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dogma wrote:For example, how does one manage female hormonal issues without birth control?

I have no idea what the brand names are, but my wife took some when we were trying to have a kid. Apparently becoming pregnant levels everything out, because she didn't have to keep up the hormone treatment after she got knocked up.


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Grakmar wrote:It depends on why that law was created. I can't think of a legitimate reason for it (other than to specifically limit Muslims' religious practices), so that clearly is in violation of the 1st amendment.

The contraceptive mandate was enacted specifically because a certain group of employers refused to provide contraceptives.

dogma wrote:

biccat wrote:2) secondary medical uses of birth control pills does not overcome the objection to other methods of birth control.

But they do overcome the categorical objection.

Theologically, categorical objection is not at issue. The problem is not theological but rather a matter of practical policy, in which case the secondary uses do not overcome the categorical objection.

Manchu wrote:The problem is not theological but rather a matter of practical policy, in which case the secondary uses do not overcome the categorical objection.

They could be made to, provided the objection to birth control is not based on something like an aversion to casual sex.

Well, that's another level of mix up. Ostensibly, the only people having licit sex in the eyes of the Church are married heterosexuals. So the teaching against birth control is aimed at them. Of course, practically, all the rest of you are roped in, too, because extramarital sex acts are wrong at least in part for the same reasons that married people aren't supposed to use contraceptive -- the arbitrary rejection of the properly contextualized procreative act. The issue is fairly knotty because of the way it was worked out. You see, the majority report done by the Vatican commission concluded that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with contraception because it assumed a conception of marriage as a holistic relationship. The minority report, which Paul VI ultimately adopted in Humane Vitae, looked at the issue regarding the individual sex act. Now, a teaching about sex in marriage that is divorced from its context (that is, marriage) is easily applicable to all sorts of sex -- which, if you ask me, is what some of these conservative Italian bishops were really worried about in the late sixties, as opposed to whether married people were using contraception. After all, do you hear much about unwanted pregnancies within marriages, all other things being equal? Therefore the aversion, as you put, is indeed directed to casual sex as much as anything else and the Church's idea of casual sex is that it is not open to life.

Which is pretty ironic when you're also telling kids to forego contraceptives.

dogma wrote:Yeah, my dad has had 5 different churches, and only one sprung for an accountant (~200 regular attendance), otherwise he's done the books (Granted, he has an MBA, so he has some basic knowledge.), or had me do them.

Looking at his friends, across multiple denominations, most of them either had a basic familiarity with accounting when they started, or acquired one on the fly (Rule 1 in NPOs: never trust volunteers.).

Oh for sure. "I've done a bit of that in the past and would happy to help out for free" is among the most dangerous sentences in the English language.


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biccat wrote:However, as has been discussed upthread, the President's compromise was actually nothing of the sort.

Do you think that the cost to the insurer of "free" contraceptions will not be passed down to the church?

If you'd read the thread, you'd have seen I already responded to that, and consider it not likely at all. Because contraception is very cheap, so why risk Federal penalties for the sake of allocating a pittance?

And more importantly, because such legislation already exists, including the state Rick Warren's church has been set up. And he never saw costs for the provision of contraception getting splashed across other areas, or at least never bothered to let it worry him. Yet now that it is to become Federal law he's freaking out. It's almost as if the whole thing is empty political theatre.


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Manchu wrote:This was the absolutely stupidest move the President could make. One of the advantages to being an incumbent is that you get to pick your battlefields if not necessarily your battles. Now why on earth would you pick this as your battlefield? Who do you stand to win? People who will already vote for you no matter what. Who do you stand to lose? Not just Catholic democrats but also and more importantly the idealistic young people who elected you to begin with.

Except that people that side with the President can't be just assumed to vote for him. People keep on talking as if US presidential elections are decided by winning over the undecided centre, adding them to your typical voters and seeing if you've got the most votes. But the number of people in the centre who can't decide and who actually bother to vote is utterly trivial.

What matters is giving your side a reason to vote for you, either by making the other side seem utterly horrible, or by giving them something to actually like in you. In 2010 the Democrats were utterly smashed, because Republicans turned out in about the numbers they always turn out, whille Democrat numbers were way down, and it was largely a result of Obama and the Democrat dominated congress giving them very little to vote for. Since then we've seen some efforts to deliver for the liberal base (such as repealing DADT), combined with a lot of liberal friendly rhetoric - all aimed at closing the enthusiasm gap.

No one ever won a battle by underestimating their opponents, sebster. You can foolishly say conservatives are playing pretend but what they are really playing is politics. And they're doing great at it -- at least compared to Mr. Obama, at the moment.

Except Obama's numbers have improved massively over the last few months, and particularly over this nonsense noise over contraception.

I agree that it could hurt Obama, that depends on how the issue is framed in the media. If the Republicans win it sounds like it's the state forcing religious bodies to do something, and that's bad. However, if he wins it sounds like religious bodies trying to stop people outside of their faith doing something, and any Republican who hitches on to that wagon comes out looking like a theocrat.


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dogma wrote:Hell, I know self-professed Catholics that don't care about the Catholic position on birth control.

In the developed world birth control use is as prevelant among catholics as it is among non-catholics, and it's been that way since, more or less, the 70s.

The celibate church hierarchy has their ideas, but the faithful moved on decades ago.


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gorgon wrote:Looking at it from that perspective, I wonder how much of the Vatican's view on the matter has to do with keeping a steady flow of new Catholics coming into the church. I mean, if Catholic couples start having 1.9 children...that really doesn't help grow the religion, does it?

And funnily enough, Italy has the lowest birth rate in the world, at just 1.7.


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Melissia wrote:Well, that's certainly a thing.

Yes, sourclam's statment is probably the stupidest thing that I've seen said on this forum in the past six months.

sebster wrote:Except Obama's numbers have improved massively over the last few months, and particularly over this nonsense noise over contraception.

But this isn't a monthly news cycle. Actually, he gained a point coming out of January and has lost two in the wake of his "compromise" announcement. I'm not saying it's connected to the issue at hand. I'm also not saying these kind of polls reflect the wisdom of particular political tactics, i.e., I reject the substance of your retort as well as the approach.

sebster wrote:The celibate church hierarchy has their ideas, but the faithful moved on decades ago.

Trite and wrong. You might well bill this as "us v. them" but you don't seem to know who "they" are. As Catholics who have been paying attention pointed out, the hierarchs haven't seemed to bothered with contraception over the last few decades, either. If bishops haven't taught it all these years and almost no one actually observes it, the question for Catholics becomes a bit more nuanced than "the Church is out of touch."


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sebster wrote:In 2010 the Democrats were utterly smashed, because Republicans turned out in about the numbers they always turn out, whille Democrat numbers were way down, and it was largely a result of Obama and the Democrat dominated congress giving them very little to vote for.

HCR? To quote Joe Biden, it was a "big fething deal." By the standards of FDR, LBJ, and even Nixon, this might well be the biggest fething deal in American politics. The 2010 failure of Democrats had to do with Republicans demoralizing the center that carried Obama to office and scaring a good many of them into doing more than doubting.

Manchu wrote:]Automatically Appended Next Post:[/size]

sebster wrote:In 2010 the Democrats were utterly smashed, because Republicans turned out in about the numbers they always turn out, whille Democrat numbers were way down, and it was largely a result of Obama and the Democrat dominated congress giving them very little to vote for.

HCR? To quote Joe Biden, it was a "big fething deal." By the standards of FDR, LBJ, and even Nixon, this might well be the biggest fething deal in American politics. The 2010 failure of Democrats had to do with Republicans demoralizing the center that carried Obama to office and scaring a good many of them into doing more than doubting.

Yeah, except the base wanted single-payer and not a reheated Heritage Foundation idea from Newt's days as Speaker. I'm sure you can see why adopting a Republican idea on HRC and getting it passed despite their opposition didn't do much to motivate the Dem base right?

I didn't see a unified base rallying behind reheated HillaryCare, either. The "problem" with the Democratic party is old -- lots of interests that don't totally coincide except at the broadest level -- and it's not going away. It's inherent to a mainstream leftist outlook. (And, yes, I'd rather support a party that leans toward disorganized than toward authoritarian.) Even within the bluest segements, there are a lot of very distinct shades of blue. This is why Democrats always rely so heavily upon the broadest sympathies. Every card-carrying Democrat who writes off HCR in 2010 as "a reheated Heritage Foundation idea from Newt's days" might as well be voting Republican. How much more so the vast majority of Americans whose political sensibilities are fickle/insular? I think liberals need to realize that a lot of people they think are in their base are really not.

biccat wrote:You're right, there are acceptable secondary uses for birth control pills. However:
1) those secondary uses can be obtained by non-birth control methods;

I would LOVE to see your medical credentials so you can justify that statement.

EDIT: Okay, question aswererd.

Next question: Why should a non-Catholic nurse, doctor,or janitor for that matter, employed at a Catholic hospital be denied access to affordable contraception when they laws of the land say that it must be offered? Because a bunch of old men in funny hats are misinterpreting a single line from a 3000 year old document?

I'm sure if you look long enough, there is a line in the bible justifying women as second-class citizens... if even that high. Do we allow the old men in the funny hats to overturn women's sufferage too? Okay, bad argument. But the modern world doesn't work well if you try to run it via an ancient set of rules.

Manchu wrote:Well, that's another level of mix up. Ostensibly, the only people having licit sex in the eyes of the Church are married heterosexuals.

No wonder you got married so young.

Manchu wrote:But this isn't a monthly news cycle. Actually, he gained a point coming out of January and has lost two in the wake of his "compromise" announcement. I'm not saying it's connected to the issue at hand. I'm also not saying these kind of polls reflect the wisdom of particular political tactics, i.e., I reject the substance of your retort as well as the approach

Are you honestly claiming that as evidence the issue has hurt Obama? Or that approval ratings are the core measure of electibility?

Trite and wrong. You might well bill this as "us v. them" but you don't seem to know who "they" are. As Catholics who have been paying attention pointed out, the hierarchs haven't seemed to bothered with contraception over the last few decades, either. If bishops haven't taught it all these years and almost no one actually observes it, the question for Catholics becomes a bit more nuanced than "the Church is out of touch."

Haven't seemed to have bothered is what you do when you've lost on the issue, but don't want to admit it. And yeah, there's nuance, what's your point?

HCR? To quote Joe Biden, it was a "big fething deal." By the standards of FDR, LBJ, and even Nixon, this might well be the biggest fething deal in American politics. The 2010 failure of Democrats had to do with Republicans demoralizing the center that carried Obama to office and scaring a good many of them into doing more than doubting.

Are you really, really going to claim HCR was successful policy? It was meant to be something for the progressives, but we all know it managed to be unpopular with every voting group.

sebster wrote:Are you honestly claiming that as evidence the issue has hurt Obama? Or that approval ratings are the core measure of electibility?

Re-read:

Manchu wrote:I'm not saying it's connected to the issue at hand. I'm also not saying these kind of polls reflect the wisdom of particular political tactics, i.e., I reject the substance of your retort as well as the approach

sebster wrote:Haven't seemed to have bothered is what you do when you've lost on the issue, but don't want to admit it. And yeah, there's nuance, what's your point?

My point is that you've framed this issue incorrectly because you don't actually know what you're talking about. Your analysis is actually just sentiment. As I have said in this thread, the majority opinion of the commission assigned by the Vatican to study the issue found nothing intrinsically wrong with birth control. The bishops have not been silent merely because the laity finds the teaching uncompelling.

sebster wrote:Are you really, really going to claim HCR was successful policy? It was meant to be something for the progressives, but we all know it managed to be unpopular with every voting group.

Which is why I have posted at least twice in this thread that the President should not let the Republicans make this election a referendum on HCR.