EEOC: The Pill more important than religious liberty

Sunday August 16, 2009
Rod Dreher

According to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, requiring religious colleges to provide contraceptive coverage in their health care plans is more important than religious liberty -- a stance that's led the president of the Catholic Belmont Abbey College to say he'll close the college before giving in to Caesar:

The president of a small Catholic college said Friday he would rather close the school's doors than violate the church's teachings on contraception should the college lose the latest battle involving health-insurance laws and religious freedom.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has determined that Belmont Abbey College violated discrimination laws because the school's employee health insurance plan does not cover contraception, according to a letter the EEOC sent to the school...

Oh, please. There is no such thing as male contraceptives, and if there were, they would also be prohibited under Roman Catholic moral teaching. Men can undergo sterilization proceedings, though, and when the college discovered it was inadvertently providing coverage for them, it closed those loopholes. No, this is all about people in the government who don't like the Catholic Church's stance on contraception trying to use a bogus discrimination law violation to force the college to violate its collective Catholic conscience.

You don't have to agree with the Catholic Church's stance on contraception to find this ruling appalling. Is it really the case that the failure to cover birth control pills for people who voluntarily seek employment at this tiny liberal arts college is an outrage so great that it's worth bringing down the weight of the federal government on this college? By the EEOC's reasoning here, wouldn't affirmative action programs designed to privilege racial minorities be a violation of federal law because they exclude people on the basis of race?

Again, this is not about equality. This is about punishing a Catholic college for being Catholic, in defiance of the sexual revolution. Folks ought to be raising hell about it. the rest