Religious Liberties and Moral Ambiguities - The Cases of Contraception and War Resistance
Posted: 03/ 3/2012 11:18 am
William Grassie
The Senate rejected the Blunt amendment, which would have allowed employers to deny healthcare coverage to their employees for contraception or any other "morally objectionable" service. The failed amendment --to a highway bill in this case -- appeared on the heels of the recent controversies with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops over the federal mandate to provide contraception for women in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.
I am reminded of another religious liberties case that I was involved in 1981. I reflect on this now because it demonstrates the limits of religious liberties and the challenge of making moral judgments. A recent college graduate at the time, I was hired to work on nuclear disarmament by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers. While not a Christian pacifist, I believed then, as I do now, that nuclear weapons are incompatible with any possible construal of the just war theory. By their very nature, nuclear weapons cause indiscriminate loss of human life. I decided, as a symbolic act of civil disobedience, to withhold a portion of my federal income tax in protest. With my tax return, I enclosed a letter explaining my actions to the IRS and copied my senators and representatives. I was a war tax resister.
Young and idealistic, perhaps foolish, I also had no illusions. I knew the money would eventually be collected with interest and penalties. I also knew that the portion of taxes that I did pay went into the same treasury and could not be segregated to appease my conscience. Indeed, I was not particularly interested in having a clear conscience on the matter, as if that mattered in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. I was interested in changing foreign and military policy.
(It is worth noting that two years later, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops articulated basically same position I held in their May 3, 1983 Pastoral Letter on War and Peace.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-grassie/religious-liberties-government_b_1317007.html
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