Was the Catholicism question out of line?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

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Obamacare, for one.

You lose the thread.

[Wisconsin+17]

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Forcing people to pay for abortion and contraception when their faith tells them that both are sinful is a violation of their freedom of conscience.

[memphis]

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Forcing people to pay for abortion and contraception when their faith tells them that both are sinful is a violation of their freedom of conscience.

In that case, I look forward to receiving my Iraq War rebate.

[Wisconsin+17]

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Constitutionally, that is part of the job of the federal government. Obamacare is unconstitutional.

[they don't love you like i love you]

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Constitutionally, that is part of the job of the federal government. Obamacare is unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court has already spoken on this.

[they don't love you like i love you]

The reason I asked though (and I doubt the red avatar poster believed Obamacare constitutes anti-Catholic discrimination) is any evidence of anti-Catholicism ala Nativists of a century or so ago. Because explicit outright shunning and discrimination against Catholics is basically limited to a few fundamentalists who are rather extreme even by fundamentalist standards (KJV-Only types and the like) and aren't in a majority anywhere. It's not like the KKK has any influence anywhere in the US today.

[7,052,770]

Catholic discrimination is a myth, even in Mississippi.  It's as absurd as the persecution complex Baptists and other conservative Christians have.

Forcing people to pay for abortion and contraception when their faith tells them that both are sinful is a violation of their freedom of conscience.

When are you going to bother to learn how health insurance works?

[Franzl]

Joe Biden is no Catholic.  You cannot spend 40 years supporting abortion in public office and be Catholic, period.

Being pro-choice doesn't imply support of abortion.

[7,052,770]

Joe Biden is no Catholic.  You cannot spend 40 years supporting abortion in public office and be Catholic, period.

Being pro-choice doesn't imply support of abortion.

Especially when conservative policies support higher abortion rates and liberal policies support lower ones.

[BaldEagle1991]

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Constitutionally, that is part of the job of the federal government. Obamacare is unconstitutional.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Independent_Business_v._Sebelius

[Frodo]

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Constitutionally, that is part of the job of the federal government. Obamacare is unconstitutional.

In case you might have missed the news in June.

[All Along The Watchtower]

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Constitutionally, that is part of the job of the federal government. Obamacare is unconstitutional.

In addition to what the others said re: Obamacare...preemptively invading countries that are no threat to the United States is not "part of the job of the federal government."

[Wisconsin+17]

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Ruling that states could choose not to opt into it. Meaning that Catholics should be able to opt out of it.

[Wisconsin+17]

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Question - do you include Libya in that tally?

[Wisconsin+17]

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Ooh.

[citation needed].

[Wisconsin+17]

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When are you going to stop billing me for your condoms?

[BaldEagle1991]

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Ruling that states could choose not to opt into it. Meaning that Catholics should be able to opt out of it.

Double standards much?

[Wisconsin+17]

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If Obama can issue waivers for GM then he can do the same for Catholics.

[TJ in Oregon]

I have some difficulty in believing in Biden's response, that he presonally believes life begins at conception but doesn't want to force his views on others. To say life begins at conception is a statement that carries a lot of weight; it means we effectively have ~800k murders in the US annually. It does not make much if any sense to accept this as true and then effectively say he's personally opposed to killing but doesn't want to force his opinion on anyone. Perhaps it may be possible to genuinely hold the opinions Biden's record shows on abortion and think that he is taking the best path to reducing it by enacting progressive economic policies, though I've always thought this is a little dumb too (like wouldn't outlawing it be the thing to do that would most drastically reduce the number of abortions....). There may be someone on the street somewhere who could be a faithful Catholic and believe this but I have trouble believing many hold this view, especially those in politics. Biden also didn't say that either. He started off talking about social justice (which had no apparent connection to the question whatsoever or at least none Biden stated) and then said we can't legislate morality. It sounded like "we can't legislate morality" combined with "we have a moral duty to help the poor".

[angus]

I have some difficulty in believing in Biden's response, that he presonally believes life begins at conception but doesn't want to force his views on others. To say life begins at conception is a statement that carries a lot of weight; it means we effectively have ~800k murders in the US annually. It does not make much if any sense to accept this as true and then effectively say he's personally opposed to killing but doesn't want to force his opinion on anyone. Perhaps it may be possible to genuinely hold the opinions Biden's record shows on abortion and think that he is taking the best path to reducing it by enacting progressive economic policies, though I've always thought this is a little dumb too (like wouldn't outlawing it be the thing to do that would most drastically reduce the number of abortions....). There may be someone on the street somewhere who could be a faithful Catholic and believe this but I have trouble believing many hold this view, especially those in politics. Biden also didn't say that either. He started off talking about social justice (which had no apparent connection to the question whatsoever or at least none Biden stated) and then said we can't legislate morality. It sounded like "we can't legislate morality" combined with "we have a moral duty to help the poor".

Of course life begins at conception.  What a silly thing to argue about.  The sperm and ovum unite through fertilization, creating a zygote that will implant in the uterine wall.  That is how human life begins.  For flowers, mullosks, trees, and algae, the details are different, but there's a moment that sets the ball rolling and that moment begins the life.

It's a little disingenuous to pretend that this should affect fertilization policy.  It'd be one thing if we really had some deep-rooted societal objection to killing, but that is demonstrably not the case.  Our nation was born of a violent and illegal insurrection, and we've been killing each other ever since.   We sentence people to capital punishment, we send our own sons and daughters to die on the desert sands in order to further our economic interests, and we regularly acquit those who kill in the name of self defense.  Even Paul Ryan himself, who, like Joe Biden, claims that life begins at conception, offers rape as a legitimate circumstance under which a life might be aborted.  Does that embryo know that it was the product of rape?  Does mitosis happen differently when the genetic material came from a stranger rather than a friend?  Of course not.  If you look deep enough, you can find inconsistencies everywhere, but to get hung up on a question such as "when does life begin?" is like putting the horse after the cart. 

I think Biden answered the question very well.  So did Ryan.  (Ryan, by the way, does have a more consistent view than Romney here:  in a radio interview in August, he said that he believes that rape is simply another method of conception and "not an excuse" to abort.  To be fair, in the debate he merely suggested that the administration would "oppose abortion except..." in certain cases, so it seems as though he has not vacillated.  I give him credit for that.  I assume that his handlers before the debate made clear that he should not mention his philosophically consistent views and instead only focus on the Romney administration policy points.  That is what he did, and to that extent you can say that he strayed from the original question just as Biden did.  If this is the first time you have ever seen politicians rambling, then you must not be watching very closely.)

[7,052,770]

Half of zygotes never implant, so classifying life as beginning at fertilization is pretty absurd. So absurd that 60% of Mississippians rejected it last November...

[old timey villain]

Half of zygotes never implant, so classifying life as beginning at fertilization is pretty absurd. So absurd that 60% of Mississippians rejected it last November...

I was proud of Mississippi last year. I think banning/limiting abortion is one of those issues that politicians talk a big game about, and many voters claim to support, but when they get to the polls, they vote more realistically on the topic. Abortion will never be fully repealed, and most Americans don't want it to be.

There's a reasons why 5 Republican Presidents since Reagan have done little to limit abortions as much as they claim.

[old timey villain]

*five presidents since NIXON

[angus]

Half of zygotes never implant, so classifying life as beginning at fertilization is pretty absurd. So absurd that 60% of Mississippians rejected it last November...

What Mississippi rejected was a bill.  I remember it well.  A life can begin and end in a few minutes, and the fact that half the zygotes never implant doesn't necessarily preclude this.

What I am saying is that it intellectually dishonest to argue over whether "life begins at conception."   The reason I think it is faulty is because it presupposes that the answer to the question should affect the law.  It's like saying you cannot get an abortion if we determine that a developing fetus is a human.  But if we really believe you cannot get an abortion precisely and only because the fetus is a human, then we must also immediately end capital punishment, and we must immediately end all the other killing we allow.  Clearly, we are comfortable with killing humans.  Whether the average Mississippi voter buys into this notion I cannot tell.  That bill never should have been written, and it's best that the voters voted against it.  There were many good reasons to reject that law, and probably a few not-so-good ones, but the fact that it was rejected does not tell us whether the majority of the voters really believe we have never found legitimate reasons to kill one another.   On the other hand, the fact that so many discussions of abortion seem to hinge around the question of whether life begins at conception is further evidence of the exploitation of the ignorance of the population by the elected officials that I alluded to in my Greatest Problem thread last month.

[Wisconsin+17]

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Two things.

One, there's a difference between the execution of guilty criminals and between killing the innocent. Two, just because we believe that killing people is wrong, doesn't mean that other people believe that killing people is wrong. What would you propose we do about these people? Just let them kill other people?

Anyways, it does not necessarily follow that just because abortion is wrong, that capital punishment is also wrong.