What’s surprising is that you can’t understand that the results of your own advocated policies tie people to the whim – the often abusive whim – of corporations. You’re a corporatist, no more and no less.

And this is why we’re never going to find common ground on this issue.

“Because the employer is paying for your insurance. Because if it weren’t for the employer and the group rate it gets for providing insurance, you’d be paying a hell of a lot more. Why do you think you have the right to force someone else to buy you things?”

It’s more along the lines of the feds forcing Radley’s Motor Mall not to sell defective cars that are much harder and more expensive for women to operate than men than along the lines of “forcing someone else to buy you things.”

“That isn’t a slippery slope argument. You’ve moved to a completely different slope. A better analogy would be if your employer promised to pay for, say, six magazine subscriptions as part of your compensation, but you had to choose from a broader list of 20. But Reason isn’t on that list, and you think you should get Reason for free. So you ask the government to force your employer to pay for Reason, too.”

I kinda threw that in there, but if an employer provided that benefit I think it would be unfair of them to pick and choose what magazines they offered, but I don’t think it’d violate the law. However, if the feds regulated magazine compensation, I’d absolutely support a federal regulation saying that no company who offers such a benefit can discriminate according to their values. Nation subscriptions at Cato and vice versa.

Again, for me it goes back to employers not having the right to impose their morals on employees. When they give you the compensation, they shouldn’t have the right to tell you what to do with it, any more than they should be able to look in your shopping cart.

I think your analogy fails miserably. Joe the Plumber was a paid political operative, a man who was paid to attend political events as a shill and to act as a public spokesperson for partisan political positions. He emerged into the public spotlight as a paid activist working for a presidential campaign, who appeared at a political convention, convened press conferences, and concurrently listed himself with speaker’s bureaus. He is currently running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Sandra Fluke, on the other hand, is merely a private citizen who gave testimony at a legislative hearing. One is a dedicated public (and highly political) figure, while the other clearly is not. It is difficult to see how one might find these two figures analogous.

Such asymmetries exist in significant measure as a consequence of government meddling. Taxpayer-funded or government-mandated subsidies for contraception will, within a short time, increase the price beyond what it ever would have been absent such subsidies. Leftist politicians always act surprised when the increased demand that results from subsidies ends up increasing prices, but such effects are almost entirely predictable. Anyone who claims to be surprised is either ignorant or lying.

The only guys who could do such a thing would be those who don’t plan on ever having any meaningful financial assets. Otherwise, a woman who accidentally gets pregnant has the option of giving up her child for adoption and then getting on with her life, whereas a man who unexpectedly gets a woman pregnant may find himself financially destroyed for eighteen or even twenty years with no say in the matter.

*Whether allowing state-aided and privileged institutions to refuse to cover contraception costs for their employees as part a mandated insurance plan constitutes an unjust restriction is a different matter.

They instituted a government(s) right off the bat. Which was a way of forcing other people to pay for things they wanted (like fighting off European powers, efforts to steal Indian land, efforts to put down rebellions i.e. keep the tax system going, slavery enforcement, default on their debts to the people who fought and died to put them in power in the first place, etc.) If it’s fair to force people to help pay for your armed security needs (to the extent of using other peoples’ money to help you steal other other peoples’ stuff), it’s fair to force them to pay for anything else.

Radley: your magazine analogy doesnt hold water. Most people can go an buy a magazine subscription for a very low price that is openly advertized, not subject to tax loopholes, and operates on the free market. Medical care is subject to all sorts of information assymetries and tax breaks that make is almost impossible to do what you can do with a magazine: buy it on the open market. As a result, we almost HAVE to pay for medical care through our employment. In the absence of root-and-branch reform of the tax code etc (which I’d prefer), what should the government do? At what stage can a private employer decide not to cover certain things? Is there a greater threat to personal liberty by forcing employers to cover certain things, or permitting employers to act on their changing moral convictions, not price.
In many ways, this is not much different to the coercion of the government in regards other areas of non-discrimination, such as race. There are important liberty interests involved in deciding to do, or not to do.

The pundit class is mostly pretty careful to limit how nasty they are to powerful people, because those people have megaphones to shout back with, as well as connections that can be used to cost especially annoying pundits their jobs. Indeed, “respectable” pundits often are pretty reluctant to even call powerful people on obvious lies. Dissing a peasant is pretty safe, unless you say something so offensive it gives your enemies an opening to move against you. Dissing another nobleman can get you cut up in a duel.

As a society, we do one hell of a job deciding which people we will outfit with megaphones.

That isn’t a slippery slope argument. You’ve moved to a completely different slope. A better analogy would be if your employer promised to pay for, say, six magazine subscriptions as part of your compensation, but you had to choose from a broader list of 20. But Reason isn’t on that list, and you think you should get Reason for free. So you ask the government to force your employer to pay for Reason, too.

So long as there are federal insurance regs (which I understand many here are not in favor of across the board) why the hell should they priveledge the employer over the employee?

Because the employer is paying for your insurance. Because if it weren’t for the employer and the group rate it gets for providing insurance, you’d be paying a hell of a lot more. Why do you think you have the right to force someone else to buy you things?

The wall between church and state isn’t just to protect each from the other, it’s also to protect us from them ganging up on us together.

Also, your “patrons” comparison is a complete nonstarter. The government != private patrons. Private patrons can’t lock you up and kill you if you disobey them. Private patrons can’t offer infinite amounts of money because they print it and the books don’t have to balance. It’s a dishonest analogy.

“Don’t want the man to have a say your business, don’t ask for his money.”

Again, pointless. They aren’t *asking* for money, the government is *giving* money… vast sums of money… to institutions, putting private, especially religious, institutions in that Rock and a Hard Place position of taking the money or becoming irrelevant. Care to point to any important research coming out of Bob Jones University? You didn’t refute my point, you just restated the point I already argued against.

If the government wants institutions to have to choose between research money and religious dogma, the government is doing it wrong.

Which is what “these women” doing in every case I can think of. I pay part of my health insurance’s costs and my employer pays part. Why should the employer’s wish not to pay for their employee’s contraception trump the employee’s wish too pay for said contraception?

So long as there are federal insurance regs (which I understand many here are not in favor of across the board) why the hell should they priveledge the employer over the employee?

And what is the distinction that the Catholic hospitals and such are trying to make here? It’s apparently okay if a person working for them violates Catholic doctrine with the cash money they pay them, but a horrendous violation of religious freedom if they violate the same Catholic doctrine with the insurance plan that they are also paid with? I don’t see any sort of logic or principle to be respected there.

You can make all sorts of slippery slope arguments here too. Maybe I find it immoral if my employees subscribe to Reason?

All that leaves aside the issue of whether or not an insurance plan that doesn’t include coverage for birth control discriminates against women by it’s very nature because women just have more skin in that game by dint of biology.

I agree 100% with “no tax breaks for anyone”. I don’t believe religious organizations should be able to receive government subsidies while not paying any taxes. However, I don’t agree with your premise of “what is Georgetown supposed to do?”

If the government, or any other patron attaches strings to funding, what’s the problem? Are you saying they shouldn’t be able to watch their money if they wish? Georgetown could go the way of Bob Jones and renounce the government funding and do as they please if the religious issue is that important to them. Or, they could continue to accept government funding and live by the same rules their competitors do that accept same. It seems you are suggesting that they should be able to take the government money while operating under a different set of rules as their secular competition because they are associated with a religious order. “EVERY OTHER INSTITUTION” has to comply with the strings attached to government money. Why should a religious institution get an exemption from that? He who pays the piper calls the tune. Don’t want the man to have a say your business, don’t ask for his money.

And stop with the BS arguments that these women are being “denied” access to birth control. They can get it if they want, they just have to – GASP! – PAY FOR IT THEMSELVES.

I will never understand why people in this country started thinking that they were entitled to force other people to pay for their things for them.

If the argument is that birth control is a “right” and because of that, it should be provided to everyone free of charge, then I will counter your argument and claim that you have to buy me a shotgun – it isn’t fair that I have to pay money in order to be able to use my second amendment right! Go ahead. Explain to me why your right (you know, the one that isn’t written in the Constitution) is somehow different from my right (you know, the one that IS.)

This is the great logic of our liberal “friends”? No fucking thank you. Tax dollars should NEVER necessitate playing by a different set of rules. Much better: no tax breaks for anyone, just keep taxes low and steady. Tax “incentives” are the most pernicious form of government meddling there is.