On the Time Ideas blog, Harvard administrator Erika Christakis dismissed all the “hysteria with a fever pitch” about religious liberty, insisting that if the Catholic bishops don’t like the Obama administration making them pay for contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilizations, they could do the MLK/Mandela thing and go to prison in an act of civil disobedience. That's the way liberals say "put up or shut up."
“Let’s see what our society would look like if we all had the luxury of imposing our unfettered will," Christakis lectured, as if that's not what Obama is doing. “At a minimum, the Catholic bishops and employers resisting contraceptive coverage should be willing to pay for the care of all those unwanted children. Or perhaps they’d be willing to spend some time in jail in protest. At my taxpaying expense, of course.”
The link took Time readers to a February 13 dispatch by Time reporter Tim Padgett headlined "Birth Control Debate: Why Catholic Bishops Have Lost Their Grip on U.S. Politics -- and Their Flock."
Christakis tried to construct a scenario where the Catholic bishops were infringing on the "rights of millions of people who are burdened by unplanned pregnancy," as if each one of them was on the health plan of a Catholic charity or school. To liberals, a "right" is often a subsidy, and freedom equals free stuff.
People who cry moral indignation about government-mandated contraception coverage appear unwilling to concede that the exercise of their deeply held convictions might infringe on the rights of millions of people who are burdened by unplanned pregnancy or want to reduce abortion or would like to see their tax dollars committed to a different purpose.
Why should an employer’s right to reject birth-control coverage trump a society’s collective imperative to reduce unintended pregnancy? Should employers be allowed to withhold a polio vaccine or cataract surgery or safe working conditions on similar “moral” grounds?
Christakis is filling a fish bowl with red herrings. She also tartly asserted that "Americans generally understand that their world doesn’t collapse when they are forced to live with decisions and values with which they disagree. It seems people are quite willing to be flexible on most matters, except in an election year and where sex is involved."
Every few paragraphs, Time salted this blog post with links to other liberal effluvia from their website, dismissing the idea there was any "war on religion" and that Obama had an "Anglican solution" to the contraceptive debate, and of course, the shrieking will-birth-control-be-banned piece we've already mentioned.
PS: Meanwhile, at The Huffington Post, Christakis is lobbing bombs against apparently male-dominated movie studios:
The American film industry has become the Saudi Arabia of popular culture, willfully ignoring the economic potential of half the population....Men get a bye when it comes to their fantasy life -- no matter how disturbing or buffoonish -- but women are expected to be the grown-ups, even though it's not much fun being the designated driver.
