Steve, you are Kevin on steroids. Do you ever sleep?

Do you ever sleep?

I'm thinking soon after November 4th, I'll try to start eating and sleeping again. Until then, there's work to do....

Citing fears that his bridge-building gesture would be wrongly construed as an endorsement, Strang said he instead hopes to take a lower-profile role, participating in a convention caucus meeting on religion later in the week."

Bridge-building = endorsement. Hmmm. Sounds like a definition from the Bush dictionary, in which bi-partisan means bend over and give me everything I want.

In politics and religion, authoritarians just don't see any middle ground. You're either with us or against us.

There are plenty of OB/GYN doctors who refuse to perform abortions, but this is different --

Not this is not different. This is denial of a legal medical procedure because of religious belief.

Sorry that should have read:
No. This is not different.

Why do are people saying that Wallis "oozed patriarchy"? Thinking that the fetus has human rights and that, therefore, abortion is something that should be generally avoided is hardly a position unique to men. There's really nothing particularly patriarchal about it. It seems patriarchy is the new fascism. Just as Orwell once observed that the word fascism was used to describe anything anyone didn't like with no clear meaning, patriarchy it appears is an ill-defined word to mean anything that anyone doesn't like from a feminist perspective. It's what the great baseball analyst Bill James has referred to as a bullshit dump.

So much heat and so little light.

jen f at 10:10 a.m. (let's get those comments numbered for reference):

Steve actually works an eight day week. The last is called Nonday, where he gets his R & R after seven 16 hour workdays. He's a scifi fan as well as a political aficionado, and somehow he discovered this marvelous, recuperative extra day in the Twilight Zone. It's the only explanation for how he can keep this pace up, which he did for years at The Carpetbagger.

"No this is not different. This is denial of a legal medical procedure because of religious belief."

Flash: You are half right: There isn't any difference, but there was no denial of a legal medical procedure. They even referred her to a doctor who would do the procedure for her. (if I remember correctly, she now has 2 children)

What this IS, is the government telling people what are and are not, acceptable religious beleifs and practices.

As an atheist living in what the religous right keeps reminding me is a "christian" country, I find that deeply disturbing.

In the second gay-rights victory this year, the state Supreme Court said religious physicians must obey a state law that bars businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.

This is a victory for everyone, not just for gay rights. Given the continuing move towards saying it's OK to refuse to perform some part of your job because of your religious beliefs (pharmacists refusing to dispense contraceptives, anyone?) this is the kind of decision all of us need.

I suppose you folks are familiar with the USAF establishment being largely infiltrated by evangelicals, and how much pressure they put on airmen etc. to blend in with all that?

BTW, I see fewer commenters per thread here than before Kevin left, I guess he took lots of fans with him. Don't feel too wistful, Steve and Hilzoy, you have plenty of good commenters like me still interested in the WaMo ("Political Animal") scene.

Before I comment on the post, de-confuse me (hmm, should that be 'de-McCain me'). That feature was always signed "Morbo." Are you Morbo, or have you just taken over the feature, or did you start it and then turn it over to him, or what? (Why do I have the feeling this is one of those questions everybody but me already knew the answer to?)

As for the post, again, hooray for the SCOCal yet again. There is more to this than denial of one particular service. One important reason for the legal 'doctor-patient privilege' is so that patients should feel free to tell their doctor anything possibly relevant to their condition without fearing that it could be 'used against them.' How can that be squared with doctors refusing to treat particular groups? (The doctors involved didn't say 'they refused to provide this particular service to lesbians' but "refused to treat lesbians" period, according to your story -- apparently 'clicking through' the doctors did in fact claim they did not discriminate against lesbians, but against any unmarried women. This doesn't make it better, in my eyes.)

Kudos to Strang for even being WILLING to hobnob with Godless lib'ruls in the first place.

Best o' Luck on finding a niche your GOP blowhard friends will tolerate. I mean it.

[No] this [doctors who refuse to perform abortions] is not different. This is denial of a legal medical procedure because of religious belief.

But there's no law or regulation that requires that doctors be trained and equipped to perform specific procedures, nor should there be. Nor is there a requirement that pharmacies stock contraceptives. What is required, however, is that if you offer a specific medical service, you offer it without discrimination. (And in either case, it's up to the employer to decide whether and how that service is offered, not the individual employees.)

I don't have a problem with doctors who refuse to perform abortions - personally, I wouldn't either, and I'm not even religious - or pharmacists who refuse to dispense contraceptives - which I find sorta creepy and weird. I'll let their bosses decide whether this is acceptable or not; the government shouldn't have any say in the matter. But I do have a problem with a doctor or pharmacist saying - for instance - "I won't do it, because you're unmarried/black/Jewish."

The relevant point of comparison is laws banning discrimination in public accommodations. Hotels aren't required to have pay-per-view, but they are required to serve lesbians (or unmarried couples!) like regular customers.

Doctors cannot discriminate against gays and lesbians in medical treatment, even if the procedures being sought conflict with physicians' religious beliefs, the California Supreme Court decided unanimously yesterday.

This is the slippery slope we go down when we decide to allow "professionals" such as pharmacists to deny birth-control objects and methods to customers because of their individual religious beliefs. There is no difference between this and other forms of discrimination such as by race, ethnicity, or other religious beliefs.

Neil B,

Give it some time, it's only been one weekday and a weekend.

I hope a lot of the PA faithful like yourself will stick around to mingle with all of us Carpetbagglers.

This week in God...

(crickets...)

Steve always wrote the "This Week In God" posts. Maybe Morbo did one when Steve was out and that's where you saw his byline?

I hope a lot of the PA faithful like yourself will stick around to mingle with all of us Carpetbagglers.

Is this guy a PA faithful? I thought he only showed up several weeks ago. First time I noticed him was when, embarrassingly deaf to obvious sarcasm, he kept shrilly accusing long-established posters of being Fox-employed wingers. Though gently corrected with several free lessons on how to detect joking, he kept up the same lunkheaded swaggering until most of us wrote him off.

I'm pretty sure that Steve has always written "This Week in God," right after Morbo's early-Saturday guest posts, which were frequently religious-themed too.

When "This Week in God" didn't appear yesterday, I was afraid that it had been lost in the move. I'm very glad to see that it's going to continue. It's one of my favorites.

I think that it's unconscionable for a health care provider to discriminate against a whole class of people - providing services to some persons but not others. Good for the California courts!

Providers should also be required to provide every service they are qualified and trained to provide, like prescribing the "morning after" pill. Refusal to provide birth control to a rape victim is about the most evil thing I can think of. If some treatments would trouble a provider's conscience, he should find another line of work.

Steve is notorious for never eating or sleeping. I know, I've been reading the Carpetbagger Report for some time.

As for Wallis: I just love how people talking about the "shameful abortion rate" never actually look at the reasons our abortion rate is high in comparison to other Western countries: poor access to health care and family planning services for women, and the presence of men who regularly abuse women and limit their control over their lives (batterers, incest offenders, rapists etc.). It's particularly interesting how the roles of the FATHERS of the pregnancies in question never seem to get mentioned.

You never hear about a Hindu getting a job at a fast food chain and then having that job protected after he refuses to serve hamburgers because of religious objections. When that happens, I'll believe that people promoting this "conscience clause" horsehockey really are trying to protect freedom of conscience rather than promote christian hatred and social control over women and gays.

Speaking of which, the HHS regulation establishing a conscience clause is up for comment. In 30 days, it will become law. Mike Leavitt was not successful in defining contraception as abortion in it, thanks be for small miracles.

http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2008pres/08/20080821reg.pdf

If you have a wife, a girlfriend, a sister, a daughter, a favorite aunt, a woman coworker, teacher, friend, PLEASE contact your Congresscritter about this and leave a reasoned comment against this abomination.

Is this guy a PA faithful? -shortstop

Shrug. I just assumed after seeing lots of comments over the past few days and not remembering the handle from TCR.

I suppose you would know better as a reader of both blogs in the past.

One thing I am sure happy about is that a lot of our good friends from TCR made it over here. I was worried this place wouldn't feel like home, but other than lacking a fresh coat of paint and maybe a new sofa, it's nice.

I'm still confused as to how Jim Wallis got anointed as the 'go-to' guy for liberal religion by the MSM. Beyond his abortion views, I was in the audience at a speech he gave where he basically said: let's just drop all the gay rights stuff so we can all get along, attract more right wingers, and that way elect more dems to fight poverty.

The man is a right wing snake in the grass.

Actually a lot of people on the right were seriously outraged- okay, poutraged- about Somali cab-drivers in (some place in the MidWest- excuse, I'm Canadian) who refused to carry passengers who had liquor.

I'm outraged by that, too- that's a violation of my religion, especially on Sunday when there's a football game on- but I also believe anyone who's licensed by the state to fill a service that you need that license for should be obliged to provide that service, including pharmacists.

If the concerned Christian pharmacists support a law stripping themselves of control over filling birth-control prescriptions, so you can get them at 7-11, fine.

"Doctors cannot discriminate against gays and lesbians in medical treatment, even if the procedures being sought conflict with physicians' religious beliefs, the California Supreme Court decided unanimously yesterday"

This goes completely against the Hypocratic oath, and becomes the Hypocrtical oath for some.

Negligence and refusal of treatment on religious grounds is farcical. They shouldn't be doctors, the should be clergy then.