More attacks on Obamacare

By Frank Moraes

The fucktards at Liberty University are trying another attack on the Affordable Care Act (ACA / Obamacare). Actually, this is an old case, but it is now going forward. The college has two problems with the healthcare reform law: employer mandate and birth control coverage. This is a scattershot approach to destroying legislation that they don't like. But let's look at this a little more closely.

Liberty University is the pretend college founded by Jerry Falwell in 1971. It was originally called "Lynchburg Baptist College" and slowly migrated to its current name. And that name is telling. Modern American Christianity has little to do with Christ and lots to do with conservative politics. Consider, for example, Patrick Henry College -- you know, "Give me liberty or give me death"? These groups are big on the sort of liberty they think people wanted in the late 18th century: the liberty to force everyone to do as they say.

Kill the Pill

The attack on the birth control mandate in the ACA doesn't make any sense. No employer will be paying for this. But it is the part of the law that is likely to get the most interests from Scalia and Alito. I have long said that if the right ever managed to outlaw abortion, they would next work on banning birth control. This is obvious now. As the conversion about abortion moves to whether rape victims ought to be allowed one, those on the leading edges of "liberty" are already calling for birth control bans.

The official line from Baptists is that they think birth control is fine as long as it prevents conception. Thus, they're against using hormonal birth control: the pill. The problem here is that the pill works in two ways: it stops the egg from becoming fertilized and if it does get fertilized, it makes it harder for the egg to get implanted in the womb. There is no killing of fertilized eggs here. Basically, the pill works the way that condoms do. Having a problem with one but not the other shows a shocking lack of understanding of how the pill works.


Employer Mandate

The attack on the employer mandate shows the "good" Christians at Liberty University to be the hypocrites they are. It is one thing for Christian groups to claim that the government shouldn't be in the "giving a shit about people" business because that's their own gig. But a Christian college claiming that they don't want to provide healthcare for their own employees?

I'm sure that the people at Liberty College would argue that they have no problem providing healthcare. They would say that they already do provide healthcare for most of their employees. It is just that the government shouldn't dictate their behavior. But if that is the case, why the fuss? Does Liberty University really plan to keep their options open in the event of bad economic times? Do they really admit that God would do that to them? And even if He did, wouldn't he expect them to do the right thing and continue to provide healthcare and close the budget gap some other way, like lowering the university president's salary?

All of the complaints I've heard from conservative business owners sound very immature to me. "You're not the boss of me!" And, "You can't tell me what to do!" Coming from the likes of Papa John's, this is about par for the course. But coming from supposed Christians? It's just awful.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)