Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Welcome to the Hotel Gulag California

Freedom takes yet another hit. Thanks to the California Supreme Court and an incredibly ungrateful, self-centered lesbian, California fertility doctors are now required to help lesbians to have babies without the services of a man. If that goes against the conscience of the doctor, too bad!

In the lawsuit that led to the ruling, Guadalupe Benitez, 36, of Oceanside said that the doctors treated her with fertility drugs and instructed her how to inseminate herself at home but told her their beliefs prevented them from inseminating her. One of the doctors referred her to another fertility specialist without moral objections and Benitez has since given birth to three children.

Nevertheless, Benitez in 2001 sued the Vista-based North Coast Women's Care Medical Group.


And I pointedly am including Ms. Benitez in the blame for this violation of conscience and freedom. Those doctors helped her out as much as their consciences allowed. For what they couldn’t do, they referred her to another doctor. And since she has given birth to three children, she obviously got served fully, and it worked out well for her. (Whether it works out well for her unfortunate children is another matter.)

But that wasn’t good enough for her. Her priceless feelings were more important than the freedom and conscience of the doctors who treated her with professionalism and grace. So much so that she sued them to take their freedom away.

Any sensible court wouldn’t even hear such a suit, seeing that the only damage is to her oh-so-precious feelings. And I doubt even that damage. This smells of leftist activists with chips on their shoulders, looking for an excuse to sue to take away more freedoms from Christians. Actually, it’s more than just a smell. Ms. Benitez’s lawyer is one Jennifer C. Pizer.

And, of course, the California Supreme Court rewards them fully. And freedom shrinks more and more.

-----

MORE: Andrew McCarthy puts the ruling under rigorous criticism. Then he concludes:

California has thousands upon thousands of medical practitioners. The doctors in this case were not seeking to ban in-vitro fertilization for gay couples. They were simply saying, “Don’t make me do it.”



What they want is freedom: freedom to hold their convictions just as gay couples are free to hold theirs. Freedom to depart from a secular-belief system tyrannically imposed by government — governments having been known to impose any number of beliefs deemed de rigueur at the time . . . and remembered now only for their close-minded noxiousness.


In modern America, plenty of room has been made for gay couples and their life choices. We needn’t vanquish religious believers to make those accommodations. Trying to do so, as California is, will not result in harmony and societal progress. It will add to the campaign of political correctness slowly and needlessly tearing the nation asunder.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The case should be appealed to the US Supreme Court, the California court is overstepping and violating the religious rights of the doctors in question. It's an attempt to discriminate against the rights of the religious.

Anonymous said...

Sadly, I have my doubts that the Supreme Court will be of any help in this matter.

Not too long ago, NPR did a piece about the over-all success rate of these types of suits against religious conscience and time and time again the religious objectors have lost.

The assumption that homosexuality is the same as race has become the legal standard and precedent, I think established by the Supreme Court itself if I am not mistaken. In any case where a person of religious conscience has a "public" exposure, ie operates a business or institution open to the public, the courts have consistently ruled that such a business cannot be open to only some members of the public and not others. This is the argument that closed a beach pavillion operated by the Methodists. This is the argument that financially penalized a photographer for refusing to work a gay "wedding" (thus forcing her in the future to either work these events or go out of business)

In other words, the law has already been decided and the argument is lost. The sooner we Christians realize it and stop pinning our hopes on the law to protect us, the better. We need to start working to find creative and innovative ways to protect ourselves. It may mean becoming a more insular community in some way.

Its catacombs time again folks. The sooner we hie ourselves hence, the better it will be for us in the long run when all else has gone to hell. We have survived persecution before and we can do it again. If we must withdraw for a time from the world, then so be it.

Anglican Peggy