Secular Jizyah

Two idle thoughts on recent items in the news.

1. Compare & Contrast
HHS Contraceptive Mandate

provides Catholic institutions with three choices: isolate themselves in a Catholic ghetto, serving and interacting only with fellow Catholics; live as non-Christians, with no regard for the moral dictates of the faith they profess; or pay stiff fines in exchange for a very limited ability to live as they please.

Jizya:

Non-Muslim Dhimmi citizens who paid the tax were permitted to practice their faith and to enjoy a measure of communal autonomy as well as being entitled to Muslim protection from outside aggression and being exempted from military service amongst numerous other exemptions to levies upon Muslim citizens, but Dhimmi constituted a second class status.

2. Susan G. Komen.
For a tiny moment there I thought I was going to stop being annoyed by pink. I can't help wondering if the take-away of most organizations won't be that it doesn't pay to be entangled with Planned Parenthood, because once you start, you will never be allowed to stop.

Mr. W. points to something more astonishing. Namely, how did PP get 22 U.S.senators (not mere reps, mind you, Senators) to threaten Komen for wanting to quietly drop some pretty small grants? How much is the President controlled by PP? Is HHS now simply a proxy for Planned Parenthood? This story suggests Cecile Richards is more powerful than the Veep, Panetta & Daly put together.

Planned Parenthood delenda est!

The American Pontiff

Ramirez' latest, shamelessly pinched from here.

Click to enlarge and see details.

 Thanks, but I prefer mine. For one thing, he imposes his religious and moral views less.

The One

The Orthodox Church stands with the Catholics.  And so do the Lutherans.

Obama is healing schism faster than the Pope.

Fear the Vest

Rasmussen has Santorum out-polling Obama (by 1 lousy point, but I'll take it).

French Parents Are Superior?

So reports an ex-pat reporting for the WSJ. She can't fool me; I know the French have no children.

(Seriously: nice article. It's a pity we have to couch common sense in these "look at these odd ethnic habits" sorts of stories, though.)

On to the House of Delegates

Whoops: Not yet. Bad info on the earlier claim that Senate had passed it.

FYI, "Catholic Matters," our local Catholic radio show, will do a show on same-sex marriage this coming Tuesday (8 am EST). Guests will be Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute and Pastor Derek McCoy (my hero, currently, for his yeoman's work spear-heading the Maryland Marriage Alliance). Get friends to tune in and educate themselves.

Great, Judging By the Cover

Peter Schramm on Steven Hayward's latest:

That it is good and true and well written and amusing goes without saying.  Buy a couple to give it to your friends, or better, to your political enemies.  I hope he makes a mint off this!

That's nice, but the really important fact is the Official Cartoonist of Wheat & Weeds did the cover.

Expecting A Bigger Tax Refund This Year

Oh, for the love of all that's holy. The President says he redistributes because that would Jesus would do. As long as we are shamelessly manipulating the words of Christ to our own ends, I'd like to remind the President that the tax collector wasn't considered redeemed until he'd repaid all he'd taken from the people four-fold.

Christ's command is to freely give, not force others to do so. Why is it that when people of faith wish not to participate in abortion, that's an unjust imposition of their faith on others, but when the President invokes Jesus as justification of his tax policy, that's not imposing his faith on everyone?

Worse Than You Think

Yo, GOPers fretting over Romney's "gaffe" about not being worried about poor people. It wasn't a gaffe, it's a line from his stump speech he repeats in variation everywhere he goes, and for my money one of the most troubling things about Romney. It's not that the Obama ads will suggest he's anti-poor when we know he isn't. You guys are worried about image, how about worrying that he frames everything in class-warfare-light? Look at what he says in an interview "dialing the gaffe back:"

“Well, you had to finish the sentence, Soledad. I said I’m not concerned about the very poor that have the safety net, but if it has holes in it, I will repair them. The challenge right now — we will hear from the Democrat Party the plight of the poor. And there’s no question, it’s not good being poor, and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor. But my campaign is focused on middle income Americans. My campaign — you can choose where to focus. You can focus on the rich, that’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor. That’s not my focus. My focus is on middle income Americans, retirees living on Social Security, people who can’t find work, folks that have kids getting ready to go to college. These are the people who have been most badly hurt during the Obama years (transcript from here). 

The explanation is worse than the original remark! Since when is it the part of the Republican candidate to group people by class and have the government choose which class to favor? I thought we freedom-lovers hated that stuff and cared about making opportunity available for everyone? When is he going to talk about freedom for individuals and families, and not about him swooping in to help members of a particularly burdened class? And if that's his vision, exactly how is it different from Obama, except by degree? I become more convinced that Santorum is right, Romney can't make a sufficient distinction between himself and Obama. This is the same Progressive crud, just less bold.

Update: Maybe he really doesn't care about the poor. He wants the minimum wage to rise with inflation. Keep those poor minority kids out of work and on that nice safety net we have for them!

Call Your Maryland Senators

Same-sex marriage was supposed to breeze through the Maryland Senate, but the Judiciary Committee has a hold on it. No scuttlebutt as to why, but any brake in their momentum is to the good.

Gossip from the offices of Maryland Marriage Alliance, where I was volunteering this evening:

• They're very happy with the turn-out for the pro-marriage rally Monday night. Don't know the source for this claim, but it's said it was the largest turnout on Lawyer's Mall by people who weren't paid to be there. The cops privately estimate the crowd between 2000-3000 (depending which cop), and they say we're the most polite, orderly and non-violent group they've seen there. 
• The folks are considering sending the First Lady of Maryland roses for calling the marriage defenders cowards. Apparently two wavering votes on our side were so ticked off by that they're solid again, and it's considered a main reason the rally was so big.

Keep the calls and postcards coming (call the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Members if you're so inclined), but also, if you can, consider donating (click the "contribute" button here). The other side is massively funded: the ACLU and Human Rights Campaign and Soros-funded Catholics for Equality (grr!) are hiring celebrities to blitz the airwaves. Our side wants to run ads too, but that takes $$, and there's no national moneybags-and-celebrities organization backing us: just us little people who think it's wrong to deliberately deprive kids of a mother and father, and know this isn't about equality, it's about erecting a legal cudgel against Christians.

Word comes tonight that the Washington State Senate passed their same-sex marriage bill, and it's expected to fly through their house. So it would be extra nice if Maryland could halt the spread through the state legislatures.

Drawing The Right Conclusions

Simcha Fisher:

the Obama administration’s new unconstitutional insurance mandate seems to be jolting weary and jaded voters into action.  Those who had given up on the political system and weren’t planning to vote, even with a clothespin on their noses—they’re suddenly realizing that it’s imperative to get this power-mad grand inquisitor out of office, no matter who replaces him.

Yes. (Her column also makes the necessary point that the Conscience Crusher mandate is not about the Church, it's about America.)
Catholic Vote gets more explicit:

Obamacare was amended to authorize HHS to make this coercive decision back on December 3rd, 2009 through the passage of the Mikulski Amendment (#2791) in the U.S. Senate.
Republican Senators Snowe, Collins and Vitter voted for that amendment, helping ensure passage (all other GOP senators voted NO). All Democrat Senators (except Ben Nelson who went on to vote for Obamacare and help it pass) voted YES on the amendment.
The Senators who voted YES on the Mikulski Amendment and voted YES on Obamacare played a special role in authorizing HHS to make this bad decision. When Catholics and pro-lifers warned that passing this amendment would result in precisely this sort of coercion taking place down the road, these Senators ignored us. We should remember that when they all come up for reelection.

Also yes.

And just maybe the bishops should do some soul-searching of their own.

it behooves the Catholic Church in America to immediately, absolutely and transparently refuse any more funding from the United States government.  Because the bills always come due, and they always cost more than the estimate.

Moreover, Catholicism is the truth. In the public square we are pleaders on behalf of the dignity of every human person, not special privileges for ourselves. I HATE these arguments where we place ourselves in a box and plead like a special interest group to be exempt from the laws that apply to other citizens. If Catholic institutions were to be exempt, that's nice, but what of the millions of Catholics and other pro-life citizens who don't work for religious institutions and would also like clear consciences?

Who takes the king's coin becomes the king's man Free of federal interference, we might start behaving like Christians, creatively caring for each other, like this.

James Lansberry, the vice president of Samaritan Ministries, says the concept is simple. First there's a $170 annual fee to cover Samaritan's administrative costs. His nonprofit group then compiles members' health care bills and tells its 14,000 households where to send their monthly checks.
"The money doesn't get received at our central office — it goes directly from one family to another," Lansberry says. "So each month I send my monthly share of $285 directly to another family."

Being a Christian means walking by faith. And we believe that God is ultimately in control of everything, and that things work best when you go his way.

- Mary Miller, self-employed farmer considering Samaritan Ministries' health care system

That's all it costs for Lansberry, his wife and their seven children to be in the program. That's a fraction of what a typical health insurance policy would cost. 

Overthrow the whole dang insurance system and bring costs down, and you'd feel better about it, too, because you know your money is going to John and Mary, not to "the man." It would bond us to each other, build community and fellow-feeling, and free us.

Update: Here's a great piece that argues against me --or at least defends the status quo in a qualified way.

His Body, His Choice. Brilliant!

From a commenter at Instapundit:

“How about a proposal that as long as abortion is legal men are exempt from child support unless they cho[o]se to do so.”

I'm sure women would object that the man makes his choice when he beds a girl. To which my response is, "Oh, really?"

That and my old friend's suggestion that we impose wage and price controls on abortion would end almost all abortions in the country within a year, and likely spark a surprising new re-discovery of chastity to boot. 

All That Sex Education For Naught

Monday night, as the 90-day legislative session of the Maryland General Assembly began, supporters of traditional marriage rallied on Lawyer's Mall in Annapolis. I was there, and the place was packed -- so much so that I never ran into any of various friends and neighbors also in attendance. At the same time, I'd have been happier if the crowd has swelled to overflow the Mall. 3000 or so people, I'm guessing? Baltimore Sun has pictures here.

Yesterday the Maryland Senate held hearings on the Civil Marriage Protection Act (the same-sex marriage bill). First order of business! Because Lord knows the most important thing in a state-wide fiscal crisis is to destroy the one institution most likely to produce stable persons living above the poverty line. The people are starving? Declare that grass is the same as wheat! #ThereIFixedIt

The Governor and First Lady of Maryland: what a pair! Last week she declared opponents of same-sex marriage were cowards. Yesterday he testified in favor of same-sex marriage as follows:

"We all want the same thing for our children," O'Malley said. "It is not right and it is not just that the children of gay couples should have lesser protections than the children of other families in our state."

"Our children?" Forty years of mandatory sex education and the Governor doesn't know where babies come from!

I'm a little disappointed in my side. The Maryland Catholic Conference is providing good materials, but the HHS Conscience Crusher mandate is sucking all the oxygen at the parish level. I brought my pastor inserts for the parish bulletin and he was delighted to collaborate and announce the rally and postcard campaign, but he didn't know a thing about it, and anecdotal evidence from friends all over Maryland suggests very few parishes are even aware this is going on. (Though some are. I ran in to Msgr. Filardi at the rally, and he'd brought a bus from Lourdes, and the local Nashville Dominicans were out in force.) No coverage in the Archdiocesan paper for Washington so far, though there are three stories on conscience protections.  I gave an interview on local Catholic radio because the Maryland Catholic Conference couldn't provide anyone on short notice! (This is not because they're negligent, but because it was hearing day, and they're short-handed.) I was able to get the radio station to agree to do PSAs for the campaign, connecting them with Maryland Marriage Alliance and with Jennifer Roback Morse (wish she were testifying here as she did in Washington), who'll do an interview next week to educate folks on why this is important for everyone, not just a parochial Catholic issue. Most people I've talked to are willing to get involved, but have heard nothing. 

The witness list at the hearings is largely black pastors. They're excellent, but like the Catholic Bishops fighting the Conscience Crusher, they tend to argue solely from the right to conscience, and I can't help but feel they're a bit impotent, because -- also like the Catholics Bishops fighting HHS-- they can get their people to protest this one measure, but their people will turn right around and vote the same people back in office. Unless there is a political cost to voting against marriage, marriage is weak.

Trade-Offs

Starbucks is so gay. On the bright side, Susan G. Komen just broke up with Planned Parenthood.