Not2BSubjugated
Callous Individualist
- Thread starter
- #21
Free? No. You DON'T have the right to that.
But you DO have a right to contraception!
The government can provide that if they want.
It's not a right, it's a privilege. And the government can provide that privilege if they wish. (I support it for obvious reasons. people don't realize how much of a positive effect it can have overall.)
To be denied an item that you have a right to have because of religion is against the constitution, even if it is a privilege.
It's like saying you have to start paying for church. You can't go if you don't pay for it yourself because I'm an atheist.
There's a few misconceptions shining through in your argument. First, if the government doesn't force your employer to buy your contraceptives for you, you haven't been denied anything. You can still go buy all the contraceptives you can fit in your SUV if you choose to do so. I've never heard of any religious types standing in the medicine isle at 7-11 and blocking people off from the condom racks.
Next, the health care mandate is the only piece of legislation currently implying that there is a Federally recognized "privilege" to be given contraceptives by way of government mandate. Even if there was, it wouldn't trump the religious freedom granted in The Constitution. Why? No new legislation legally trumps the Constitution. The only way this new privilege could have that kind of weight is if the privilege underwent the ratification to be added to the Amendments. Absent that, you must recognize that the entire concept of the Constitution is a set of rules outside of which future legislation, exempting new Amendments, cannot operate. Essentially, even if Washington representatives -did- decide to Federally recognize this privilege, it would not carry the weight to trump the 1st Amendment's religious protection. Quite the opposite, actually.
Next, people -do- pay for Churches themselves. The government doesn't build and maintain religious organizations/infrastructure, it simply allows them to receive donations from their congregations without taxing them. You seem to suffer from a common misconception shared by most big government advocates: when the government doesn't take your money from you, they're not actually giving you anything. Those donations the churches receive from their congregation is not technically the government's property, so when it isn't taxed, nothing has actually been given away to the religion by anyone except those donors who voluntarily dropped their tithe/offering into the collection plate. If I'm standing outside your place of employment when you pick up your paycheck and I don't take your money on your way to your car, you don't thank me for giving you that paycheck.
Lastly, there's a minor point that I'm not sure if you've thought through or not. The US government isn't currently running a profit margin on any investments. It doesn't have its own income in any amount that even approaches its levels of spending. That means that for the government to provide you with anything, it has to use money that it has taxed from others. In essence, saying that the government is providing you with something is the same as saying the government is coercing your fellow citizens into providing you with something.
so you are saying because of your 1st amendment rights, people shouldn't be able to get it through healthcare?
If you've already forgotten what the original topic was about, that's not exactly what I'm getting at. I only brought the 1st amendment into the conversation because you brought up that women having their privilege denied by someone's religion. The only place I can imagine that argument being leveled currently is at the Catholic church so I assumed that you were referring to the current issue regarding the mandate vs the catholic church. In that case I adhere to the argument that, if offering contraceptives as part of the employee package conflicts with the employer's religious practices, they ought not be forced to do so. So, to answer your question, yes. If the only way you can procure your contraceptives is if the government forces your employer to give them to you, and your employer happens to be a religious organization to whom contraceptives are a sin (an evil, etc), then my 1st amendment rights (everyone's 1st amendment rights) trump your privilege to free stuff.
And, as I said at the onset, before you fire off about "my" 1st amendment rights, try to recall that I'm not Catholic or personally opposed to contraceptives.