…and refugees, the sick, the elderly, the homeless… but only if they’re LGBT or the wrong kind of Christian, of course. These people aren’t complete monsters.
Daniel Reynolds at The Advocate writes:
The Department of Health and Human Services announced a new rule Friday that would allow adoption agencies and other programs that receive HHS grants to reject same-sex couples and rainbow families on the basis of religious freedom, reports the Washington Blade. Other programs that stand to be affected include elder services, Head Start, refugee resettlement, HIV services, and programs for runaway and homeless youth.
The proposed regulation would nullify an Obama-era policy that prohibited federally funded agencies from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity…
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council — deemed an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center — praised the new regulation.
“Thanks to President Trump, charities will be free to care for needy children and operate according to their religious beliefs and [lies about LGBT parents redacted],” Perkins said.
[…] “The Trump-Pence White House has proposed a horrific federal regulation that would permit discrimination across the entire spectrum of HHS programs receiving federal funding,” added Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David.
We knew this was coming. These dipshits are convinced that this country, in which a supermajority of the population and elected officials shares their religion, is coming for their faith. And they hated that Obama policy. What liberals are really coming for, of course, is their ‘right’ to take government money while discriminating against people for the circumstances of their birth. They’re more than welcome to hang up a “no fags allowed” sign on their church. Nobody’s trying to take that away.
Now, even for a fairly privileged fellow like me, this is going to affect my behavior. I try not to travel to deeply conservative areas as a matter of conscience and personal safety, and this policy makes such places even more dangerous for me. What if I get hit by a bus and the only hospital won’t treat me? Or more likely, what if they won’t let my husband visit or make decisions? But for the more marginalized members of the community, this is going to be much more significant. Catholic hospitals are already denying procedures to trans folks that they’ll happily perform on cis folks. This policy makes it official.
Anyway, this will probably become another “Mexico City policy” that Republican and Democratic administrations keep reversing each other on, until the culture warriors die out, so forever. That’ll be fun.
J R in WV
When I read the article you linked about “Catholic hospitals are already denying procedures to trans folks that they’ll happily perform on cis folks. ” I was disgusted. These people should be restrained from receiving public funding of all sorts as long as they can’t see themselves treating everyone.
ETA: They should need their own water supply, fire department, roads, etc. On their own!!
Despicable vermin, protecting pedophiles, attacking anyone who diverges from their religions constraints in any way. Our (WV Catholic) Bishop spent millions of dollars on living high while being a sexual predator. So glad my parents didn’t subject me to Catholicism, or just as bad, Southern Baptist insanity.
R-Jud
Christ on a bike, to whom do I write about this? Is there anyone who can actually do something about making these protections permanent? People’s safety and comfort shouldn’t be at the mercy of the invisible friends of others, no matter how fiercely they believe in them.
R-Jud
@J R in WV: Kay once quoted a statistic on here that something like one in five hospital beds in America were in Catholic ones. Chilling.
Mary G
The only hospitals in my area are now Catholic, and the last time I went for a procedure crosses had popped up everywhere. I asked if there wasn’t an atheist wing I could be treated in, and I’m not sure I’d be welcomed back.
We need to fight to get all these unChristian cultists out of office. If Twitler gets reelected, it’ll be the disabled and women next.
cain
Catholic hospitals are terrible. Thank god I’m with Kaiser Permanente, who have their own hospitals and network. I’ve very much enjoyed the medical attention that they have given me.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
Went to a Catholic, all boys technical HS for one year, 1962. We had the Los Angeles area cardinal show up once. Rolls Royce limo – with driver of course, silk robes and enough gold chains/rings with enough huge stones to pay the debt of a third world country. Austerity my ass. And I was told I had to respect this person and this church. I didn’t fucking think so then and I don’t fucking think so now.
trollhattan
@J R in WV:
The regional Catholic hospital chain just inked a sponsorship-branding deal with a local theater. The chain is notorious for policies such as no tubal ligations (what century was this, again?) and I’m certain that gender reassignment gets a vigorous hail noe! Soon as I read about it I ran for the popcorn machine because the theater in question is home to our Broadway musical series as well as the youth theater program, plus original productions and the blowback is already pretty epic.
Catholics and musical theater–like oil and holy water.
debbie
@J R in WV:
The Catholic hospital around here (Mt. Carmel, affectionally known as The Hospital of Death) has just in one year been found to have allowed a doctor to kill dozens of patients by injections and to have inflicted Legionnaire’s Disease on their patients on several different occasions.
Eolirin
I’m honestly not sure that we can survive as a country if most of our regulatory environment starts looking like that Mexico City policy. And I feel like more and more of it will. Business will not be able to keep up with the whiplash.
And since we can’t get out of this without the Republicans losing basically forever, I have no idea how things can improve without the country ripping itself apart. Even once we’re rid of Trump we wont be rid of his voters. And it’s increasingly clear that we cannot share the same government with them.
trollhattan
@debbie:
Dear Lord. Irony intended.
Mary G
Baud
JPL
@Baud: Tax cuts for the 1% overrides long standing principals.
Mary G
@Baud: Anyone who’s still a Log Cabin Republican is trash. Haven’t had a chance to say how happy I am to see you back!
Baud
@Mary G:
Thanks, MG.
satby
Major^4
Traveling to deeply conservative areas to support LBGT youth as a very visible transgender woman is what my friend Meghan Buell started her organization TREES for. She is an incredibly courageous person, and if you want to support a Trans advocacy group working in the heart of Pence country please consider sending that group a donation. They do valuable work in very rural areas trying to prevent adolescent LGTB youth suicides and murders.
Martin
They don’t seem to be all that picky about how they define the groups. Immigrants, LGBTQs, whatever. They’ll adapt to whoever they think the public will accept. Sometimes it’s just liberals.
Capri
I remember early in the first Obama term when he was called a traitor because he didn’t immediately allow LGTB in the military via presidential policy change. He said at the time that it was much better to wait until it was put into law as otherwise it would be reversed as soon as someone else got into office. Looks like a good move in retrospect.
J R in WV
We have a great public hospital group in Charleston, teaching hospital associated with WVU Med School. There’s a second one in a next door city which isn’t as highly thought of.
Then there’s the Catholic hospital, which recently got permission to drop their ER, now it’s just an Urgent Care. Typical. Would not go there with any other choices. If they aren’t willing to do all medical procedures for everyone, they shouldn’t be licensed to do business at all.
So tired of Catholic clergy acting like princes in a nation that did away with royalty long ago! Using money raised from poor working class believers!!
Jay
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Baud:
Glad to see you back, Baud!
Ksmiami
@R-Jud: tax them out of existence- why are they allowed to dominate our secular medical economy?
Dan B
My partner is in Bellingham, 90 miles north if Seattle, today. He visits his mom almost every Saturday. She is in failing health – seizures, nausea, can’t walk. Across the street is the catholic run hospital. All the hospitals between Bellingham and Seattle are run by the church. Bellingham is a liberal city but the lack of options in hospital care makes it a disturbing place.
Frankensteinbeck
@Martin:
Liberals want to help everyone. Conservatives want to choose who suffers.
Nicole
I posted a comment about how poorly I was treated at St. Vincents, NYC’s last Catholic hospital, which closed a few years ago, but then felt kind of bad because I know they were an important hospital during the AIDS crisis (not necessarily all for the good, but because they were the hospital in the Village). So I deleted it, and googled about St. Vincents and the AIDS crisis and found this excellent collection of memories from that time:
out.com/news-commentary/2010/08/17/st-vincents-remembered
It doesn’t necessarily paint St. Vincents in the best light, but not the worst. That said, it’s a reminder of how much fucking neglect gay men suffered during the first years of AIDS and how much work it took to get the rest of America to give a shit. And gets me so fucking angry about this goddamn administration all over again.
So yeah, I lived very close to St. Vincents for about ten years (including during 9/11) and they were incredibly brusque to a lady person like me. I had a doctor make fun of me for crying when I came in with a UTI (I told him he was not in my bladder, so he didn’t know) and then the fucker, after the hospital lost my first urine sample, displayed my second one to the assembled patients to note approvingly how much water I drank. Catholic hospitals, I tell ya.
(That said, a couple of hours later another doctor, a woman, gave me a shot of morphine because by then it was the only thing that killed the pain. A fine drug, morphine.)
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think today’s conservatives want to choose everyone else to suffer but the wealthy. Self flagellation seems to be a highly desired concept of conservative religion, got to keep everyone in their place. And paying for the privilege.
Martin
@Frankensteinbeck: Well, the full answer is that every other ideology stands in contrast to conservatism, but with varying interpretations of who should be included. Liberals have the intent of helping everyone, but in practice fail to do so. Would we take every Syrian refugee? Are we willing to drop sanctions on NK because they cause their people to suffer? Liberals have their limits as well.
Conservatives have no intent to help everyone. They think that’s impossible, so why try it. That leaves them in the position of defining who is and isn’t deserving, whereas liberals concede they can’t help everyone despite wanting to. I mean, the Rapture is just conservatism codified into religion and should be noted is a newer concept than the Republican party. That should tell you that the foundational ideology is with the party, not with the church.
VOR
The physicist Max Planck said that science advances one funeral at a time. Or more precisely: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Social policies seem to be the same way.
Jay
RAVEN
GO DAWGS!!
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
G-Damn the authoritarian, oppressive Republicans! Why do we have to fight them so hard for something as basic as human rights and freedoms?
But on a happier note, Baud’s back!
Ruckus
@Nicole:
Had my tonsils out in a catholic hospital. The kid in the next bed, also seven yrs old was having a circumcision. He was quite proud and all about it. Till after the procedure. It seemed rather cruel to set him up like that.
Also that hospital stay sort of started my path to looking at religion in an entirely different light. Not that I’d been all that robust of a supporter prior but so much of the place just rubbed me the wrong way. Today I wouldn’t set foot in a catholic hospital.
Jay
Jay
Jay
Ruckus
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
Basic human rights make it harder to exploit workers and to get everyone to think their shit doesn’t stink. Conservatives like that other people have to obey and honor them, while they think they are above all that, because they follow the formula. In this case, white skin. Other times have had other qualifiers.
But everyone should have human rights, which of course is what makes them basic. They aren’t god given, we give them to each other. And they can’t be human rights if we don’t give them to all humans equally.
Nicole
@Ruckus: Yeah, I wanted to feel worse about St. Vincents closing than I did- it was a historic hospital, to be sure. Titanic survivors, one of the first 10 cases of AIDS reported in the country, 9/11…
But I don’t think religion should a factor when it comes to medicine (I mean, not on the part of the providers), so I just couldn’t be sorry.
St Vincents has been turned into pricey condos for rich people, which doesn’t surprise me.
david
This is why Democrats can’t win:
———-
Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen
In Texas:
-Cruz has a +7 approval rating
-Cornyn has a +1 approval rating
-Beto lost to Cruz by 2.6%
Can someone explain to me what Beto was trying to accomplish
with a presidential campaign that didn’t surmount 3% but WON’T
RUN FOR A SENATE SEAT THAT WE NEED AND HE CAN WIN?
——————-
First, Cruz was the most unliked Senator, period. Cornyn is one of the top
5 most powerful Senators in the chamber. Texas isn’t giving up that clout.
Second, the Democrats already have a senatorial candidate, a woman.
Third, If you want to guarantee a Democrat loss, have a White male, at the
insistence of other White males, step in to supplant the female candidate.
That will surely ingratiate Beto to the female voters.
Fourth, I thought all of you hated Beto? From the moment he lost to Cruz,
Democrats have been demanding he hand over his war chest to the national
party. They told him they didn’t want him to run for president, despite having
an outlook and a personality that would be effective against a Trump. Now,
some of them want him to elbow out a female candidate in a race that he
honestly has zero chance of winning?
FFS, the circular firing squad never runs out of bullets, does it?
Jay
debbie
@JPL:
It sure did for my family. :-/
Steve in the ATL
@RAVEN: damn straight!
And now for some lamb and a new wine: Dueling Pistols, a 50/50 mix of cab and Syrah. Different flavor but good. I expect it to mix well with the lamb.
Jay
Raven
@Steve in the ATL: You at the lake?
Jay
Steve in the ATL
@Raven: I am. It’s beautiful here. Much like there, I suppose since you’re so close!
Raven
@Steve in the ATL: Yea,I blew the whole day watching the pigskin and getting ready for next week. My poor sister fell Halloween and shattered her elbow so she and my great niece can’t come.
Dan B
@Nicole: Thanks for bringing up the suffering gay men endured during AIDS. I think that’s why the HHS and judicial appointments cause me so much anxiety. It feels like we’re heading there again and I haven’t healed from the 80’s and 90’s. I still feel for the friends and boyfriends I lost.
But the biggest suffering is likely to be felt by young LGBT kids in conservative communities. And sometimes the backlash is worse when progress is reversed. In Gay Liberation we were perceived as a tiny number of people because we had been invisible. Now the haters understand we are in the millions and they are well funded.
Amir Khalid
@Ruckus:
I too was circumcised at seven, at the government hospital where my dad was a doctor. It didn’t require an overnight stay, but unlike that kid you’re talking about, I wasn’t really set up to feel proud and all about it. The guy who did it was a colleague of my dad and the whole thing was very busnesslike. 7-year-old me was terrified all the way through the process, and indeed for quite a while thereafter. I shudder to imagine going through it the old-school way, at the hands of a village’s Muslim equivalent of a mohel.
Ohio Mom
@Amir Khalid: I hope your dad’s friend used a local anesthetic. The mohel used some on infant Ohio Son. Still, not a happy memory for me, and the experience made me profoundly ambivalent about circumcision as a religious requirement.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
@Ohio Mom:
When I was born in the very late 40s it seems like it was normal to perform on infants. The big takeaway for me with that was that the parents seemed to do everything to make it seem like it was nothing, like going out for ice cream. I can’t of course remember what it was like as an infant but I remember what it was like for this kid. Bet he’s still carrying that emotional scar, being so lied to by his parents, at an age when he could understand that.
And if it was for religious reasons……..
barb 2
People (normal, empathetic humans with long memories) don’t want to return to the bad old days. Rigid roles and denial of who we are.
Catholic hospitals — they are dominate in so many captive markets. Only hospital in this county was bought by a well known chain of C and has merged with another C chain. Then they force all docs to join — soon all clinics are part of the Catholic chain gang.
Women are treated as less than the male ideal. The straight male, macho, father knows best “ideal”. THAT was never a healthy ideal. Thus we have trump. He is the ultimate ideal of the religious hateful. The good old days were not that good — the good old days are an alternative reality that the extreme right wing nut balls want to force on us.
It will not work. We are stronger together. I stand in solidarity with my brothers and sisters — all colors and partnerships. I’m so glad I grew up in Hawaii and stepped into a world that was not mainland white. My best friends and school mates were multi racial and multi cultural. Pidgin English had words of many languages. Gay was no big deal. Oh except for the hate taught by the “missionaries”.
I am so sad that there is this push back by dim witted Pence. He wants to push back to the 19 century dark ages. It is going to be a hell of a rough few years.
Together we can survive the haters.
Please share when you see attacks on who you are — like our beloved front pagers do. Know that you are not alone. We are better than the haters.
BruceJ
No they’re convince this country is coming for their power.