Monday, February 13, 2012

What's, Uh, The Point?

So there's a compromise that EJ Dionne is happy with, non-Catholic liberals don't really care what kind of Rube Goldberg machine is used to provide appropriate health coverage for women as long as it works, and the Bishops are, as was easily predicted, still going to make a stink because they're not interested in "compromise." And, frankly, they shouldn't be. They think that contraception is a very bad thing and want people to stop using it. I obviously don't agree with that, and don't think their anti-women beliefs should be driving public policy. Dionne basically says: don't fight with the Church, respect their feefees, pass a "compromise" that EJ Dionne thinks everybody should be happy with. The Church then keeps fighting. Which they should do if this is an issue they care about.

Everybody in DC needs to stop this fantasy that if only we find all the magic compromises then people will stop caring about this stuff. I'm not religious, but if I genuinely had beliefs that those in the Church profess to have, I wouldn't be happy with some sort of compromise. Why the hell would I? I'd be fighting to outlaw contraception completely if I thought it was strategically reasonable to do so within a broader agenda.

And, no, liberal non-Catholics don't care about picking a fight with the Church, we care about providing proper health coverage for women, though we don't much feel the need to respect and defer to people who don't want to provide proper health coverage for women. They don't much respect us either.