Feb. 11, 2011
- FILED UNDER
- Rekha Basu
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My conscience tells me that if I'm a vegetarian waitress in a meat-serving restaurant, I shouldn't have to serve the customer who orders steak. So I'm going to lobby the Legislature to create a conscience clause exempting waiters from serving certain foods.
Your conscience might dictate that if you're a day-care worker who believes children should be raised only in two-parent households, you won't deal with children of divorce. You could seek a legislative exemption from having to.
Your conscience might dictate that if you're a day-care worker who believes children should be raised only in two-parent households, you won't deal with children of divorce. You could seek a legislative exemption from having to.
You laugh? Then you haven't heard of the Religious Conscience Protection Act, which thankfully failed to make it through a legislative committee Wednesday, though a sponsor says it may be back.
About the most morally offensive bill to emerge from the new Iowa House of Representatives, it uses a word we associate with compassion - conscience - for the sole purpose of discriminating. Introduced by same-sex-marriage opponent Republican Rich Anderson (Democrat Kurt Swaim introduced a similar version earlier), it would let people, under cover of religion, thumb their noses at the Supreme Court ruling that said Iowa could not block marriages between gay or lesbian couples. "So there!" the bill responds defiantly. "I'm not listening."
About the most morally offensive bill to emerge from the new Iowa House of Representatives, it uses a word we associate with compassion - conscience - for the sole purpose of discriminating. Introduced by same-sex-marriage opponent Republican Rich Anderson (Democrat Kurt Swaim introduced a similar version earlier), it would let people, under cover of religion, thumb their noses at the Supreme Court ruling that said Iowa could not block marriages between gay or lesbian couples. "So there!" the bill responds defiantly. "I'm not listening."
Under the bill, any religious-based business, school, college, charity, association or fraternal organization (or its employees) or a small business could refuse to recognize a marriage it claimed offended its religious sensibilities. As critics pointed out, that could extend beyond gay couples to interracial, interfaith or childless ones. Such couples could be denied goods, services or accommodations, including housing, insurance benefits, and pregnancy or fertility treatments. Who ever would have imagined that conscience could be twisted into such a tool of bias and bigotry?
Though the bill is dead for now, expect others of its kind to keep coming up. Conscience clauses have been cropping up all over the country in recent years expressly to permit people and entities that would otherwise be bound by civil rights laws or reproductive freedoms to get around them. Among them are measures to allow health care providers not to provide abortion services, pharmacists not to dispense birth control and doctors not to provide family planning information or counseling. In Idaho any health service that violates someone's conscience would be covered. Mississippi extends the immunity to counselors, social workers and health insurers. Louisiana protects health care workers who object to cloning, stem cell research, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.
The last Bush administration adopted a Provider Refusal Rule that permitted even nonmedical workers in health care settings, such as janitors, to refuse to take part in a service, give information or advice on contraception, family planning, blood transfusions and even vaccines. Health care workers reportedly have refused to dispense antibiotics to a woman to prevent infection after an abortion.
How far can conscience exemptions be taken? How about a personal shopper opting out of selling clothes he thinks show too much cleavage? Or a supermarket clerk refusing to sell ice cream to someone she thinks is obese? Imagine the mess we'd be in if everyone got to operate by their own sets of rules.
How far can conscience exemptions be taken? How about a personal shopper opting out of selling clothes he thinks show too much cleavage? Or a supermarket clerk refusing to sell ice cream to someone she thinks is obese? Imagine the mess we'd be in if everyone got to operate by their own sets of rules.
This is America, folks. States don't get to secede if they don't like a war declared by Congress. Individuals don't get to ignore a seat-belt law because they don't like seat belts. And none of us gets to opt out of the constitution by invoking our so-called consciences.
