Freedom Is Just Another Word, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #351 | @MDWorld

December 9, 2013 Mike Gold 6 Comments

The University of Notre Dame joined certain other Christian (and Catholic, depending on your definition of “Christian”) in suing the government – which is us – over Obamacare. They all are saying it interferes with the initial 15 words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

They may have a point. At least, I can see their point. Obamacare does prohibit religious-based bans on birth control, although it neither forces nor encourages anybody to control births. However, I would argue that even though they are a religious corporation they still aren’t allowed to discriminate against their employees in the name of their own religion.

But if you buy their argument, then there are lots and lots of laws that prohibit the free exercise of religion. To wit:

In order to get your child into public school, you are likely to be compelled to get your child inoculated against various communicable diseases. This must be an annoyance to Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Scientologists, and conspiracy theorists alike.

There are all sorts of blue laws that prohibit the sale or certain, or all, goods on Sundays. That’s amusing, but let’s say you work Monday through Friday (I’m told that’s actually typical) and you are some sort of Jew or Muslim. If you can’t do all of your shopping after work and you can’t do it on the Christians’ day of rest, you’ve got to do your shopping on your biblical day of rest. Blue laws prohibit the free exercise of their religion.

There are major faiths that operate hospitals where, if a woman is pregnant and there is a complication in that pregnancy and only one of the two is going to survive, the mother loses. That’s that. No vote. You don’t ask her, or her spouse. She’s allowed to die when her death could have been prevented. Fetuses make up our Death Panels. In fact, even if same sex marriage is legal in your state, is the religion-based hospital obligated to let the spouse make decisions that are commonplace in a heterosexual marriage? If not, are we tramping on that religion’s free exercise of religion?

Most of our public government functions begin with some sort of blessing from some sort of religious leader. Alternating between various religions might be a way around this, so if your local city council meeting ever opens with a statement from a Scientologist, a Rastafarian, a Santerian, a Rosicrucian, or an atheist, please let me know.

(Yeah, I know. There’ve been a few such “blessings” allowed from Wiccans. Groovy, but that’s not exactly the same as having a Thuggee start up the band.)

Where does one person’s right to the free exercise of religion end? At the point where somebody else’s free exercise begins? That doesn’t work very well: whereas shopping malls can force businesses to be open on Sundays and sundry religious holidays, the government cannot. And where do we atheists fit in? Why must we be subjected to the extreme inconveniences of other people’s religions?

Is it worthwhile to give up several of your rights in order to work for a religious-based company? In times of high unemployment, well, maybe, but you are degrading yourself to second-class citizenship. In the United States of America, approved religions are exempt from charges of bigotry. You can hire a non-Christian to work in your office, but if he or she doesn’t want to follow the approved Christian dogma, they are out on their ass. Go find work with the heathens.

Or forget about health care.

Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com and on iNetRadio, www.iNetRadio.com as part of “Hit Oldies” every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check www.getthepointradio.com above for times and on-demand streaming information. Gold also joins MDW’s Marc Alan Fishman, Martha Thomases and Michael Davis as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he pontificates on matters of four-color.