Below is a ton of verbage/babble signifing nothing... birth control
has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with medical issues... why it's
an issue of medical insurance is insane/inane. That the grubbermint
wants to be involved with peep's ****ing, especially po' folk ****ing
is ridiculous... birth control is as simple as issuing grubbermint
dildoes, and/or gals holding a dollar bill between their knees... no
side effects either.

On Tue, 1 Jul 2014 12:07:52 -0700 (PDT), ImStillMags
> wrote:

>For those who are not in the US, or have been living under a rock, the Supreme court ruled today that corporations who claim religious objections to birth control may exempt themselves from covering birth control in their health insurance plans. I'm not a lawyer, and I won't weigh in on the staggering legal ramifications of this decision. But I am a priest, a practical theologian, and the theology in this case is just plain bad. Obscenely so, and that, I can comment on.
>
>Very simply, the owners of Hobby Lobby (and other corporations) argued that their religion (Christianity) did not allow for abortion, and that birth control was a form of abortion. On those grounds they refused to cover the cost of birth control (and plan B contraceptives, which are still contraceptives, not abortion) for their company sponsored health insurance.
>
>Here's the problem: there is absolutely nothing unChristian about birth control, nothing. In fact, for many Christians, the most Christian thing they can do is to use contraceptives. First, pop over here and read what Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg has to say about the Bible and contraception. And she's right, search all you like but the only place any sort of contraception is mentioned in the Bible is that one story of Onan. Just once, despite the fact that anthropologist and historians will tell you that women have found ways to prevent pregnancy (crude and ineffective though they were before the pill) since we started using herbs as medicine (that's a long way back.)
>
>The Bible simply doesn't address birth control, it simply isn't interested. Sadly the Church has been obsessed with birth control, for all the wrong reasons, for generations. Namely because a woman who can control when, and how often, she becomes pregnant is a woman who controls her own destiny. She can go to school, she can work, she can stir up all sorts of trouble in the places that men have traditionally held sway. Through careful planning she can better the situation of not only her family, but her community, and those children she does chose to have.
>
>But the real thorn? The whole argument here assumes that there is just one view of contraception among Christians. When there are a great many of us for whom the use of contraception is at its root a theologically essential practice. Here's why:
>
>When we read the Bible, not a single sentence, or chapter, or even book, but the whole library of scripture, we find a story of a wildly fecund Creator who places Creation in the stewardship, the safe keeping, of human kind. God makes a world rich with promise and diversity and loans it to human beings. And when God does so, God demands that we care for it in God's stead. The Biblical term for the role God gives humanity is "steward," a hired hand who takes care of the property of another with more care than if it were her own. After all, I might trash something that belongs to me, but the house my friend asks me to house sit while she's away studying in Germany for a year, I will care for with diligence.
>
>So it is with God and humankind, but God gives humanity into each other's care, as well. Throughout scripture human beings are we over and over again called to care for the land and water, and all the critters; but even more so for each other. Whatever else we might be, we are first and foremost stewards. We are caretakers. Now I don't know if you've looked around recently but we've taken that "be fruitful and multiply" line really seriously. We've multiplied all right, to the point that we've squeezed out millions of other species. We've multiplied to the point that we're in direct competition for survival with the fabulous diversity of flora and fauna we're meant to be caring for, and with each other. Sadly, the competition isn't fair. We're so much better than anything else at the survival game that the board is tilted and everyone but us is slowly sliding off the edge.
>
>Frankly, the world doesn't need to be peopled. We've got that multiply bit down pat, that one sentence from a time when our species survival was still tenuous. But we've pretty solidly failed at our main purpose: stewardship. We spill millions of gallons of oil into fragile marine ecosystems because we just have to have vehicles that also spew pollutants into the air, and plastics that wind up forever in the stomachs of birds and fish and everything else. We clear forests for more and more farm land, we fish and hunt to extinction whatever the taste of the month might be. Our growing population expands further and further into what used to be wilderness and the creatures we find there, we kill, because they are inconvenient. And those of us who feel that deep call to stewardship, to partnership with God as our first command, mourn. It has become the deep religious conviction of many that procreation should be in line with the stewardship of all creation, not at the whim of our lusts
>or of random chance. We take seriously the need to balance our desire with the greater good of all and of our families.
>
>For a steward of this good Earth restricting our procreation is as much an act of religious discipline as fasting, giving alms, or prayer. We chose to have fewer, or no children, that we might give the rest of the world room to breathe, and that we might use our resources to help human beings pushed to the margins. Some who chose to have no children adopt the many, many children in need of parents; this is their stewardship vocation. Some who chose fewer children pour their resources into their local community to raise standards of living for all. Some who chose this role work to undo habitat loss and destruction, we chose to restrict ourselves that the rest of God's creation might also thrive.
>
>And never forget, parenthood itself is the act of a steward. For those who take stewardship seriously it becomes important to chose carefully when and how to bring children into this world, that we might be the best caretakers for them that we can possibly be, for this too is a calling from God. There are many ways to live as a steward, but all of them require discernment and self control. All of them call for a careful examination, and reordering of, our assumptions and choices. Often times the choice to not have children, or to have fewer children is not the selfish choice it is painted by contraception deniers.
>
>Ironically, because we live in a world where money dictates so much of life a ruling that allows companies to deny contraception coverage for their employees actually restricts their employees' ability to practice their own religious convictions. Contraception is expensive, and many, without insurance, simply cannot afford it.
>
>At the end of the day this is not a theological argument for Hobby Lobby at all. If it were they would not stock products made in Chinese factories without safe working conditions and living wages. Hobby Lobby's business practices show pretty clearly that what matters there is not theology, but money. And this ruling is about greed, about finding a way to keep just a little bit more of the immense amounts of money Hobby Lobby's owners have already amassed. How to deny every cent possible to their laborers. That the Bible has quite a bit to say about, and that decision doesn't come out in Hobby Lobby's favor.
>
>Legally the decision is a dangerous precedent and severe misreading of the constitution. Medically it entirely misses the fact that contraceptives serve many more medical purposes than just preventing pregnancy. But theologically it is an even graver misstep. It allows no room for grace, it is coercive (the opposite of the example of Christ), and it is restrictive. None of those things reflect the vow I took on at baptism to "respect the dignity of every human being." Today's ruling disregards the dignity of the individual to chose their own path in favor of the wealthy and secure, that is a loss for us all.
>
>http://www.barefoottheology.com/2014...good-theology/