No health care: I don't believe in it

Well, they did it. They passed an extended rule about conscience clauses.

Now, remember, no one forces a physician to perform an abortion NOW. But ironically it is perfectly legal to FORCE a physician who supports a woman's right to choose, to have to read a scientifically inaccurate document that tells lies about the consequences of abortion. THat's where we were, yesterday.

Now, under the new Bush rule, if the receptionist doesn't like gay people, she can refuse to ring up anti-HIV drugs.

A pharmacy assistant who doesn't believe in birth control can deny a woman the Pill. Now, let me remind you that there are legitimate medical reasons for the Pill that have nothing to do with contraception (I know this as a woman, and a lesbian--trust me, birth control is not a conern). So the assistant gets to make the decision whether I "need" this medically?

Don't like black people? It's legal for you, the clerk, to refuse to fill someone's prescription for insulin.

AND it's legal for you NOT TO TELL THEM where any alternatives are.

This is run amok. Seriously.

Universal Human Rights ? Not if you are gay. Or, Better dead than wed.

Today is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the UN, France is sponsoring a largely symbolic resolution that supports the decriminalization of homosexuality. Nothing more, nothing less. Simply a resolution that protests imprisonment or death for being homosexual.

"Eighty-six countries (nearly half the nations on Earth) still have a total ban on male homosexuality and a smaller number also ban sex between women. The penalties in these countries range from a few years jail to life imprisonment. In at least seven countries or regions of countries (all under Islamist jurisdiction), the sentence is death: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania and parts of Nigeria and Pakistan." (source)

The Vatican opposes this resolution. Because, you know, if you don't allow people to execute gays, you are forcing churches to marry them.

I am deeply ashamed to report that the US also opposes this resolution. Which has a bitter irony, given Justice Kennedy's decision in Lawrence v. Texas: Gays are "entitled to respect for their private lives. The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime." That's the law of the US. Apparently George Bush's government doesn't think it should be the law anywhere else.

Thus, both the US Government and the Vatican prefer to see gays executed, because of a spurious "slippery slope" argument that if you don't kill them, you will have to marry them. Actually, that's the Vatican's argument. I have no idea what the US justification is. (Update: I just thought of a slogan for this point of view. "Better dead than wed.")

Now, let's consider who REALLY believes in a "culture of life".