Moral Equivalence

by digby

Everyone seems to agree that it would be an immoral and selfish act for pro-choice women to vote against health care reform based on their own parochial principles when the bill will help so many people. Greater good, moral imperative and all that rot. Real human beings would suffer for their self-centered insistence on a fealty to their own beliefs and they are most often people at the lowest end of society who desperately need such help.

Will the Catholic Church be held to the same standard?

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

[…]

Catholic Charities, the church’s social services arm, is one of dozens of nonprofit organizations that partner with the District. It serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington’s homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church. City leaders said the church is not the dominant provider of any particular social service, but the church pointed out that it supplements funding for city programs with $10 million from its own coffers.

You’ll recall that the Catholic Church earlier abandoned foster children in Massachusetts over gay adoption, so there’s every reason to believe they will follow through on this threat. It’s obviously an edict from the hierarchy. And presumably, they will not face the disapprobation of the whole country for being “selfish” and “immoral” for doing so.

I’m not arguing that this stand is right. I’m arguing that there is a double standard that puts secular principles at a permanent disadvantage. The Catholic Church and other religious organizations are not only not accused of immorality for refusing to minister to the poor because they don’t believe in gay rights, they are portrayed as highly principled and beyond moral reproach. So are the “pro-life” Catholics — backed up by the Catholic Bishops — who are willing to destroy health care reform that will give millions of people access to life-saving health care. Meanwhile, pro-choice advocates are being pompously lectured by patronizing media figures about “letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

There is no reason to grant that “pro-life” and anti-gay rights Catholics are operating from a higher moral position. If the argument is that it’s immoral to deny millions of people health care because of one moral objection, then the Catholics are behaving as immorally as the secularists. On the other hand, if refusing to compromise on a matter of fundamental principle is a moral position then both sides are equally moral. You decide. But either way, there’s no distinction between the two sides. So everybody needs to stop the lectures about pro-choice women being self serving and immoral for threatening to withhold their votes if they believe their principles have been violated.

If pro-choice Democrats are going to be accused of “making the perfect be the enemy of the good” then so should the “pro-life” Democrats. And frankly, if anyone’s going to be given extra points for morality I would at least give them to the people who have shown they feel some sense of moral dilemma rather than the wrecking crew who don’t blink an eye at denying people health care merely because one of their dollars will touch a dollar that pays for insurance that might someday pay for an abortion. But then, I’m an immoral pro-choicer.

“We won because [the Democrats] need us,” Stupak said. “If they are going to summarily dismiss us by taking the pen to that language, there will be hell to pay. I don’t say it as a threat, but if they double-cross us, there will be 40 people who won’t vote with them the next time they need us — and that could be the final version of this bill.”

h/t to KC

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