A “pill” too hard to swallow

According to a recent article written by Jessica Yellin and Brianna Keilar, both Correspondents for CNN, the White House is trying to adjust the health care policy to appease the Catholic Church and perhaps get the vote of some Catholics. The article claims that this adjustment is due to “an avalanche of criticism.” Apparently, the White House will try to implement the same policy that is currently used in Hawaii for religion institutions, in which women that work for Catholic charities, hospitals and the church can acquire coverage directly from the insurance company at the same price their employers would pay. I do not think it’s fair that women working for Catholic enterprises and who may or may not profess that religion have to be excluded from that benefit, unless the Catholic Church increase their salary to the same amount they would have to pay out-of-pocket to acquire it. However, this modification suggested by the White House is not being accepted by the Catholic Bishops, according to the article the leaders of the Catholic Church will only accept a total reversal on the policy – which means totally removing the contraceptive clause from the health care policy. Who on earth do the Catholic Church thinks they are?

I am so tired of having any religious institution – who pay no taxes, who at no time accept government interference in ANY of their day-to-day business (as it should be), who have no government regulations set in place, to think that the government has no business in their religious matters but that they, the religious institutions of any denomination, have any right whatsoever in changing governmental policies because it does not agrees with their views! The religious groups are overstepping their boundaries interfering with politics – both at a local and national level – forcing their views onto everyone else as if the separation of church and state didn’t exist or if it does, it simply does not apply to them. While the leaders of any religious corporation (that’s what they are) enjoy a life of luxury, no taxes paid, no need to report any of their actions to the government because if the government decided to interfere in any of their business they will cry religious prosecution, they seem to think they have "divine" power and can stick their noses where it does not belong.

Of course, as expected, we have the Speaker of the House, Mr. "Cry me a River" Boehner, accusing this administration of ‘attacking religion freedom." How is that so? How it's making contraceptives accessible, not forcing any woman to take them, an attack on religion freedom? Why is not an attack to the State what religion institutions are doing? Why does this "attack" can only be applied on one direction? I am not surprised either at the holier than God comments coming from all the Republican candidates which are all up in arms about the intrusion of government in religion… Mitt Romney, as usual, is already counting his chickens before they hatch and has added another thing he would do on his first day as President, reversing this clause. Sorry Romney, but you will not be the 45^th President of the United States.

Mr. President, keep the policy as it is! Do not allow religion to change the policies that will affect thousands of women, even millions if the Catholic Church gets its way. It is time for a real separation of church and state, it is time for any religious institution to pay their fair share of taxes – no more getting rich by preaching, no more favoritism. According to their own beliefs, money is sinful… so lets help them release some of that sin, and pay taxes after all, they can’t seem to separate religion and politics so, if they want to be involved in politics they should contribute to the country, financially, as everyone else does!

Changing Course

I love this country and it hurts to see the downward path in which it’s going thanks to the Christian Fundamentalists.

During the last thirty years or so, slowly at first and rapidly during the last ten years, the country has seen the Christian Fundamentalists; exercise their influence in Congress, ignoring our Constitution for their personal religious gain, while claiming that they want to honor the Constitution. These Fundamentalists, now better known as the Tea Party, will rally behind any white politician that is willing to dance to the tune they play, which it’s usually anything that is against science, technological advances and respecting every individual’s right to choose, whether this choice is to have a family or to choose a spouse of the same sex. If the Fundamentalists aka The Tea Party doesn’t like what you like, too bad for you. They feel they have the right to interfere in your personal life, in who you choose to love, whether you choose to have a family or terminate a pregnancy for whichever reason you may have; no one chooses an abortion lightly the woman that chooses to terminate a pregnancy does so after serious thoughts about that action, it is always a hard and difficult decision but it should always be a personal decision, not a government decision or a community decision. But to the Fundamentalists, it doesn’t matter that you might be an atheist and therefore you have no fear of the afterlife or if you will burn for eternity in the fire pits of hell – the Fundamentalists believe that their God is a vengeful god and apparently they have a direct line to the almighty where He tells them what to do and who can do it and you, a mere mortal, have no saying in the matter – out the window goes the ‘free will.’ They believe in Judgment Day but, they have decided that their God might not be a very good judge to ‘prosecute’ you so instead; they have decided to be judge, juror and executioners. This same group of Fundamentalists while Liberals make fun of them, have shown they’re smart enough or at least their leaders are, to invade our political system, manipulated it in their favor and now they even have members of Congress that proudly claim to be part of The Tea Party. Fundamentalists long for the good old days, where white mobs were free to lynch black people without being brought to justice, they long for the Victorian age, they long for the time where Civil Rights were nonexistent or were only applied to white people. They want to live in the past, no matter how obscure this past was, for them it was the ‘Golden Age.’

It is time to fight fire with fire. It is imperative that we elect Obama in 2012 and that we get more liberals and progressives to fill the House and the Senate; we must kick out from Congress as many Fundamentalists, Republicans, Blue Dogs and “Teapers” as we possibly can; We, as a nation, must continue fighting to maintain the position as leaders of the Free World, the country of all. The only country whose Preamble to the Declaration of Independence clearly states “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We can’t allow these words to lose their meaning. We can’t allow Fundamentalists to choose who is an equal or who is entitled to Life, Liberty and above all, pursuit of Happiness. They yearn for a past long gone and we should never look back; it is our duty to look optimistically and work towards a better future for ALL. We should never go back in time, it can’t be done, and it’s futile. We can't continue to look backwards, not to the preceding administration nor to the previous century; the time is well overdue to set our eyes in the future, no nation has ever advanced while immovable, no nation can be in the past and pretend to be leaping forward, the future always lays ahead, never behind... The choice should be clear that in order for this nation to continue leading the world into the future, it must learn from its history but never remain a slave of the past.