabulous manicures. I simply find them the easiest-to-remember species analogue to remind people that homosexual/bisexual behaviour is perfectly natural. At last count, I recall some 1500 species exhibit it. So if you don't like rabbits for some reason, there are thousands more.

I'm talking, of course, about the generalized issue of LGBT Rights. I'll dive more specifically into the interplay as we get going, but each of the stories I'll discuss this morning have something to do with it.

Chelsea Manning is going to jail for seven times longer than Donnie Snook would have if his crimes were committed in the United States.

Let's start with the obvious starting point - the recent sentencing of (former) Private First Class in the US Army, Chelsea E. Manning, who came out publicly as transfemale shortly after being sentenced to 35 years in prison for divulging sensitive material to WikiLeaks, a wildly politically-unpopular service for anonymously collecting things like diplomatic cables, internal-use-only SWAT analysis, and so forth, as a service to news agencies.

Personally, I consider the identity of Chelsea Manning significantly less relevant to the discussion at hand than the particulars of the case. She leaked military documents - including video footage pertaining to the shooting death of reporters on the ground in Iraq - that ranged from "significantly uncomfortable" to "potentially actionable" for people who disagreed with that conflict. Some would argue that some of the things her documentation revealed were criminal in nature. Some might even argue that what she did was a service by revealing that information. Others, naturally, including the courts that sentenced her, recognized that what she did was, by nature, a criminal offence in the United States of America and that she, rightly, should be penalized for it.

I take a middle road - I'm glad she did what she did, but as the saying goes, an act of sacrifice usually requires some sacrifice. What I don't agree with isn't the guilty verdict, it's the 35 years in prison. At the age of 25 that'll make her 60 when she leaves. While I agree that what Manning leaked was sensitive, embarrassing, and uncomfortable, it wasn't operationally compromising. The Iraq war would not have ended differently if she did not leak the information, and the Iraqi Republican Guard were not better equipped to fight with their 1970s-era equipment against a 21st century force by the knowledge that America has a bad habit of ignoring collateral damage when the collateral waves a different flag. She will be spending more time in prison than she has presently been alive.

That, in itself, is absurd. Statistic Brain, citing the U.S. Department of Justice, lists the penalty for Sexual Assault where the victim is a minor at 25 years. Murder, at 25 years. Sexual Assault of the first degree at two years for the first offence. Nine months in the second degree. "Contact with intimate parts of a minor under the age of 13" is five years. Chelsea Manning is going to jail for seven times longer than Donnie Snook would have if his crimes were committed in the United States.

The problem isn't that Chelsea Manning was sentenced for violating counter-espionage laws. It's that the US's sentencing priorities are 83 kinds of messed up.

The next story to talk about, of course, is the problem of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. At this point, nobody should be unaware of the specifics - Olympics in Russia, Russia basically bans being gay (the law is naturally more convoluted than that), champions of equality everywhere including myself have a good time screaming themselves into a frenzy about the IOC refusing to move the olympics.

On this issue, I have only one thing to say - Homophobia has a root in voyeurism.

Why Gay Marriage Forces Me to be a Democrat

Bunnies: Proof Homosexuality Happens

So, in case you fell asleep recently and slept through one of the larger SCOTUS decisions in our generation's history, you should know that DOMA was struck down and Prop 8's appeal for survival was defeated, meaning that gay marriage is once again legal in the State of California and can be made to be legal in any state in the union that so wishes. This has been seen largely as a civil rights victory for the gay community, and speaking as a straight guy with a surprising amount of gay friends on both sides of the border, I'm pretty pleased to learn that the American ones will at least have the same rights as the Canadian ones.

Now, I'm going to save the morality of homosexuality for a later discussion. Being mortal and strictly adherent to Matthew 7:5 I'm not entirely sure I actually get to have that conversation, but since controversy is the bread-and-butter of hits and hits are the bread-and-butter of those of us who are trying to make a living with a single ad box, you can probably expect me to be not so strict in my adherence.

As it happens, I am enjoying the reaction to the ruling more than the ruling itself. Remember, for those of you who need it, that the force and effect of the ruling was that "gay marriage is once again legal in the State of California and can be made to be legal in any state in the union that so wishes." No more, no less.

What's this have to do with me never being able to be a republican? The tea party. Speaker of the House Boehner actually did a very good job of addressing the ruling in a tasteful, responsible way. Then, the right wing of his own party jumped up and shot the chances of a Republican presidency in 2016 right in the rear.

I'm going to start with the statements that are truly egregious-in-fact: the statements from elected Republicans that make it clear that there should be an exam on civil procedure before you're allowed to run for office in America. I refer, of course, to Rep. Stephen Scalise. My source, of course, is the CBC.

“It’s a sad day when unelected judges change the definition of marriage and turn their backs on the will of voters and … their elected representatives,” he declared. 

Unelected judges  overriding the tyranny of the majority is precisely why the US has a supreme court. If it didn't, there is a strong possibility that schools and businesses would still be segregated along racial lines.  In the 60s, when the Jim Crowe laws were still in force an effect, they were very popular among the majority. Sometimes, the will of the voters is wrong in light of the US Constitution, and that's why Judges don't have to run for office. And shouldn't have to.

“Marriage has been debased by this decision, and the moral fibre of our country is affected greatly,” said Doug Lamalfa of California, adding that churches will now somehow be forced to “perform things that they are against.”

Tortoises also occasionally show gay behaviour

 There's actually a factual error in here, but I do want to wade into the area of morality in order to address the first half of the statement. To say that marriage has been debased by gay marriage, in a country where Kim Kardashian was married for about a week and made $17 Million in the process, where overnight drunken weddings in Vegas are so common that they have become a staple of comedy movies, and where the divorce rate is higher than the marriage rate (meaning most divorcees have already been divorced) is a little like saying my applying whiteout to that graffiti over there debased the wall. Moving from that, however, there is a factual error here, and an oft repeated one.

No Church, anywhere in the United States, is forced to perform anything. Not by this ruling or any law on the books I can find. They are simply allowed to do so. Some chruches actually embrace gay marriage: The United Church of Canada is one example, though I'm certain there is an American one. To to say that they were forced to do so only admits something the Con-Equality side doesn't want you to know - some churches bow to public opinion and allow marriage rights to the homosexuals. Admitting that would be admitting that the majority actually does want gay rights.

Redefining marriage, declared Louie Gohmert of Texas, is “usually tried at the end of a great civilization.”

I've um, I've never been a fan of this argument because it lacks an appropriate humility. Rome, you ain't. Damascus, you ain't. But, ignoring for a moment the definition of great civilizations, I've never been able to find a scrap of evidence for this assertion. None. And, once tasked with arguing against gay marriage for a Logic and Debate project in college, I can actually say this was an argument I tried before. Or rather, considered trying - no evidence means no argument.

Of course, Boehner and the mainstream Republicans had the right side of this issue - we disagree, but SCOTUS is SCOTUS - but that doesn't matter, because once again, the Tea Party is hijacking the issue. And that's a shame, because, until there's a legitimate counterpoint to the Democratic Party in the US, the Dems are pretty much going to run the show.

Gays in the Scouts

I'm going to preface this by pointing out that, being from the Soviet Republic of Canuckistan, I can't recall a time where our local scouting divisions had such a ban. As a further disclaimer, I was never actually a scout - I was in Beavers for a while, but by the time I was old enough to actually Scout, I wound up in the Royal Canadian Army Cadets instead. So, I've never had to deal with being a member of an organization that promotes homophobia. Also, apparently I'm full of poorly-thought-out pith and vinegar tonight, so if you're the type of person who is offended by dissent, do me a favour and light up my inbox.

A tiny voice somewhere shouted "But you're Catholic!" That's true. I wouldn't call the catholic position on the morality of homosexuality homophobia and more than I would call catholic sexual morality sociophobia (from the root sociosexual, which is a real word!). The question of whether or not your sexual conduct and preferences override your religious beliefs is a personal one, and if you're serious about your faith it's a conversation you're going to have to have with yourself, regardless of your orientation or paraphilias. It's a conversation for another time and another place, and once again, we've confused two variables that I think people have a hard time with.

I wouldn't call myself a moral relativist. I'm pretty clear-cut on what I consider to be right-and-wrong, and while I have various caveats, corollaries, and loopholes, they're all fairly well-founded and static. I make room for change to the overall code as I grow older and wiser - as even the staunchest moral absolutist would.

Actually, the last one isn't true, as this
man can tell you. (FAIR USE!)

However, I exist in a strange overlap between liberalism and faith where I have come to recognize two constructs: social morality and eumorality. Social morality falls under the category, to put it into Christian constructs, of the golden rule, the admonition against judgement, and similar ideas. Social morality covers the things that belong in a civilized body of law. Bans against those things which tend to annoy people, like killing or raping them, and protections for those things we feel should be our right, like being grippingly sarcastic while trying to make a point, wearing bright plaid shirts, and using cream in your coffee. The rest, the eumorality or true morality, are the things you personally find moral, like only eating responsibly-ranched meat products, refusing to be embalmed upon death, or not trimming your beard - cotton/polyester blends are, obviously, right out.

The question for lawmakers, politicians, and wonks like myself is where eumorality begins and social morality ends. Once upon a time in the United States everyone who wasn't european was only 3/4ths of a person, the Kitten and I could not get married, and in most states, it was more legal for my landlord and his horses to get shady in the back yard than it would have been for my friend and her girlfriend to get married. In the case of the last point: it was yesterday.

So, when we're using the excuse of trying to maintain the moral high-ground as the only real justification for taking exclusionary action, we have to consider the reality that even though morality can look absolute, from a strictly societal position, it's relative. Take a hundred people and you're going to get about 120 moral codes. The best you can do as the architects of society is to try and make the law reflect morality as much as humanly possible.

Shown: Gay bunnies. But it's
more like prison-gay, so does
it "count"? I don't think it
matters...

I'm not gay. Not even a tiny bit, and I'm pretty damn sure of that. Homosexual rights actually have no bearing on my life whatsoever. But Adam and Steve being able to marry whoever they want is how I know I'm going to be able to marry whomever I want. Once upon a time, the love of my life and I would not have been able to. If you ask some churches - some mainstream, very well-accepted churches, we still can't. The point is though, states aren't churches. Sure, some are. Canada isn't. America isn't. Churches are more like... NGOs.

Okay, so, the BSA is an NGO. In many cases, it's even funded and run by local churches and parishes of the same. So, it's understandable that there would be some resistance to allowing gay scouts. And that is all we're talking about. Gay scout masters are actually still banned. It's just the kids, they're letting be gay.

Being a gay kid is not the walk in the park even in liberal areas. Besides any conflict at home, there's students (because teenagers are so enlightened), authority figures, media in general... if anyone's wondering why suicide rates are high among teens and doesn't stop to think that sexual identity might be involved, they're either preteen, or a moron.

All these are people are asking is that their sons, whether gay, straight, or whatever, can go ahead and be scouts. Since the scouts have nothing to do with sex (and rightly shouldn't, youth group that they are!), I feel like whether or not the scouts are gay is about as relevant as how good they would look in drag.

Americanization of Canadian Politics II: Our Increasingly Violent Culture

I have been said to personify one of these from time
to time.

If people knew me by my frustrations alone, they'd probably think of me as a violent person. A teenage decade of losing pretty much every physical fight I've been in, however, has taught me that psychological warfare has much more of a place than any sort of physical conflict.

When it comes to political issues that surround violence, I'm hopelessly liberal - in favour of restricting civilian access to firearms, broadly in favour of legalizing even some of the harder drugs I would personally never touch, anti-death...

Frankly, I never really thought I was sitting all that far outside the margin until I read this thread on the NationStates Forum. While I wasn't surprised by some of the comments considering the vast majority of the players on this site are American, I became surprised pretty quickly once certain players I know to be Canadian got involved.

With "debate" (or what passes for it on the internet) raging on the issue of abolishing the death penalty, a surprising number of otherwise very representative Canadians came out in favour of keeping the practice (or, I suppose, in our case, bringing it back - we abolished it in 1976 and the last executions were actually in 1962), often rather vocally.

What was telling, however, was that these particular Canadians kept citing various prison statistics - from the United States - and calling it "our broken prisons".

Either five or six of the people I know on the internet to be Canadian all spontaneously moved to the States, or, once again, a lack of competitive flare on the part of Canadian broadcasters means we're getting drowned out in favour of CNN and FOX. For the record, and as an aside, on four occasions of the last fifty that I've gone to a restaurant that happened to have a tv tuned to a news channel - commonly McDonalds - it's been tuned to CNN. D'oh.

This is actually one of many things I'm always surprised to hear people get up in arms. I honest to god had one older woman (who frankly should have known better!) complaining about the recent abolition of the penny and invoke President Obama in the proceedings, who is not my president and had nothing to do with setting fiscal or monetary policy in Canada. No discussion of the traditional hot-button issues from America is complete without at least one person in the group somehow invoking the American state of affairs, with such hits as:

Yeah, but when the Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade they pretty much made it impossible to get an abortion in this country.

(Honestly, I can't even begin to tell you what's wrong with that sentence.)

We're all supposed to have health insurance through provincial medicare - why is this clown making us buy health insurance?

That's the other guys!

There's no need to ban guns - just made safety training comprehensive and compulsory and restrict the more ridiculous weapons.

Get this: We already do. Civilians can pretty much only own long arms (and certain, very restricted classes of handgun), and only after earning certification in firearms safety through accredited, government-run instructors.

I can't believe (such and such a state) legalized (pot or gay marriage, player's choice) - What are they doing to this country?

This is another one of those statements I hear way to often. First of all, if it happened in another state, it didn't happen in Canada (I'll teach you the meaning of the word state in countries other than America presently), and what's more, neither of those things is bad. Say what you want about the morality of the issue, but neither Catholic Doctrine nor a strict solo-scriptura reading of the bible makes the use of recreational drugs a sin per-se. Abuse is Gluttony, sure, and I'm pretty sure I saw a passage that makes violating "just laws" (of course, the definition of "just" is open to fairly wide interpretation, because this is the kind of thing where you'd want as much ambiguity as possible) a sin, but in areas where it's legal to smoke and you keep your smoking within the "healthy" limits of most people's drinking and tobacco habits, it's pretty much fair game from a moral standpoint. I'm pretty sure I've said before that you can't really justify a prohibition on Marijuana and the creation of a criminal class if you're going to let people drink alcohol and smoke tobacco. Say what you want about the morality of Gay Marriage - a properly secular government cannot legislate morality, and Gay Marriage is not a public safety issue.

Disapproving Pink-Tailed Chalceus, anyone?

The underlying problem with all this, particularly changing attitudes with younger Canadians toward executions and guns, stems, I believe, from an influx of American media. While I've never been on the ball with the whole "videogames/movies/music cause violence" argument, I certainly get how people make the connection, and I can certainly see such things predisposing a frustrated culture toward the acts often depicted. After all, even non-gamers usually play way more Call of Duty (at least, the recent ones) than is probably necessary or completely healthy. This is coming from a guy who plays some pretty violent games himself, from time to time, though for the most part, lately, killing blocky zombies in Minecraft is about as violent as it gets for me.

If we idolize vengence, of course we come to want the death penalty. We need to learn the distinction between Justice and Vengeance (as a species, on the whole).

Logical Consistency (Marriage and the State)

Prom night. Feels like an age ago.

Something many people seem to forget is that the Catholic viewpoint is that state marriages don't count - at least the way state marriages are conducted here in canuckistan, where the language is as theologically clean as humanly possible. I've been to enough weddings involving justices of the peace to know that there's an identifiable difference between these and just about any other, Christian-conducted ceremony. As it happens, I personally don't have a problem with state marriages - it's a pretty good way to do interfaith weddings when you stop to think about it, or to marry people with no actual religious views.

If you already consider something invalid, do you really get to put energy into deciding how that invalid thing should be administered? I mean, you've pretty much already declared it to be make-believe.

That's exactly what Catholic Answers, one of the largest catholicism-related websites on the English-speaking internet (mostly due to having captured the Catholic.com domain name) is doing. Recently, they sent around a mass email to all their members (by the way, you can't unsubscribe from their mailing lists or delete old forum accounts) doing precisely that. Entitled "Stop Same-Sex Marriage!", the email goes opens with a bombshell.

This Is OurLast Chance to StopSame-Sex Marriage

Formatting and emphasis is theirs, of course. Not two lines further down is a hyperlink for "mak[ing] a gift... that will help you defend marriage!"

I recognize that the Church teaches a very narrow view of the parameters of marriage for straight couples, never mind unorthodox ones. I also recognize that the general population over at CAF works mostly in conservative or ultra-conservative circles and that rather liberal views about secularization such as my own are alien and, to be fair, completely heterodox.

The fundamental problem seems to be that CAF and its operators can't understand the difference between Church and State, or else don't seem to understand why the separation is important or why it exists. I'll go on to demolishing the email itself in short order, but I've got to address that point first, otherwise there's no point in going forward, because my arguments aren't grounded in theology and a basic understanding of civics is necessary.

In the USA, which is where this email is primarily targeted just by tone and subject, there exists a right to the free exercise of religion. That is true in Canada too and my point stands for both countries. In a country where all religions are to be freely exercised, there cannot be a state faith. There just can't. Strictly speaking, Canada has a state faith - a function of our head of state being the head of the Anglican faith - but that faith does not inform state procedures, laws, regulations, codes, or (except loosely) ceremonies.  It's a cute little window dressing. There's a very good reason for that. As soon as the state acknowledges primacy of one religion over the others, and lets that inform their legal system, freedom of religion slowly begins to erode for other religions. Remember: what is morally just is not always legally just and what is legally forbidden can often be a moral act.

Now, out of the general and into the specifics...

First and foremost, if you basically lead by asking me for money, I'm more inclined to be an antagonist. You could be the Canadian Alzheimer's Society or something and I'd still be inclined to laugh in your face and dispute your statistics... at least until I forgot what I was doing and remembered that you're working on my single most-feared disease. It's rude, it looks greedy, and it's just plain gauche.

"Despite the fact [California Proposition 8] was a constitutional amendment, they got key judges—using tortured legal reasoning—to strike it down as unconstitutional."

This species exhibits
homosexual behaviour

 This is an apples-and-oranges fallacy. Prop 8 was a constitutional amendment to the constitution of the State of California, which was overthrown in US courts (not California Courts) and is undergoing appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States because it's unconstitutional under the federal Constitution, which has primacy in the US. "State's Rights" is really more perfunctory than anything else to my understanding of American law.

"It would be just like in 1973, when Roe v. Wade swept away all state laws protecting unborn children from abortion."

It really wouldn't. I can accept abortion as a moral ill sweeping aside tens of millions of lives as something being easy to oppose but I... just don't see that here. Millions of gay couples suddenly being able to be married gay couples is only going to bolster certain industries, like my own, by providing a new market to tap. It's not like gay couples will break up if they're told they can't get married. That's not really how it works here.

Given the mostly-conservative composition of the court, I can't really see an open field being declared. I just see more of the same "state's rights" declarations.

We’re on Our Own . . . So It’s All Up to Us!

Except for just about every other conservative faith group operating in the USA at the moment.

[Our Amicus brief] focuses on the disastrous effects that imposing same-sex marriage would have on religious liberty in America. Here’s what would happen. . . .

A Nightmare Future

As the brief to the Supreme Court bluntly puts it, anyone who upholds true marriage will be treated like a bigot, regardless of his faith:

“To be a devout Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, Muslim, or Orthodox Jew will become the moral equivalent of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Furthermore, our brief points out:

“The Court would correspondingly consign traditional religious beliefs regarding marriage and the family to the same circle of constitutional hell as racism and sexism.

“Thus, simply by accepting the principles that their religious groups have publicly supported for thousands of years, tens of millions of religious believers in the United States would be branded as the legal equivalent of racists, a result that will subject believers to such burdens and acrimony that many will be forced to hide their faith.”

Those burdens will be felt in all parts of society.  

 I realize Amicus curiae briefs are rhetorical by their very nature but... really? The moral equivalent of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan? You feel that that is your strongest possible argument?

The argument you took out of your brief as your best fundraiser has no merit. None, whatsoever. I'm not saying that it won't happen - I'm merely saying that it's probably the weakest argument you could make. What if the KKK had made that argument when intermarriage was legalized? "You can't make [moral issue] legal - It'll make us look like idiots!"

The fear-mongering actually gets worse from here. The following section, entitled "How You, Your Children, and Your Granchildren Will Be Punished", basically threatens that gay marriage will be the downfall of Christendom. I'm to get into specifics in a second but... I thought the gates of Hell could never prevail against the Church?

Employers will fire people—or not hire them in the first place—if they speak out in favor of true marriage. (Some are already doing this.)

Fish species, like A Heckelii, don't derive pleasure from
sex. Like true Catholics, they do not exhibit homosexual
behaviour.

 Of course, this would be illegal under employment nondiscrimination laws protecting the exercise of religion, where such laws exist. And you can't have it both ways - if I had a nickel for every time I personally was turned down for a job because I was going to the wrong church according to the management, I could probably buy a single french-fry from MacDonalds.

Lawsuits will be brought against small business owners to compel them to provide services to homosexuals as married couples. (That’s already happening, too.)

 From what little research I could manage to pull reliable results regarding this is mostly happening in states where gay marriage is legal - it's basically forcing small business owners to acknowledge state functions rather than live in an imagined Theocracy.

Public schools will indoctrinate children against the beliefs of their parents—and against the Catholic Faith itself—in a way that dwarfs what’s happening in the school system today.

This is only true if you consider the entire Catholic Faith to be consumed in this sentence "Homosexuality is wrong." I suppose the Apostles Creed doesn't count for much these days.

From there, the email pretty much devolves back into asking for money, and I'd be happy to send it along to anyone else who wants to see it.

Fundamentally, the argument is the same as the argument I used on this post at A Woman's Place to explain why, if you're going to have a draft, you have to draft anyone.

IF the state is going to be conducting marriages, they have to marry everyone.

Say "No" to Political Parties

I hear from a number of my fellow Canadians that, surely, ours is the freer of the two when compared to the United States of America. How could one argue otherwise, when they have only two parties to choose from, and we have so many? Surely, nobody could disagree that adding choice to the democratic process increases the freedom felt by those who are ruled by the results of the vote, and you need look for no further confirmation  than that which is found in the disdain with which we discuss countries with single-party elections. The more parties, the better.

I disagree. I think there should be fewer political parties, not more. A lot fewer, actually.

A political party is, for all intents and purposes, a coalition of persons who share political ideologies and use their combined headcount to their advantage by applying the principles of majority rule in order to attain positions of power. In that regard, a political party must garner popular support among the electorate, which is done by campaigning on a party platform. As a general truism, a member of the electorate may expect one NDP candidate to be replaceable by another, politically-identical candidate - republican for republican, liberal for liberal, so on and so forth.

A party must, therefore, rely on this platform in order to garner votes. It is possible, even, to compensate for gross flaws in ideology by adopting popular positions. For example, the Republican Party in the States has, as a factor of its positions on marriage and so forth, a distinct anti-homosexuality bias, however understated. Yet support in the LGBT community for the Republican Party persists, due to the party having popular positions on other issues such as defence. This is true in one way or another of almost all political parties, and is a natural function of another truism: no two people will ever find themselves in total agreement on every matter.

What you end up with is the acceptance of bad/unformed/unpopular ideas on the shoulder of ideas that are, or at least seem, more robust, more elegant, and more accurate.

This is why I suggest the abolition of political parties.  While it would be further ideal to replace representative democracies with pure democracies on the strength of modern telecommunication, that is an issue for an entirely different diatribe. Simply decentralize candidate selection and voting. Let communities decide, on the strength of a person's individual merits and ideas, who would best represent them in the political arena.

Compromise is Aggression Now; Repub Rhetoric Puts Dems in Check

I know, I know, I'm a Canadian ranting about American Politics. I hope to have an analysis of the New Democratic Party Leadership Debates done sometime late-week.


If you haven't already heard that America's in the middle of a fight over birth control, I just told you. What you need to know is that a Health and Human Services directive was going to put employers on the hook for birth control coverage for the women that work for them, as part of their general health insurance.

What's new, and you probably didn't hear, was that the Obama Administration has actually backed down on that position last week. They announced that, while coverage was still going to be (for all intents and purposes) universal, employers at religious institutions and institutions with close ties to religion would no longer have to pay the cost, and that the difference would be picked up by insurance companies themselves. With even religious people divided fairly evenly down the middle, you'd think that this would be a laudable compromise. Nobody is forcing anybody to actually take the birth control, and nobody with a strong stance against it is going to have to pay. It makes yet one more personal choice actually personal, which is where medicine belongs.

So what's the problem? Republicans are framing it as the administrating 'ratcheting up' an agenda of 'religious persecution', which, to me anyway, triggers a bit of cognitive dissonance. The Dems looked at how much opposition they were getting, shrugged their shoulders, and compromised, like intelligent adults are expected to do.

It's more than just that, though. Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, and others are still trying to make this an issue of religious persecution, which this isn't about any more. Not now that religious employers aren't going to be required to pay for the extra coverage. What they really mean is that this policy is a violation of their own religious values. That's fine. You're allowed to make that argument. This is America, baby, home of the free, one nation under God and all the rest of that prose. If your Baptist, Mormon, or otherwise religious views have gotten a hammering from this, that's your right (and, some would argue, responsibility) to share. If you hold the view this law is still immoral, you are correct. Conversely, if you think birth control is all right and dandy, you are also correct. When you are incorrect is when you say that it is somehow 'sticking it to religion'. If anyone's getting it "stuck to", it's the insurance companies themselves.

They say a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet. I say a rose is a rose.