Day 325: Religious freedom and you

I’m not here to tell you how to live your life. Then again, that’s the point of the post. The United States was founded on the idea that we can believe, or not believe, whatever we want and the government would not do anything to impose one religion on people above any other. We’ve failed miserably, but that was decades in the making.

The supreme court recently ruled that if you had religious objections to providing contraceptives to your employees you were under no obligation to do so. I’ll give you a hint, there should be no religious objections. Birth control doesn’t work in any way that should be questionable to anyone’s faith. Moreover, birth control is a misnomer, women take it to help deal with crippling pain from several different reproductive issues. It’s safe, effective, and frankly should be free. Unfortunately, we live in a society where if you can make a dollar, then screw however many people need to die for you to make that dollar.

Back to my point, your religious freedoms end where I begin. I’ll use an example, let’s say I belong to an extremely eclectic religion that greets members who do not belong to my region by punching them in the face. It’s a good way to… connect with people. Okay, bad joke. In this scenario, why should by religious beliefs allow me to cause you physical harm? If you’re okay with this scenario than heck come on over and I’ll say hi! But seriously, that is essentially what is happening here. Because of “religious freedom” the supreme court gave the green light for you to punch women in the face (metaphorically).

But wait you say, “how is refusing to provide them with something causing them harm?” Well, let’s say you were diabetic and I had a religious objection with providing you with low-cost insulin. It’s the same result, there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of women who take birth control to manage crippling pain, sure it wouldn’t kill them (mostly), but do you really think it’s okay to force someone to live in semi-constant and perpetual pain that because you have a moral objection to a medication that could prevent it?

The United States was founded on separation of church and state, but that is no longer the case. Now the church has become the state and we are forced to acquiesce to their desires because of a book, written by men, edited by men, and literally modified to fit their agenda (hello king James version of the catholic bible).

This is antithetical to the very idea the United States was founded on. We can go over the history of how the catholic church has taken over, but that would be a whole other post on its own. The bottom line is that we should be free from religious persecution and have equal access to medicine no matter what other people believe.

If you want to refuse medical care provided to you that is literally your right, that is the point of the United States. YOU have the right to refuse treatments based on YOUR religious beliefs. You do NOT have the right to refuse treatment to someone else based on your belief. Your religious freedom ends where I begin, it’s as simple as that. If you have a problem with this, then might I suggest moving to another country, because forcing your religion on people isn’t religious freedom, its religious tyranny and frankly is antithetical to supposed religious beliefs to begin with.