WASHINGTON (Rooters agency) – Political observers here are wondering whether President Ronald Dump received the best political and legal advice before he announced changes to health insurance rules last week.
The changes allow any company or institution that provides health insurance to exclude coverage of birth control if it objects to such provision on religious or moral grounds.
Not terribly surprisingly, the religious/moral grounds for exemption from health insurance legislation have been seized on by a number of minority groups, which say there is no logical or legal reason not to extend the privilege to groups that disagree with other legislation.
For example, the True Grandsons of Zion, a sect excommunicated from the Mormon Church two centuries ago, quickly announced that it was not only reestablishing open polygamy (“We’ve been doing it all the time, but we didn’t say so”) but also making it compulsory.
The next day, the Highest Pope of the Biblical Soothsayers for Christ, Inc., announced that the group had executed a witch by stoning, in accordance with Leviticus 20:27: “A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.”
That announcement was immediately criticized by the Puritan Revivalist Movement, which argued that Christian tradition, as exemplified by the Salem witch trials, dictated that witches should be hung, not stoned. The Movement then demonstrated that it was more opposed to witchcraft than its competitors by hanging three witches, who had been convicted on the clear testimony of five children aged 7 to 10.
The New World Druids, however, issued a press release that was sharply critical of both the BSC and the PRM: “Sending witches or other evildoers to them does not honor the gods, but insults them. Next Wednesday, the New World Druids will pay our respects to the gods by sacrificing three innocents.”
Other religious and moral objections to US legislation are reportedly being prepared by various law firms, although several Muslim fringe groups contacted said they had no illusions that any exemptions might apply to them. And an Ayn Rand Anti-Collective spokesperson replied to Rooters’ query: “It makes no difference to us. We can already do whatever we like.”
Several political observers here agreed with the comment by one of their number, who said that the President “should have been clearer about what qualifies as a religious or moral objection. If he had just said that he was exempting groups that have a moral objection to spending money, he would have accomplished his purpose and not caused all this confusion.”
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