AI
Wednesday, February 08, 2012 4:47:12 AM
Conservative Pundit Compares Birth Control Mandate To Rise Of Nazi Germany
First Posted: 02/ 7/2012 1:20 pm Updated: 02/ 7/2012 1:23 pm
Conservative commentator Eric Metaxas took the religious lobbyists' argument [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/18/lawmakers-worry-obama-will-cave-to-bishops-on-birth-control_n_1102077.html ] against birth control coverage to a new extreme on MSNBC Tuesday morning, comparing [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sfk7q87zZQ (above)] the Obama administration's new contraception mandate [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/20/barack-obama-birth-control_n_1219622.html ] to the rise of Nazi Germany.
"In [my] book, you read about what happened to an amazingly great country, called Germany," he said in an on-air debate with NARAL Pro-Choice America's Donna Crane. "I'm half German. Uh, in the early '30s, little things were happening where the state was bullying the churches. No one spoke up. In the beginning, it always starts really, really small. We need to understand as America, as Americans, if we do not see this as a bright line in the sand, if you're not a Catholic, if you use contraception, doesn't matter. Because eventually, this kind of government overreach will affect you. If we don't speak up, we're gonna be in trouble."
Metaxas was recently awarded the "Canterbury Medal" [ http://www.becketfund.org/cmd2011/ ] by the Becket Fund for Religious Freedom, a conservative advocacy organization that is representing a Catholic college and an evangelical university in a lawsuit [ http://www.becketfund.org/hhs/ ] against the new birth control rule.
Religious groups, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, have organized a powerful lobby [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/01/the-men-behind-the-war-on_n_1069406.html ] in opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services' recent decision to require that almost all health insurance plans cover contraception with no co-pay. Churches and other places of worship are exempt from the requirement, but the religious groups are pushing to broaden the exemption to include all employers who are morally opposed to contraception.
A petition calling for [ https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/#!/petition/rescind-hhs-dept-mandate-requiring-catholic-employers-provide-contraceptivesabortifacients-their/lBxr7SdP ] the Obama administration to rescind the birth control mandate had received 24,118 comments as of 1:20 p.m. on Tuesday -- just under a thousand short of the 25,000 signatures it needs to elicit an official response from the White House.
But a new poll from the Public Religious Research Institute [ http://publicreligion.org/research/2012/02/january-tracking-poll-2012/ ] shows that a majority (55 percent) of Americans agree that "employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception and birth control at no cost." Nearly 60 percent of Catholic respondents support the birth control rule, and 40 percent of all the people polled said they opposed it.
A senior administration official said in a conference call last week that the decision is about "ensuring there are no cost barriers" to contraception for women who need it.
"We believe this decision was made after very careful consideration of legal and policy points," she said, "and strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious beliefs and providing access to services."
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/birth-control-mandate-nazi-germany_n_1260184.html [with comments]
---
Countering Conventional Wisdom:
New Evidence on Religion and Contraceptive Use
April 2011
[...]
Among all women who have had sex, 99% have
ever used a contraceptive method other than natural
family planning. This figure is virtually the same,
98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women.
[...]
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/Religion-and-Contraceptive-Use.pdf
=====
ThyssenKrupp Racism Allegations: Company Apologizes After Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Office Weighs In
02/ 7/2012
A top official at a German manufacturing company issued an apology Tuesday after African American employees at its suburban Chicago office said they were "routinely" discriminated against by supervisors.
The apology comes less than a week after Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that the company, ThyssenKrupp A.G., will open its North American regional headquarters in Chicago. The move is expected to bring about 100 jobs to the city at first, and grow from there.
“ThyssenKrupp’s decision to locate their North American headquarters in Chicago is a testament to the world-class business environment the city offers,” Mayor Emanuel said in a statement. “By combining transportation, infrastructure, and the best workforce in the world, Chicago is a destination for the greatest companies around the globe, and ThyssenKrupp is a perfect example of this.”
After the announcement, however, questions were raised by local media about ThyssenKrupp’s treatment of minority employees. The Chicago Tribune reported that the Department of Human Rights received a complaint in November from sales representative Montrelle Reese, who said one of his supervisors used the N-word around black employees -- and it was not a one time occurrence.
From the Tribune:
Another supervisor applied brown makeup to his face to make his skin tone darker during a skit at a sales conference in Indianapolis, according to the report, which concluded that there was "substantial evidence" that Reese, who worked in the Westchester office, was harassed because of his race.
Though the supervisor later claimed he was impersonating a rapper of Asian descent from the musical group Linkin Park, the skin-darkening showed the company "fosters an environment of accepted racial intolerance," the report states.
An attorney for the company initially denied the allegations, the Tribune reported Saturday. But after Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Rev. Jesse Jackson made it clear that the issue would not die, they apologized.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/thyssenkrupp-racism-alleg_n_1256118.html [with embedded links, and comments]
=====
Retired Cardinal Edward Egan Faces Criticism For Taking Back Abuse Apology
By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN
Associated Press
02/ 7/12 01:26 PM ET
NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Retired New York Cardinal Edward Egan is facing criticism from representatives of clergy sexual abuse victims for a recent interview in which he said he regretted apologizing for the priest abuse scandal in 2002 when he was bishop of Bridgeport.
In the interview with Connecticut Magazine, Egan said "I don't think we did anything wrong" in handling abuse cases. He said he was not obligated to report abuse claims and maintained he inherited the cases from his predecessor and did not have any cases on his watch, according to the magazine.
Clergy in Connecticut have been required to report abuse claims to authorities since the early 1970s, according to attorneys who represented numerous abuse victims.
"Egan never did so and his failure to do so constitutes a violation of the law," said the attorneys, Jason Tremont, Cindy Robinson and Douglas Mahoney.
Telephone messages were left with church officials in New York and Bridgeport.
Egan, who reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 in 2007, was Bridgeport bishop from 1988 to 2000. The Bridgeport diocese has paid out nearly $38 million to settle abuse claims over the years involving allegations by more than 60 people who said they had been molested by priests.
In court documents unsealed in 2009, Egan expressed skepticism over sexual abuse allegations and said he found it "marvelous" that so few priests had been accused over the years.
In the recent interview, Egan was asked about a letter he wrote to parishioners in 2002 saying "if in hindsight we discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry."
"First of all I should never have said that," Egan responded, according to the magazine. "I did say if we did anything wrong, I'm sorry, but I don't think we did anything wrong."
Egan said in the interview that he sent accused priests to treatment.
"And as a result, not one of them did a thing out of line. Those whom I could prove, I got rid of; those whom I couldn't prove, I didn't. But I had them under control."
Egan also said he was not surprised that "the scandal was going to be fun in the news, not fun but the easiest thing to write about."
As for reporting claims to authorities, he said, "I don't think even now you're obligated to report them in Connecticut."
"I sound very defensive and I don't want to because I'm very proud of how this thing was handled," Egan said.
At another point, Egan said, "I believe the sex abuse thing was incredibly good." Asked if he meant because it resulted in positive changes, he responded, "Good that ... the record, I think, is an excellent record."
Egan's statements describing the scandal as "fun" for the news or "incredibly good" shows he's out of touch, the attorneys said.
"For the cardinal to `take back' his apology is just another slap in the face of every victim who has endured the physical and emotional upheaval and betrayal of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a priest," the attorneys said.
The attorneys said their clients included victims who were abused by priests while Egan was Bridgeport bishop. In 1989 and 1993, abuse victims complained to the diocese but no action was taken, they said.
Egan also welcomed a priest back into the diocese in 1990 who had been accused of biting a young male's penis decades earlier, according to the attorneys.
Egan transferred priests subject to complaints and allowed priests with complaints against them to continue to practice, the attorneys said.
The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests called Egan "obviously unrepentant, self-absorbed and painfully dismissive of the abject suffering of tens of thousands of deeply wounded men, women and children who have been sexually violated by priests, nuns, bishops, brothers, seminarians and other Catholic officials. We can't help but believe that many other prelates feel exactly as he does but are shrewd enough to avoid saying so outside of clerical circles."
SNAP urged other American Catholic officials, especially in New York and Connecticut, to publicly rebuke Egan.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/cardinal-egan-child-abuse_n_1260367.html [with comments]
=====
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Laura Bassett
First Posted: 02/ 7/2012 1:20 pm Updated: 02/ 7/2012 1:23 pm
Conservative commentator Eric Metaxas took the religious lobbyists' argument [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/18/lawmakers-worry-obama-will-cave-to-bishops-on-birth-control_n_1102077.html ] against birth control coverage to a new extreme on MSNBC Tuesday morning, comparing [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sfk7q87zZQ (above)] the Obama administration's new contraception mandate [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/20/barack-obama-birth-control_n_1219622.html ] to the rise of Nazi Germany.
"In [my] book, you read about what happened to an amazingly great country, called Germany," he said in an on-air debate with NARAL Pro-Choice America's Donna Crane. "I'm half German. Uh, in the early '30s, little things were happening where the state was bullying the churches. No one spoke up. In the beginning, it always starts really, really small. We need to understand as America, as Americans, if we do not see this as a bright line in the sand, if you're not a Catholic, if you use contraception, doesn't matter. Because eventually, this kind of government overreach will affect you. If we don't speak up, we're gonna be in trouble."
Metaxas was recently awarded the "Canterbury Medal" [ http://www.becketfund.org/cmd2011/ ] by the Becket Fund for Religious Freedom, a conservative advocacy organization that is representing a Catholic college and an evangelical university in a lawsuit [ http://www.becketfund.org/hhs/ ] against the new birth control rule.
Religious groups, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, have organized a powerful lobby [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/01/the-men-behind-the-war-on_n_1069406.html ] in opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services' recent decision to require that almost all health insurance plans cover contraception with no co-pay. Churches and other places of worship are exempt from the requirement, but the religious groups are pushing to broaden the exemption to include all employers who are morally opposed to contraception.
A petition calling for [ https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/#!/petition/rescind-hhs-dept-mandate-requiring-catholic-employers-provide-contraceptivesabortifacients-their/lBxr7SdP ] the Obama administration to rescind the birth control mandate had received 24,118 comments as of 1:20 p.m. on Tuesday -- just under a thousand short of the 25,000 signatures it needs to elicit an official response from the White House.
But a new poll from the Public Religious Research Institute [ http://publicreligion.org/research/2012/02/january-tracking-poll-2012/ ] shows that a majority (55 percent) of Americans agree that "employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception and birth control at no cost." Nearly 60 percent of Catholic respondents support the birth control rule, and 40 percent of all the people polled said they opposed it.
A senior administration official said in a conference call last week that the decision is about "ensuring there are no cost barriers" to contraception for women who need it.
"We believe this decision was made after very careful consideration of legal and policy points," she said, "and strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious beliefs and providing access to services."
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/birth-control-mandate-nazi-germany_n_1260184.html [with comments]
---
Countering Conventional Wisdom:
New Evidence on Religion and Contraceptive Use
April 2011
[...]
Among all women who have had sex, 99% have
ever used a contraceptive method other than natural
family planning. This figure is virtually the same,
98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women.
[...]
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/Religion-and-Contraceptive-Use.pdf
=====
ThyssenKrupp Racism Allegations: Company Apologizes After Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Office Weighs In
02/ 7/2012
A top official at a German manufacturing company issued an apology Tuesday after African American employees at its suburban Chicago office said they were "routinely" discriminated against by supervisors.
The apology comes less than a week after Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that the company, ThyssenKrupp A.G., will open its North American regional headquarters in Chicago. The move is expected to bring about 100 jobs to the city at first, and grow from there.
“ThyssenKrupp’s decision to locate their North American headquarters in Chicago is a testament to the world-class business environment the city offers,” Mayor Emanuel said in a statement. “By combining transportation, infrastructure, and the best workforce in the world, Chicago is a destination for the greatest companies around the globe, and ThyssenKrupp is a perfect example of this.”
After the announcement, however, questions were raised by local media about ThyssenKrupp’s treatment of minority employees. The Chicago Tribune reported that the Department of Human Rights received a complaint in November from sales representative Montrelle Reese, who said one of his supervisors used the N-word around black employees -- and it was not a one time occurrence.
From the Tribune:
Another supervisor applied brown makeup to his face to make his skin tone darker during a skit at a sales conference in Indianapolis, according to the report, which concluded that there was "substantial evidence" that Reese, who worked in the Westchester office, was harassed because of his race.
Though the supervisor later claimed he was impersonating a rapper of Asian descent from the musical group Linkin Park, the skin-darkening showed the company "fosters an environment of accepted racial intolerance," the report states.
An attorney for the company initially denied the allegations, the Tribune reported Saturday. But after Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Rev. Jesse Jackson made it clear that the issue would not die, they apologized.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/thyssenkrupp-racism-alleg_n_1256118.html [with embedded links, and comments]
=====
Retired Cardinal Edward Egan Faces Criticism For Taking Back Abuse Apology
By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN
Associated Press
02/ 7/12 01:26 PM ET
NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Retired New York Cardinal Edward Egan is facing criticism from representatives of clergy sexual abuse victims for a recent interview in which he said he regretted apologizing for the priest abuse scandal in 2002 when he was bishop of Bridgeport.
In the interview with Connecticut Magazine, Egan said "I don't think we did anything wrong" in handling abuse cases. He said he was not obligated to report abuse claims and maintained he inherited the cases from his predecessor and did not have any cases on his watch, according to the magazine.
Clergy in Connecticut have been required to report abuse claims to authorities since the early 1970s, according to attorneys who represented numerous abuse victims.
"Egan never did so and his failure to do so constitutes a violation of the law," said the attorneys, Jason Tremont, Cindy Robinson and Douglas Mahoney.
Telephone messages were left with church officials in New York and Bridgeport.
Egan, who reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 in 2007, was Bridgeport bishop from 1988 to 2000. The Bridgeport diocese has paid out nearly $38 million to settle abuse claims over the years involving allegations by more than 60 people who said they had been molested by priests.
In court documents unsealed in 2009, Egan expressed skepticism over sexual abuse allegations and said he found it "marvelous" that so few priests had been accused over the years.
In the recent interview, Egan was asked about a letter he wrote to parishioners in 2002 saying "if in hindsight we discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry."
"First of all I should never have said that," Egan responded, according to the magazine. "I did say if we did anything wrong, I'm sorry, but I don't think we did anything wrong."
Egan said in the interview that he sent accused priests to treatment.
"And as a result, not one of them did a thing out of line. Those whom I could prove, I got rid of; those whom I couldn't prove, I didn't. But I had them under control."
Egan also said he was not surprised that "the scandal was going to be fun in the news, not fun but the easiest thing to write about."
As for reporting claims to authorities, he said, "I don't think even now you're obligated to report them in Connecticut."
"I sound very defensive and I don't want to because I'm very proud of how this thing was handled," Egan said.
At another point, Egan said, "I believe the sex abuse thing was incredibly good." Asked if he meant because it resulted in positive changes, he responded, "Good that ... the record, I think, is an excellent record."
Egan's statements describing the scandal as "fun" for the news or "incredibly good" shows he's out of touch, the attorneys said.
"For the cardinal to `take back' his apology is just another slap in the face of every victim who has endured the physical and emotional upheaval and betrayal of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a priest," the attorneys said.
The attorneys said their clients included victims who were abused by priests while Egan was Bridgeport bishop. In 1989 and 1993, abuse victims complained to the diocese but no action was taken, they said.
Egan also welcomed a priest back into the diocese in 1990 who had been accused of biting a young male's penis decades earlier, according to the attorneys.
Egan transferred priests subject to complaints and allowed priests with complaints against them to continue to practice, the attorneys said.
The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests called Egan "obviously unrepentant, self-absorbed and painfully dismissive of the abject suffering of tens of thousands of deeply wounded men, women and children who have been sexually violated by priests, nuns, bishops, brothers, seminarians and other Catholic officials. We can't help but believe that many other prelates feel exactly as he does but are shrewd enough to avoid saying so outside of clerical circles."
SNAP urged other American Catholic officials, especially in New York and Connecticut, to publicly rebuke Egan.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/cardinal-egan-child-abuse_n_1260367.html [with comments]
=====
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
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