Civil Hypocracy

I'll probably get bashed for this posting but I don't care. I spend a lot of time hiking around the area, which gives me time to think. Yesterday, while hiking out by one of my favorite rivers, I thought a lot.

I saw the clip of Rush Limbaugh bashing the graduate student and it kind of got my blood flowing. I listen to the republicans debate over civil liberty and the right for a faith based organization to choose to pay for things like contraception and it just frustrates me that on one hand, conservatives want the federal government to stay out of their business but on the other hand if it was up to them, everyone would have to live under their religious rules based on a set of values that only apply to a minority of our population. Gay rights, contraception, and abortion are all things that churches may be against but the reality is, most people don't subscribe to the teachings of those churches so why do we all have to be subjected to their rules? The answer might be because certain politicians may be better at manipulating a base through the use of rhetoric in order to gain support regardless of what their base really stands for.

Before I go off on Rush and whether we should be paying for women's contraception, let me just say that I have a very unique set of experiences that create a perspective that might be of interest. I went to grad school for sociology, I traveled around the world and stayed with host families everywhere we went, I worked as a program director for a faith based inner-city community center and I was raised in a fairly strict Catholic family. That doesn't mean you should necessarily agree with everything I'm saying but maybe you could benefit from listening for just a minute or two. As with all these blog entries, I encourage you to participate as long as you keep it respectful.

Rush is a dope. I know, that's not very respectful to him or his followers but calling that grad student a "slut" and a "prostitute" for fighting for her health care provider to cover her contraception is just wrong and insensitive and hypocritical. The obvious parallel here is how insurance companies have no problem paying for this guy's Viagra so to use his logic, maybe we should be asking him if we can see his sex tapes. The problem is, I can't see a single woman out there that would want to have sex with him and if so, I'd hate to see her or him naked.

I do watch the Daily Show, which obviously leans heavily to the left so I realize there are some biases I need to be aware of. I do however, try hard to understand the argument to not want to pay for contraception but I always fall a little short; especially when those arguments come from people that will also fight for things such as payed maternity leave and Viagra. While watching last night, Stewart revisited a clip from Fox News host Megyn Kelly where she fights with this guy over payed leave. Yesterday, Megyn and some of her co-hosts completely bashed the grad student for her view on women's rights and the contraception issue saying she was just being entitled and if she wants contraception, she should just pay for it herself. If you're going to make the argument, at least be consistent.

Where this gets a little convoluted is that some people are using the religious angle to support their argument and some are using economics and the fact that they don't want their money going to support the welfare of someone else. As for the economics, it's much cheaper preventing the pregnancy than it is to deal with an unwanted child. There are also many health benefits to many forms of contraception that far out-way the up-front costs that save us billions on the back side. (I know some of you that read this so no, that's not a pun.)

So here's the problem with allowing religious values into politics. The community center I worked for in Milwaukee was a Catholic organization under the umbrella of Ministry Health Care, which happens to be one of the largest health care organizations in the Mid-West. As a Catholic organization, we could not support or teach the use of contraception to our community members. We had to teach an abstinence only curriculum to the youth that visited our center. There were some truths to the curriculum such as abstinence being the only sure way to prevent STD's and pregnancy but the reality was, that the kids and the adults for that matter, were going to have sex regardless what we taught. In my opinion, the number one issue facing the inner-city, (and most impoverished areas in our country for that matter,) is unwanted and teen pregnancy because it perpetuates a situation where kids are raising kids and parenting skills and the means for providing for the infant are diminished incredibly. The use of Catholic driven strategies did absolutely nothing to prevent the issue and if faith based methodology is what we're left with or if that's the only means for an individual to obtain services, we will never fix the problem. What science tells us is that curriculum using abstinence plus contraception works better and actually getting contraception to the teens before a pregnancy is best. But Rick Santorum and most of the Conservatives don't want to hear that. They just want to impose the same faith based strategies to everyone as if it's the only way it could be because that's what the church says. How does that equate to civil liberty?

Our center didn't just provide services to a destitute community; it also provided jobs at a sustainable pay rate. We hired people from our community to provide the services and we paid them livable wages as well as offered better than average benefits. Fortunately, our center out-sourced our insurance from a provider that was not faith based so contraception was something that was covered. For many of our families, this wasn't just important for themselves but for their sexually active teenagers as well.(I actually had a 35 year-old woman working for me who was not only a mother, but also a grandmother. That's right. Do the math. Had she had the coverage sooner, maybe the cycle could have been broken for this family.)For those of you who think your teenagers are not having sex, most of you have your head in the sand.

Let's say we didn't use the insurance company we did and were forced to use a company that was faith based. Regardless of what our employees thought about the use of contraception, they would have to live by the rules of the provider. Now you might say they had a choice to work there or even to accept that insurance but the reality is, they don't have the choices we take for granted. Where else in the inner-city were these people going to work? McDonald's? The Mall? Do you think they were going to receive benefits there? Do you think they could afford to shop other providers? And if it comes down to paying for the phone bill or the pill, what would you do?

The crazy thing is Ministry Health Care recognized the need for providing procedures to folks in their clinics that go against the church's doctrine. In order to get around this, they would lease out offices in their clinics to other health care providers that would offer those services. If someone came in for a procedure they couldn't provide, they were referred to the clinic within their clinic that could. As we worked with our youth, we told our staff that if a kid came to our center that we knew was sexually active, they should bring them down the street to Planned Parenthood so they could get the services they needed. Of course, we had to have them do it on their own time...

My point is, is although I understand where the church stands and realize that it works for some of us; I also understand that it doesn't work for all and that when we allow religious values to dictate policy that everyone, regardless of their religious beliefs have to succumb to, we're going to have some serious issues and many of the needs of our people won't be met. If you want to teach your kids religious values, great--more power to you. But as it comes to dealing with the country's issues and health care specifically, lets let science drive policy.

Wow, sorry for the rant but it's been a while and you didn't have to read it. Just sayin...as for fishing; it was in the upper 50's the last couple days but windier than hell. There are too many days to be on the water to have to deal with 30 mph winds by choice. However, we did stay out until 2am the other night on another ling mission. We caught two ling and a number of trout. No walleyes.

Keep 'em where they live...