Just because people do, doesn’t mean you can. 100% of Catholics are sinners, but that doesn’t mean sin is ok.

Even if 100% of people were on contraception (statistically impossible), Obama still FORCED everyone to pay for contraception. Do you understand the meaning of the word “mandate”? Just because people would have freely chosen the same thing doesn’t mean they weren’t forced. Read a dictionary some time.

Sophisticated? No… it’s really very, very simple. Let me lay it out for you again, a little simpler this time.

1. Everyone must buy health insurance or pay a tax.
2. Every insurance plan must cover contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortifacients at “no cost.”
3. Insurance coverage is paid by customers’ premiums.
4. Every customer (which is everyone who gets health insurance in lieu of the tax) is paying for contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortifacients.

Whether your company gives you the plan with the job or not, you’re paying for it (realistically, the cost of the plan comes out of your pay potential). Is that clear enough for your sophisticated understanding?

The audacity of your position is that you seem to think people don’t choose where they work. No one is forced to forgo anything. If an employer or job doesn’t offer something that I need, I won’t take the job. Why is that so awful? Should a non-Jew expect his bacon to be paid for when he gets a job at a Synagogue (regardless of how “outmoded” and “abandoned” the doctrine is)?

No one NEEDS free contraception, anymore than anyone needs free weight-gain-free ice cream. Walmart has generic birth control pills for $4/month. Anyone can afford that. What is it with this power trip of forcing everyone to pay for contraception?

It IS a defiance of religious freedom and the 1st amendment. There is no other conclusion.

“But by your logic, Jehova’s Witnesses should be able to refuse paying
for their co-workers blood transfusions, Jews could refuse to pay for
their co-workers non-kosher medicines, tea-totallers would refuse to pay
for their co-workers substance abuse counselling.”

I’m ignoring your last example because I’m pretty sure a tea-totaller would typically SUPPORT helping people stop substance abuse. As for the first two, before this mandate, they could! Before this mandate, buying insurance, and choosing the specifics of the policy, were a CHOICE. Now they are not. I am outraged for exactly the examples you give in addition to the one we’ve been talking about this whole time.

Not wanting to cover free contraception is not “mak[ing] religious rules that others have to follow.” It’s exercising your own religious liberty for yourself. “Free contraception” is not a right. Religious liberty is, as guaranteed by the 1st Amendment of the Constitution of the United States:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”

“And that’s the “conclusion” of the courts. Every case objecting to the birth control regulations have so far been thrown out.”

There are 24 cases still pending representing 58 plaintiffs: http://www.becketfund.org/hhsinformationcentral/

And apparently, the ACLU missed this injunction in CO: http://www.becketfund.org/private-company-wins-challenge-to-hhs-mandate/

“Maybe you’re saying they could have just foregone the insurance market
altogether. And that’s still their prerogative, though they’ll be fined
for it.”

Exactly. The option is no longer available to conscientious objectors. The affront to individual and religious liberty is unprecedented. Did you maybe notice that little quote I included from the Constitution of the United States before? I don’t see how all your “sophisticated” reasoning gets around that.

“the fact that Calvin keeps insisting on making the link to European socialist systems”

You made the link, not me. I merely responded to the question your comment begged, what with all the talk of this being a step toward getting with the rest of the industrialized world’s program. And since you bring it up, it’s worth noting that (a) government micromanagement of costs and care are comparable, (b) the only reason ObamaCare doesn’t have a public option is because the politics didn’t go Obama’s way, and (c) Obama and other Democrats are on record as being in favor of a full-blown single-payer system, and they see ObamaCare as a step in that direction.

Not being a Catholic, I don’t care what Catholics do with their money and their business. But being an American, I do care what government tells anyone they have to do with their money and their business. As long as you insist on pretending not to see the real issue, these conversations will never yield fruit.

“Christianity (and by extension Catholicism) has maintained a preferred status in this country for a very long time.”

How?

“I know that has a lot of you kicking and screaming, no one likes to give up their privileged position.”

Translation: basic freedom is nothing more than a privilege, and there’s something immature and unreasonable about anyone who has the audacity to assert their own rights. The true face of modern liberalism, ladies and gentlemen.

“But if we’re truly equal under the law, then Hindus and atheists and Jews and agnostics and Buddhists and Muslims shouldn’t be obliged to live their lives under Catholic dogma”

Well, then it’s a good thing nobody’s advocating that non-Catholics be forced to live their lives under Catholic dogma.

“I know Calvin like to pretend that I don’t know the Constitution very well, but boy oboy, I know me some establishment clause.”

Except for that pesky “free exercise” part….The problem isn’t that you don’t know the Constitution, it’s that you don’t care about what it really says or means. You’ve all but admitted as much when you’ve sneered at the concept of originalism and endorsed the concept of the “living Constitution.” Your ideology has disregard for its intended meaning and willingness to twist it for your own ends baked right in.

Ah, the typical crack of people who know virtually nothing about the marriage debate beyond what pop culture feeds them….

Civil marriage isn’t a “right”; it’s a secular institution with a secular purpose, and secular reasons for keeping its definition one-man one-woman. It in no way denies gay Americans their rights to live together, have sex, form contracts, hold wedding ceremonies, receive benefits from willing employers, or exercise any of their other natural or constitutional liberties.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/216805/option-four/ramesh-ponnuru
http://www.covenantnews.com/newswire/archives/018502.html

Again, I hesitate to detour into another unrelated issue, but on the off chance it’ll do any good, here’s some study material:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_3_gay_marriage.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/sep/19/opinion/oe-blankenhorn19
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2011/12/why-gay-marriage-is-a-bad-idea.html

“I think its the fact that EVERY organization that has opposed gay marriage has a religious mission and connection.”

No, I don’t know that, and neither do you.

“You have to admit that the MAJORITY of opposition comes from religious groups with biblical opposition to it.”

Maybe, maybe not. So what? It doesn’t change the facts and merits of the case.

“They all accuse gay people of being bad parents.”

No, they say children need both a mother and a father. That doesn’t impugn the parenting of any individual. Two gay men might be wonderful fathers, but that doesn’t change the absence of a mother, which is a major problem.

1.) The Heritage Foundation, the Institute for American Values, the National Organization for Marriage, the Manhattan Institute, the American Principles Project, the Claremont Institute, the Freedom and Virtue Institute, Eagle Forum. Dang, that was easy.

2.) Your “that’s the only opposition” premise is a lie. Besides, even if 99 out of every gay marriage opponents only opposed it for Biblical reasons, that wouldn’t do anything to change the merits of the 1 whose rationale is secular.

3.) “So would gay people be allowed to marry if they cant adopt?” Um, no, there’s no societal point to gay marriage.

“You dont find anything wrong with discriminating on adoption in this way?” Nope.

“Shall we discriminate on all families that dont have a mother?” Nobody’s talking about discriminating against any family. Most people understand that describing the ideal for children isn’t a knock against mothers or fathers who are without their partner for whatever reason.

“I’m not sure how you’re able to argue that, under status quo ante, Jews were able to refuse paying for their co-workers’ non-kosher medicines, or other faiths were able to refuse other things.”

Then you should re-read what I said, because it’s right there. If you choose to take a job or sign onto a particular plan, you are choosing to pay for whatever the terms of the relationship entail. Your rights aren’t being violated. Neither employer nor government will force you to sign on if you’re unwilling, or punish you if you don’t. If certain policies covered in your employer’s insurance plan are absolute deal-breakers to you, you have the freedom to try your luck elsewhere.

True, *circumstances* might leave you with fewer options than you like, but that’s a separate issue. Just because we can’t insulate people from the realities of life doesn’t have anything to do with whether it’s just for *people* to take choices away from one another through the force of government.

This exchange highlights a big problem in this country: too few understand the basics behind voluntary association, private of association vs. public coercion, property rights, and how these principles intersect in matters such as non-coercive economic transactions and agreements made among free individuals.

The rest of your comment begs a very, very big question in presupposing that we should have a healthcare system like the rest of the world. We’ve gone around that block a little before, so I’ll just leave this food for thought: http://theuklibertarian.com/2011/04/04/list-of-articles-chronicling-the-failures-of-the-nhs-and-other-socialised-medical-systems/

My personal favorite fact about the Catholic Church/A main reason why I stopped being Catholic: Did you know if you cannot achieve an erection you are not allowed to be married into the church (sourced below)? They have actually enforced this law, on a few faithful Catholics who are in wheelchairs. You can defy the teaching of the Church and be in communion with “her”, personally though I would say him because there are no female priests. I would say that the majority of Catholics do not agree with this law but still would call themselves card carrying members of the religion.
Canon law Can. 1084 §1, states: “Antecedent and perpetual impotence to have intercourse, whether on the part of the man or the woman, whether absolute or relative, nullifies marriage by its very nature”

Very simple. You said specifically that you cannot openly defy the teachings of the church and be in communion with her. Im simply pointing out that some of the churches rules are so radical (if you cant define canon law 1084 as radical I dont know what is) that you have to be a “cafeteria style Catholic”. There are a large portion of Catholics that have no problem with gay people, contraception, abortion, or people in wheelchairs getting married. Just showing that many Catholics can, and do, openly defy the teachings of the church and call themselves card carrying Catholics.