Google WWW Talk To Action


The Indian River Incident : What You Can Do

link > The "Stop the ACLU Coalition" Shaming Project
How you can help stop "Stop The ACLU" just by sending a few emails



 'Left Behind' video game imageThe Shaming Project

does the violence of "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" bother you ? If so, what can you do ? Well, to begin with you can email Jonathan Hutson's stories to people you know. That will help to bring more public scrutiny of the game. Public shaming really works ! Just click on the "email" icon and link at the top or bottom of the story and you'll be taken to a form that will allow you email the first story, The Purpose Driven Life Takers or the latest installment without leaving this site. Thanks. 'Left Behind' video game image




Whose Freedom? Institutional Conscience Clause Under Consideration in California
By Kathryn JoyceMon Jan 29, 2007 at 02:34:21 PM EST
topic: Reproductive Rights section:Front Page printable version print this story
The Christian Medical Association (CMA), a Tennessee-based activist group of Christian doctors and dentists whose leadership includes alumni of Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse, has been actively involved in both openly faith-based and pseudo-scientific challenges to women's reproductive health options ranging from RU-486, to in vitro fertilization to, of course, birth control. Now the group, "the nation's largest faith-based organization of physicians," is taking its case to California, appearing as "Intervenor-Defendants" in a lawsuit brought by the state's Attorney General,  Lockyer v. United States, that challenges the constitutionality of the Weldon Amendment, an institutional "conscience clause" surreptitiously added to an omnibus "must-pass" spending bill in 2004 the night before the legislation was up for vote. Following the decades-long anti-abortion strategy of "chipping away" at abortion accessibility, the measure, which was introduced by Florida Representative Dave Weldon, a staunch Republican and anti-abortion activist, extended the "right of refusal" - that is, the exemption of individual doctors with specific religious objections from performing abortions; a right they have always had - to any health care entity. In effect, this meant treating hospitals and health clinics, insurance companies and corporate HMOs as though they were conscientiously objecting individuals, who could refuse to provide service or coverage for any abortion services, information or referrals on the same moral grounds that a Catholic doctor, for instance, has long been able to use. And for doctors or health care workers who support abortion rights in anti-abortion hospitals, clinics, or HMOs, the amendment could have the effect of a gag order.
But you'd never know that from the way that anti-abortionists discussed the bill. When it was passed, supporters called it the "Conscience Protection Amendment," or the "Abortion Non-Discrimination Act," claiming that it would "protect" health care entities like HMOs from "discrimination" at the hands of state governments that tried to force them to provide reproductive health services and information. It expanded the definition of what sort of entity could reasonably said to have a "conscience" that warranted protection and special consideration - a question of "a balance of rights" that the ACLU suggested resolving by favoring individuals with specific religious objections, not vague, amorphous corporate entities with nebulous "moral objections" (which in some cases have amounted to pressure and ultimatums from anti-abortion activists who don't want abortion services offered in their community). But though the ban was made to effect institutions, anti-abortion groups spun the bill as a protection of individual health care workers against abortion-rights advocates' using government agencies to coerce unwilling health care workers to participate in abortions.

Specifically, the Weldon Amendment enforces its "conscience clause" objections by cutting off funding for state or local governments that require their hospitals to provide a set of basic reproductive health services as a condition of receiving financial aid.

Just weeks after the passage of this 2004 bill, vilified by abortion-rights advocates across the board as a vastly misleading evocation of religious repression, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer and Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell filed a lawsuit to block the amendment, which they described as "a federal spending restriction that could deny $49 billion in federal funds to California if the state enforces women's constitutional right to emergency abortion care."

"The Weldon amendment tramples on women's constitutional rights, state sovereignty and the interests of California taxpayers," said Lockyer. "Equality for women is illusory unless they remain free to make their own health care decisions. With the Weldon amendment, President Bush and Congress are denying women that freedom. And the danger doesn't end there. The funding restrictions could damage the state's ability to improve our schools, make our children safer, aid jobless workers, collect child support from deadbeat parents, and provide child care to poor people trying to get on their feet."

Said O'Connell: "The Weldon amendment threatens to hold funding for schools and other important government services hostage in an effort to force states to restrict women's reproductive health options. This unfair provision of federal law must not be allowed to stand. California law rightly protects women's reproductive freedom. Our schools and our students should not be penalized because of it."

...

The spending restriction at issue resides deep inside an appropriations act that provides states at least $143 billion in federal funds for labor, health and human services, education and related programs. California state agencies, including the Department of Education, expect to receive about $49 billion in federal dollars under the act, according to the complaint. The Weldon amendment jeopardizes California 's receipt of all these funds.

The amendment prohibits disbursement of any funds made available under the act to any state or local government that "subjects any institutional or individual health care (provider) to discrimination on the basis that the health care (provider) does not provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions."

"Congress cannot constitutionally circumvent a woman's fundamental right to reproductive freedom through the Weldon amendment's draconian funding restrictions," the complaint states. "Because this coercive federal statute is wholly inconsistent with our federal system of government, this court should strike it down."

But such a rebuttal to the Weldon Amendment's misleading rhetoric of "rights," "freedom" and "conscientious objection" does not prevent its advocates from continuing to employ such defenses. Today, the CMA's press release called Attorney General Lockyer's challenge to the amendment "reverse discrimination," and reinforced the notion of the oppression inherent in upholding universal standards of patients' access to reproductive healthcare:

CMA CEO Dr. David Stevens noted, "The Attorney General's attack on conscience protections is essentially an attack on the First Amendment freedoms of healthcare providers who wish to act consistently with their religious or ethical standards. Our country was founded by individuals who had personally experienced the pain of overreaching governments that tried to force them to deny their religious beliefs. That's why the United States has historically prevented governments from tramping over the religious freedom of expression in the form of conscientious objection.

"The state Attorney General's opposition to these freedoms specifically targets and threatens faith-based hospitals, clinics and providers who provide irreplaceable services to underprivileged patients who otherwise would have nowhere to turn for help. These institutions and individuals will not compromise their conviction that abortion immorally ends a human life. Is the state of California prepared to shut down these vitally needed faith-based hospitals and clinics?"

Senior Vice President and OB/GYN Dr. Gene Rudd added, "Hopefully the court will recognize not only the constitutional freedoms for healthcare providers with deeply held convictions, but also recognize the political motivation behind this attack on conscience protections. If fewer physicians objected to abortion as immoral and unethical, pro-abortion forces would not have to be attempting to force physicians to perform abortions. It is sadly ironic that those who march under the banner of choice are trying to force others to conform to their beliefs.

"It is imperative that we protect the ethical integrity of physicians and the medical profession by allowing them to act on their ethical convictions. We do not want a nation of doctors without conscience."

At the time the Weldon Amendment was passed, I studied the different ways that such religious and individual "freedom" language was being used by anti-abortion activists to subvert individual, and especially low-income, women's access to abortion in the name of "protecting" large corporations from acting against their "consciences." I found that not only were the "health care providers" in question far from the besieged individual doctors supporters made them out to be, but that the "right of refusal" was being turned on its head in conservative communities, where hospitals and doctors that wished to provide abortion and contraception services were being intimidated or coerced into not providing them:

Who were these besieged health care workers being forced to violate their consciences? In New Jersey, it was a public clinic that merged with a Catholic hospital and agreed to stop providing abortions. How was it oppressed? By a New Jersey court ruling that public hospitals bought out or merged with Catholic hospitals should establish a trust fund for patients who sought sterilizations, abortions or related referrals for services that would no longer be available from the clinic. In Palmer, Alaska, it was a group of religious conservatives elected to a local hospital board who voted to end abortion services at a local hospital, charging that abortion was "out of step with community norms." Their evidence of discrimination? A lawsuit filed by an obstetrician-gynecologist who performed abortions at the hospital, and sued for the right to continue following the dictates of his conscience. In New Mexico, it was a county commissioner, Paul Curry, who inserted language into a public hospital's long-term lease agreement, requiring limits on abortion "as a method of birth control," with the accusation that the non-profit hospital might someday market abortion as a money-making scheme. Curry's oppressor? A state finance board which ruled his arbitraty insertion of the anti-abortion clause into the lease terms unconstitutional.

These three examples of non-religious hospitals suffering "discrimination" for their anti-abortion policies were cited as proof of the necessity of the Weldon Amendment, and continue to be referenced by Weldon Amendment supporters like CMA as evidence of religious discrimination against defenseless pro-life doctors. But compared to the merging hospitals and activist hospital board members, we should keep in mind the actually defenseless players in this scenario: poor or rural women with limited health care options who may be restricted to faith-based hospitals because of their circumstances, or women locked into anti-abortion and anti-contraception insurance and health plans. These are the people who are protected by state regulations, such as the ones California is fighting to maintain, that attempt to ensure equal access to services for all patients. And that notion of patients' rights is something that must be remembered and repeated when discussing cases such as Lockyer v. United States, where double-speaking defendants assume the mantle of oppression in order that they might legally discriminate against others, or in any other instances of media-spun claims that the rights of HMOs' "consciences" are of more importance than patients' rights to the care they provide.




Display:
Here's a link to a partial list of state laws concerning "conscience clauses": http://www.ncsl.org/programs/health/conscienceclauses.htm

by Kathryn Joyce on Mon Jan 29, 2007 at 03:51:40 PM EST

This is an example of what's wrong with the concept of corporate 'personhood'.  Civil rights and human rights are for humans, not corporations.  Corporations get the government-given rights of living more-or-less in perpetuity and of limiting the liability of their owners.  There's no good reason they should also get the added advantages of what we like to think of as God-given personal rights. Intrusive regulation of a sort that no human should have to experience is a fair exchange for what corporations have been given.  It's a rather Faustian bargain -- in return for their charters, they give up their claims to having souls.

I think this is a religious issue that needs to be made much of.  Corporate personhood, which has a very shaky legal underpinning and is being attacked at the local level in a few places, strikes me as being idolatrous as well as unconstitutional.  The Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD-www.poclad.org) has good information on the constitutional issues.

by wipeltz on Tue Jan 30, 2007 at 08:37:23 PM EST


This is a bit tangential, but important: just this week, a young woman in Florida who had been raped, upon reporting it to the police, was arrested and jailed based on a technicality related to a 4-year old conviction from when she was a juvenile. While in jail, a female guard refused to allow the woman the emergency contraceptive she'd been prescribed after the rape on the grounds that it conflicted with the guard's religion. An astounding example of where unregulated "conscience clause" exemptions can take us.

by Kathryn Joyce on Wed Jan 31, 2007 at 06:02:12 PM EST

Left Behind: Eternal Forces: Installments of Jonathan Hutson's Talk To Action expose series on the "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game have been viewed by up to 1/2 million people. See our site section featuring Over 35 original articles covering the controversial "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game that has provoked a boycott by a coalition of religious groups and a letter writing campaign urging Walmart to stop selling the game. Media inquiries click here
(image: detail from Francoise Dubois' rendition of the Bartholomew's Day Massacre reveals the actual nature of religious warfare)

Palin: "A Natural Choice" for Catholics?
The Catholic Right, Part Sixty-eight Is Governor Sarah Palin really "a natural choice" for Catholics as Fidelis's Brian Burch suggests?  The answer is obviously,......
By Frank Cocozzelli (4 comments)
Major Christian Organization Endorses the Military Religious Freedom Foundation
With all the attention being given to the radical fundamentalist brand of Christianity espoused by churches like that of Sarah Palin -- a brand......
By Chris Rodda (0 comments)
Palin's Church Promotes Gay Conversion
The Associated Press reports that the Wasilla Bible Church where Sarah Palin is a member is promoting a conference on the crackpot notion of......
By Frederick Clarkson (0 comments)
Palin's Pastor: God "Is Gonna Strike Out His Hand Against... America
On July 20, 2008, the pastor of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's home church, Larry Kroon, delivered a sermon called "Sin Is Personal To......
By Max Blumenthal (1 comment)
Sarah Palin and the Servant Heart
<small>Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates (author info)</small>Sarah Palin's references to the Servant Heart comes from the idea that Jesus of Nazareth asked his......
By Chip Berlet (5 comments)
Short Takes: Sarah Palin Edition
Religion Dispatches: Kathryn Joyce profiles Palin -- as McCain's mad pander to the Religious Right continues to unfold. Gay City News: The accumulating evidence......
By Frederick Clarkson (2 comments)
Palin's Churches and the Third Wave
Part Two This posting documents the extensive involvement of several of Sarah Palin's churches in the Third Wave Movement, also known as the New......
By Ruth (2 comments)
Palin's Churches and the Third Wave
Part One History and Theology of the Third Wave Sarah Palin has refused to acknowledge belonging to any specific denomination or any particular religious......
By Ruth (3 comments)
What is Dominionism? Palin, the Christian Right, & Theocracy
Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates (author info)Sarah Palin is a "Dominionist" with an apocalyptic End Times theological viewpoint that sees the war in......
By Chip Berlet (3 comments)
EVENT CANCELLED Speaking in Philadelphia on September 27th
Update [2008-9-5 12:26:36 by Frederick Clarkson]: Buzzflash has announced that the event has been cancelled, but that the themes will continue to be pursued......
By Frederick Clarkson (0 comments)
Sarah Palin's Theocratic End Times - UPDATED
I have never believed that the evangelical views of George W. Bush ran deep -- at least as far as relating interpretations of the......
By Frederick Clarkson (4 comments)
Dobson and the Religious Right Rally for McCain/Palin
It was not so long ago that pundits were busy telling us that the Religious Right is dead, dying or irrelevant. The selection of......
By Frederick Clarkson (1 comment)
At Palin Church, Jews For Jesus Head Says Terrorism vs Israel Is God's Punishment
Do terrorist attacks on Israel, as recently preached in Sarah Palin's current church, amount to divine judgment on Jews for refusing to accept Jesus......
By Bruce Wilson (1 comment)
Theocrats to Pray for McCain's Death
The more theocratic elements of the Religious Right have a disturbing habit, (more like a practice) of invoking "imprecatory prayer" -- a call for......
By Frederick Clarkson (8 comments)
Rest Assured New Orleans, I'm Sure Lt. Gen. Van Antwerp is Praying for You
For those who don't know who Lt. Gen. Robert L. Van Antwerp is, he's the Commanding General of the Army Corps of Engineers --......
By Chris Rodda (2 comments)
Future links to upcoming documentaries on Palin's Churches
Will live here, at this URL address. ......
By Bruce Wilson (0 comments)
Sarah Palin used AK tax dollars to fund dominionist churches
Over the past few days, I've done reporting on Sarah Palin's extensive dominionist connections--including the attempt to run her as a "stealth" dominionist candidate and her connections to some scary dominionist groups including not......
By dogemperor (1 comment)
Palin Steals Hockey Mom Joke from John Hagee?
Hockey mom Sarah Palin got a great reaction during her convention speech with an unscripted joke (which she also used somewhere the day before) addressed to her fellow hockey moms. Noticing the "Hockey Mom"......
By Chris Rodda (1 comment)
The Irony of Sarah Palin's "Choice"
Republican operatives and religious conservatives are ecstatic over Sarah Palin.  Most of all, they are ecstatic that she is a "pro-life" mother who chose not to have an abortion after she found of she......
By tacitus (0 comments)
New revelations re "stealth dominionist" Sarah Palin
A few days ago, I wrote one of the first articles out there regarding Sarah Palin's VP nomination as a "stealth dominionist"--a "stealther" with extensive Assemblies connections (and to particularly scary segments of the......
By dogemperor (0 comments)
Sarah Palin: Dominionist Stalking Horse
The big news, obviously, in the blogosphere today is John McCain's surprise pick for the Republican veep nominee--a relative unknown by the name of Sarah Palin, whom--at least in the more conventional political circles--would......
By dogemperor (0 comments)
Richard Land Picks Republican Veep Candidate
Yesterday the media was all atwitter about Karl Rove's supposed Republican V.P. pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.  However, it seems that instead SBC President Richard Land, well known among readers of Talk2Action for his......
By ulyankee (1 comment)
"Yes on 8" RSVP? Need your advice.
Schubert Flint Public Affairs has been hired to run the Yes on Prop. 8 ("Protect Marriage") initiative.  If you've happened to notice the names Jennifer Kerns, Frank Schubert, or Jeff Flint in media coverage......
By Chino Blanco (2 comments)
Alabama PSC Cantidate Matt Chancey: His Views on Suffrage, Women, Marriage, etc.
Promoted from the diaries -- FC Alabama voters should be made aware that Matt Chancey opposes"one person, one vote" suffrage, apparently on religious grounds. Matt Chancey, a Republican, is running for president of the......
By CynthiaGee (2 comments)
Jews and Christians Unite against the Empire of Neo-cons and 'Christian' Zionists
Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources...Everything is justified in......
By eileen fleming (1 comment)
Patriot Follows the Money and Exposes Foreign Agents
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official."-Theodore Roosevelt ......
By eileen fleming (0 comments)
The Alleged "Church of Liberalism"
4th July, Independence Day. I was at a party in Paris. As usual, when one of the guests learned that he was speaking to an American the conversation turned to the election and Obama.......
By TMurray (0 comments)
Hope Never Dies for Extremists
The extreme political Religious Right hasn't given up hope of getting something out of this election. Their latest ploy involves petitioning the parties for a "True Christian" in the vice-presidential slot. The Christian Anti-Defamation......
By John McKay (0 comments)
Catholic religious right wing: Legion of Christ
Frank L. Cocozzelli's weekly series of posts on "The Catholic Right" (listed here) includes quite a few posts about Opus Dei. There's another, similarly ultra-orthodox Catholic religious order he might want to examine in......
By Diane Vera (3 comments)
Prosyletization in Iraq: A threat to national security
As amazing as it sounds, dominionists may in fact be fomenting terrorism--not just the domestic terrorism like bombings of women's clinics we normally associate, but the very "Islamist terror bombings" that the GOP loves......
By dogemperor (0 comments)
Proselytization in Iraq: A minor history
The recent incident where a Marine was recently found distributing "Bible coins" promoted by a fundamentalist "Bible church" is, sad to say, far from the first incident of overt prosyletisation in Iraq. The truth......
By dogemperor (1 comment)
Source of "Bible coins" distributed by USMC in Iraq discovered
In what is--sadly--yet another case of the extent of which blatant prosyletisation is tolerated in the modern US military, a recent incident where members of the US Marine Corps were handing out coins to......
By dogemperor (0 comments)
What Does the Religious Right Fear the Most?
A poll that one of the giants on the right, Coral Ridge Ministries, sent to their members gives a revealing insight into their world view. ......
By John McKay (3 comments)
UK Abortion Limit Stays at 24 Weeks Despite Washington Think Tank's Tactics
IN GOD'S NAME is a revealing documentary about how the Alliance Defense Fund is using its tactics to try to restrict abortion in Europe as well as in America.  Watch this trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeTfW8-dCNE ......
By TMurray (3 comments)
'Christians United For Israel' Joyfully Sing of Israel's Invasion and Destruction
An open letter, from Ray McGovern, a 27-year intelligence analyst with the CIA, to Admiral William J. Fallon, warns of an impending US attack on Iran. If such an event occurred, the resulting war......
By Bruce Wilson (3 comments)
The Petrification of John McCain
We are very pleased to welcome Frederick Lane as a guest front pager. He is the author of several books,most recently, The Court and the Cross: The Religious Right's Crusade to Reshape the Supreme......
By Frederick_Lane (3 comments)
More Biblical Precedent for Allowing Abortion
This is a follow up to my most recent diary entry. ......
By TMurray (3 comments)
John Hagee Says God Made AIDS and Bird Flu But Lord will Protect Him Personally
John Hagee claims 1) that he knows with absolute certainty the will of God (as he told a BBC interviewer in 2003), is 2) sure that he, John Hagee, has a place in heaven......
By Bruce Wilson (0 comments)
Biblical support for abortion, who knew?
It turns out that our present legal understanding of when a life is entitled to legal protection is consistent with the Old Testament Biblical understanding of when a fetus becomes a 'life' warranting legal......
By TMurray (2 comments)
2001 John Hagee Film Shows Gangsterish Rabbi, Foppish Catholic Priest In League With anti-Christ
The following somewhat satirical video is built around a brief excerpt from Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee's 2001 55-minute film "Vanished", which followed the prophetic, premillennial plot line of Tim LaHaye's and Jerry Jenkin's......
By Bruce Wilson (0 comments)
PBS "Carrier": A Mixed Blessing
Watching the PBS miniseries "Carrier" was a revelation, but not always a pleasant one... ......
By bughouse square (0 comments)
Will We Ever Learn?
Ever looked at something or did something which at the time seemed good and beneficial only to learn that it was not what you thought?  If we could all have the opportunity to live......
By truthngrace (0 comments)
McCain-Endorser's Church Casts Out "Demon of Anal Fissures", Teaches Vomiting Evil Spirits
[NOTE: for a related story, see Mai Tai Dogs: Pics Show Bush Administration, McCain-Endorser Hagee Schmoozing at Chinese Restaurant] I have to admit, on one level it sounds more entertaining than a church full......
By Bruce Wilson (3 comments)
Bush 41 salutes Sun Myung Moon's effort to subdue the planet.
Sun Myung Moon's end time political front, the Universal Peace Federation had a summit from April 28 to May 2 in Washington DC. The participants took a tour of the Moon owned Washington Times......
By Lou (2 comments)
Advancing The Kingdom
Over the past four years, I've researched the darkest regions of the Christian right for the non-fiction film Silhouette City. The film tracks the movement of apocalyptic Christian nationalism from the margins of American......
By MichaelWWilson (2 comments)

More Diaries...