 |
| Click to enlarge and read the excerpt. This link, for the entire post. |
The item says more, about those who would undermine separation of church and state. You are urged to read the entire post. It is well argued, and it says a necessary thing, that the debate is less about how boorish Rush Limbaugh is and has been, and more about Limbaugh joining as a tool of those other less crude but like-minded individuals wanting, if they could, to undermine the penumbral Constitutional privacy foundations upon which the Griswold decision was premised. So - not only is there an attack upon Griswold's specific facts, concerning contraception practices within the four walls of one's home, but an attack on privacy itself, the sanctity of the living space each of us, as autonomous individuals having individual life choices to make, has and expects to see honored by a denial of government intrusion within the walls of our home.
Surely, the Issa arranged show hearings did not directly attack this, privacy of the home, any more than being a direct attack of Roe v. Wade, (the ultimate hate-directed target), but the undercurrents of a too-heavily stepping state, using preachers as a tool, were within Issa's show hearing. Get God on the side of suppressing individuals' rights regarding contraception practices and availability, in a narrow way if feasible, and then expand the erosion of individual rights, as feasible. It is the camel's nose under the tent or foot in the door analogy.
I can see an obvious counterargument. Obama's mandate, per prior legislation, was phrased as a test of religious "freedom" and that would mean some individuals would be discriminated against, as to healthcare needs and uniformity for the individual, the Constitutionally protected individual, because of some corporate or institutional feelings of belief. As if somehow the rights of an individual, as protected, intrude into the rights of somebody's church collective, to set doctrine for those choosing to follow set doctrine.
However, nobody was mandating how one should believe, either as an individual or in some collective situation such as within Catholicism or another belief system.
The Obama step was an affirmation that no individual could be discriminated against, because of religion; and had nothing to do with any group's desire to pursue a particular belief system. Religion was not under assault by anyone.
Issa's attempt at posturing his show hearings to mischaracterize things had a divisive motive, not aimed at protecting anyone's freedom to believe a thing - or to decline to believe. That was a front.
Hence, I am as justified in trying to look behind the curtain as if it had not been erected by Issa and affiliates; and what I see is privacy under attack - indirectly, more than any true issue of freedom of belief.
Indeed, more than privacy is at stake, with equality under the law also under assault. The law would have individuals uniformly entitled to healthcare coverage for contraception, and that law was subjected to an attempt to undermine it in the guise of religion.
This involves a most basic principal that Mary Kiffmeyer fails to understand -- believe anything that makes you content, Mary, but stay out of my face about what I want to believe and, more importantly, what I want to do as long as what I do does no harm to you or your family.
And back to privacy. During the healthcare passage debate there was much right-wing hand-wringing and bleating about institutional intrusion into and between a patient and the patient's healthcare provider. Government was the institutional intruder then being painted wrong by the "outraged" right wingers. Well, institutional intrusion by a church, on arguments of belief, into that private relationship, is no different. Because you believe something does not give you and co-believers any right to disenfranchise individuals from equal rights under law.
Equal access to healthcare being denied because of what others choose as a belief doctrine or code is unconstitutional. It is that simple. Decisions of choosing contraception, or not, are for discussion and resolution between patient and physician, with no pastor having any right to force things otherwise. It is intolerable and repugnant that anyone would even think to suggest a right of intrusion into such private matters under the guise of wanting to believe a certain set of things.
Or is the Republican goal actually to say employers can play god? There seems to be that aspect, at least as an undercurrent. Pay the piper, call every tune?
Again, believe what you want but do not try to enforce any particular mythology upon others. It's that simple. It's individual entitlement. It is individual patient-physician privacy and decision making, and not the Pope's.
Benedict doesn't make my life choices for me, and under separation of church and state, I should be Constitutionally free from his ever doing so. Not that I dislike him, but I want him at a distance - as a matter of preference, and, indeed, belief.
This is from Griswold, online here, the text being Justice Douglas writing the opinion of the Court:
In NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 462 , we protected the "freedom to associate and privacy in one's associations," noting that freedom of association was a peripheral First Amendment right. Disclosure of membership lists of a constitutionally valid association, we held, was invalid "as entailing the likelihood of a substantial restraint upon the exercise by petitioner's members of their right to freedom of association." Ibid. In other words, the First Amendment has a penumbra where privacy is protected from governmental intrusion. In like context, we have protected forms of "association" that are not political in the customary sense but pertain to the social, legal, and economic benefit of the members. NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 430 -431. In Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U.S. 232 , we held it not permissible to bar a lawyer from practice, because he had once been a member of the Communist Party. The man's "association with that Party" was not shown to be "anything more than a political faith in a political party" (id., at 244) and was not action of a kind proving bad moral character. Id., at 245-246.
Those cases involved more than the "right of assembly" - a right that extends to all irrespective of their race or ideology. De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353 . The right of "association," like the right of belief (Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 ), is more than the right to attend a meeting; it includes the right to express one's attitudes or philosophies by membership in a group or by affiliation with it or by other lawful means. Association in that context is a form of expression of opinion; and while it is not expressly included in the First Amendment its existence is necessary in making the express guarantees fully meaningful. [381 U.S. 479, 484]
The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 516 -522 (dissenting opinion). Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers "in any house" in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
The Fourth and Fifth Amendments were described in Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 630 , as protection against all governmental invasions "of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life." * We recently referred [381 U.S. 479, 485] in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 656 , to the Fourth Amendment as creating a "right to privacy, no less important than any other right carefully and particularly reserved to the people." See Beaney, The Constitutional Right to Privacy, 1962 Sup. Ct. Rev. 212; Griswold, The Right to be Let Alone, 55 Nw. U. L. Rev. 216 (1960).
We have had many controversies over these penumbral rights of "privacy and repose." See, e. g., Breard v. Alexandria, 341 U.S. 622, 626 , 644; Public Utilities Comm'n v. Pollak, 343 U.S. 451 ; Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167 ; Lanza v. New York, 370 U.S. 139 ; Frank v. Maryland, 359 U.S. 360 ; Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 . These cases bear witness that the right of privacy which presses for recognition here is a legitimate one.
The present case, then, concerns a relationship lying within the zone of privacy created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees. And it concerns a law which, in forbidding the use of contraceptives rather than regulating their manufacture or sale, seeks to achieve its goals by means having a maximum destructive impact upon that relationship. Such a law cannot stand in light of the familiar principle, so often applied by this Court, that a "governmental purpose to control or prevent activities constitutionally subject to state regulation may not be achieved by means which sweep unnecessarily broadly and thereby invade the area of protected freedoms." NAACP v. Alabama, 377 U.S. 288, 307 . Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The [381 U.S. 479, 486] very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.
We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights - older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions.
[pagination notations are noted in red and are in the Findlaw online text for page citation purposes - case name not being italicized is from the original]. One of the reasons I look at the four remaining "Presidential" Republicans and can view Ron Paul to be a rational human is he understands and believes in Griswold's meaning. I cannot stomach Santorum, because he is Ron Paul's clear opposite that way, with Romney between them (as we can only guess) and Gingrich a creature of the moment's convenience to the point he likely believes in nothing and will say anything to gain incremental power and/or wealth, momentarily if not long term.