Lab rats
by digby
Hey, I wonder what they’re cooking up in the wonderful laboratories of democracy today? Let’s take a look at one of our favorite states, Arizona, where we already know they are turning back the clock on immigrant rights to the 1940s. This week they took another step backwards on women’s rights to well, the days when only “bad girls” had sex:
Arizona businesses that designate themselves to be a “religiously affiliated employer” will no longer have to include contraceptives in the insurance coverage they provide for their workers.
Gov. Jan Brewer signed legislation to broaden an exemption to a 2002 law which spells out that businesses which provide prescription drugs as part of their health insurance plans cannot exclude birth control pills. The governor said she was satisfied with the last-minute compromise worked out by lawmakers.
“In its final form, this bill is about nothing more than preserving religious freedom to which were all constitutionally entitled,” Brewer said in a prepared statement. “Mandating that a religious institution provide a service in direct contradiction with its faith would represent an obvious encroachment upon the First Amendment.”
In a separate development, the governor signed legislation designed to ensure that the state cannot take away the license of a professional because of that person’s religious belief.
Arizona law already protects pharmacists and doctors who refuse to prescribe or dispense contraceptives. This measure extends to all state licenses.
Proponents could not cite any example where this has occurred.
But they pointed to an attempt — eventually abandoned — to expand the oath that lawyers have to take that they will not permit considerations of gender, age, race, nationality, disability social standing to influence how they do their jobs to extend to sexual orientation. Foes of that move, which eventually was abandoned, said it could have force religious attorneys to represent gay clients who want them to take up some legal issue related to their orientation.
Of course I’d imagine you’ll have the ability to beg for coverage if you’re willing to prove to your religious employer that you have endometriosis or some other reproductive malady that requires it, so it’s no problem. I know that I used to enjoy sharing my intimate health issues with my bosses. It promotes such a respectful working relationship, especially if you happen to be young and single and working for a conservative company.
You’ll notice that this is actually getting worse, not better. The original law, passed in 2002, only gave churches the ability to opt out. Now, it’s any employer with religious affiliation. Soon it will be any employer who calls himself religious. Long established rights to birth control, like abortion, are under siege in states throughout the country.
I’ve spend some time recently studying the Tenthers, since they are the most organized of the modern states’ rights adherents, and it’s worth noting where they intersect with liberals and libertarians. (Indeed, I’ve called Ron Paul more of a tenther than a libertarian since he often is more forceful in defending the rights of state governments than universal individual liberty.)
Adherents oppose a broad range of federal government programs, including the War on Drugs, federal surveillance, and other limitations on privacy and civil and economic liberties, plus numerous New Deal legislation to Great Society legislation, such as Medicaid, Medicare, the VA health system and the G.I. Bill.
Tenther movement should not be confused with libertarianism, although the two often have similar positions. Whereas libertarians oppose programs such as the War on Drugs on ideological grounds, seeing them as unjustified government intrusion into lives of its citizens, tenthers hold that such programs may be perfectly acceptable but only when implemented by individual states. Libertarians are opposed to sodomy laws and believe that “the government has no business in the bedroom”. In contrast, it has been argued by tenthers that the 2003 Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which invalidated sodomy laws in all U.S. states where they remained, was an unconstitutional federal intrusion into what should have been a states’ rights area; from the tenther perspective, “there clearly is no right to sodomy found anywhere in the Constitution” and “the State of Texas has the right to decide for itself how to regulate social matters like sex, using its own local standards”.
You can see the difference, which is subtle but important. It’s this fetish for federalism that’s driving these regressive rollbacks of civil rights and individual freedoms that are sweeping through the laboratories of democracy. Ron Paul and many of his followers seem to be blurring the difference, but all over the country states are showing they are perfectly capable of being as totalitarian, theocratic and authoritarian as the feds are. Tenthers are fine with that. Libertarians shouldn’t be.
Update: Check out this editorial in the Arizona Republic about an upcoming Arizona ballot measure:
Arizona voters will face a lot of serious decisions on this year’s ballot. They shouldn’t have to waste time on an unconstitutional referendum that would seize federal land.
In Arizona’s centennial year, House Concurrent Resolution 2004 would explicitly violate the act that allowed our state to enter the union. That law requires the state, as Arizona agreed in its Constitution, to disclaim all right and title to federal lands here.
Every year, the Legislature huffs and puffs about the federal government’s relation to Arizona. But this sort of silly posturing is usually reserved for resolutions that conservative lawmakers fire off to Washington when they can round up the votes.
HCR 2004 would ask voters to amend the Arizona Constitution to assert state sovereignty over air, water, wildlife and, with a few exceptions including reservations, land.
Lawmakers are taking aim at two favorite targets: environmental regulations and federal land. Yet both bring benefits to Arizonans. It was only under the pressure of federal clean-air laws, for instance, that legislators took steps that reduced carbon monoxide in Maricopa County to healthful levels.
Federal land serves a wide spectrum of purposes, from recreation to grazing to mining.
Are there rules? Sure.
Just as there would be on private land. The national forests, meanwhile, provide critical protection for our watersheds.
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