Religious Freedom- Where Zealots Get To Watch Gays Die From HIV/AIDS
'Cuz Jesus REALLY hated those Gayz, don'tchaknow??
[Since Dobbs v. Jackson], fascist Christian activists have been frothing out of their disgusting faceholes to use that new precedent and Donald Trump's illegitimate partisan hack Supreme Court to bring the rest of society under the thumb of their hateful religious beliefs.
Specifically, that post was about PrEP, the game-changing pill taken by gay guys all over the place that pretty much reduces the chances of HIV transmission to nada. Despite what religious extremists believe, consensual sex between adults should never be a punishable act, either by infection or by unwanted pregnancy. Combine PrEP with HIV drugs that reduce a person's detectability levels to nothing and allow people to live completely normal, long lives, and HIV is effectively neutralized, at least in populations that can access the pills.
So of course this fascist Jonathan Mitchell, the former solicitor general of Texas and the brain wizard who came up with Texas's bounty hunter abortion ban, went to court to make sure mom-and-pop bigot businesses didn't have to cover PrEP in their insurance packages. Because it totally should be up to your employer what kind of fucking you do. And if your employer's religious beliefs are just that "gays should die of AIDS" — because let's be real, that's one of the pillars of fundamentalist Christianity — then sucks to be you, because those sound like very sincere religious beliefs!
You know, I’ve always wondered what it is about FunDUHmentalist Christians that makes it impossible for them to live and let live. Why do so many card-carrying members of the American Taliban get all grossed out about what consenting adults do behind closed doors? Whatever happened to the “land of the free?” Shouldn’t that be taken to mean “free to live as you see fit (as long as you’re not causing direct harm to anyone?)”
I’m not surprised that this story comes to us via Texas, the state where so many REAL men seem so uncertain of their sexuality that they feel moved to project their fears onto others.
So you don’t like the LGBTQ community, what they do, or how they live? Bully for you!! You know a very straightforward solution is available to you, right? Don’t schtup someone who has the same physical equipment as you. If you’re a Penis-American, you’ll want to do the wild thing with a Vagina-American. You can find someone to explain how everything’s supposed to fit together if you’re not sure about how it’s all supposed to work. Not exactly a radical concept, but some Texas FunDUHmentalists seem unclear on the concept.
This revelation won’t shock those who know anything about Texas Republicans and homophobia, but guess what a depraved, homophobic, Right-wing judge in the Lone Star State just did?
A federal judge in Texas on Wednesday struck down an Affordable Care Act requirement that insurers and employers offer plans that cover HIV-prevention drugs.
The ruling came as part of a broader decision that was a partial victory to Obamacare opponents who challenged the Affordable Care Act mandates for coverage of preventive care services without charge.
US District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the requirement that employers offer insurance plans that cover HIV-prevention pills, known as PrEP drugs, violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act….The mandate, the plaintiffs argued in its initial complaint, “forces religious employers to provide coverage for drugs that facilitate and encourage homosexual behavior, prostitution, sexual promiscuity, and intravenous drug use.”
Well, sure. If Christians believe that protecting their religious freedom means being able to watch gays suffer and die from HIV/AIDS, then the law shouldn’t stand in the way, right? Because what good, compassionate, Jesus-loving, washed-in-the-blood Christian doesn’t believe that HIV/AIDS is God’s revenge against TEH GAYZ??
Besides, why shouldn’t Christian employers be able to dictate where employees put their genitals during their non-work hours? It’s all about protecting their spiritual well-being, don’tchaknow? And if employees insist on inserting their genitals in places that God didn’t intend for them to be…well, then they’re going straight to Hell, aren’t they?
And if they’re going straight to Hell, they’re not going to be of much use to their employer. So this is really all about a business’ bottom line, don’tchaknow??
But let’s not jump to conclusions, ‘kay? Judge O’Connor may regularly rule against Democrats, Democratic policies, and the LGBTQ community, but that doesn’t mean he allows his biases to affect his jurisprudence.
Well, perhaps just a wee bit.
Because when Conservatives go judge-shopping and specifically seek him out, that’s precisely what it means.
Yes, this is being argued under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), because again, these people's religious beliefs are basically just "If you have an orgasm I don't approve of, I'm OK with you dying of that." Just like how in the Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor rulings, the Court found fun and creative ways to rule that if employers don't approve of their employees having sex without the threat of forced pregnancy, employers should be able to deny them contraceptive coverage.
And so it came to be that this judge Reed O'Connor — who is well-known for being a lunatic who writes lunatic anti-gay opinions — has made this ruling that bends over backward for the Sincerely Held Religious Beliefs of people who think it's gross when peeners touch and whose imaginary conception of God is that of a deity who also cries big wet God tears when peeners touch.
As any repressed White Conservative Christian heterosexual will tell you, God HATES it when you have an orgasm that isn’t specifically for procreative purposes. Recreational sex is an abomination against God because the American Taliban despises the idea of consenting adults giving and getting pleasure from the bodies of others.
Only when sex is firmly under the control of FunDUHmentalists will the American Taliban truly be happy. Because when people are having sex, they aren’t thinking about glorifying God, which should be the goal of all human activity.
But this decision isn't even just about PrEP, although in the complaint and the ruling, you can see that the target of this lawsuit is entirely things that make Christian conservatives feel tingly sadnesses in their loins. But in order to give these whinyass God-bothering freaks everything they asked for, the judge declares unconstitutional the United States Preventive Services Task Force, a panel within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that decides what should be covered under the preventive care mandate in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Why? Buncha legal-sounding words we're sure won't be on the exam.
Good, God-fearing, righteous White Conservative Christian heterosexuals understand that “religious freedom” only applies to them and their fears and prejudices. Because, to their way of thinking, America is a Christian nation, and this “separation of Church and State” stuff is so much horse s**t. America belongs to them, and they make the rules.
If God wanted people to have fun, he wouldn’t have invented sin.
If you don’t like it, there’s always eastern Ukraine in war time, knowhutimean??
“As part of the ruling, O’Connor declared unconstitutional part of the broader preventive services mandate, which requires insurers and employers to cover at no charge screenings for cancer and heart disease, as well as programs for smoking cessation, among many others.”
Cancer and heart disease are probably God's punishments for something or other, after all.
If these people want to go to church and misunderstand their Bibles so strongly that they think the book is mostly about how gay people are bad and all sex is bad, they're free to. But in this warped society we live in, it's become commonly accepted in rightwing legal brain trusts that people living their lives in ways fundamentalist Christians don't approve of is in and of itself a burden upon their exercise of their religion, and that if fundamentalists have to abide by the same rules as everyone else — like if they have some garbage company that employs members of the public and they provide healthcare — they are ipso facto being discriminated against if said healthcare provides for HIV prevention drugs or contraceptives.
So if FunDUHmentalists say they should be able to force gays to die of HIV/AIDS for their entertainment, then Judge O’Connor is all for it. Because if employers can’t control what employees do with their genitals outside of work, IS THIS EVEN AMERICA ANYMORE??
Besides, if Christians can’t elevate themselves over those they consider “less than,” how are they to know that they’re better than heathens, sinners, and non-believers? How will they be able to feel superior to those who haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and keep an AR-15 by their front door in case the Rapture arrives?
And if Jesus said that gays should die of HIV/AIDS, who are mere mortals to question that divine wisdom? No wonder so many Christians are determined to force their beliefs on the rest of us. Who knew it was all about population control? Once all the gays die, think how much more affordable property in Manhattan and San Francisco will be. Of course, you’ll never be able to get your hair done, but we’ll all have to make sacrifices until the Rapture comes, don’tchaknow?
OK, so I’m ridiculing FunDUHmentalists. Again. But this is scary business. We ALL know someone this ruling could impact if it’s allowed to stand. It’s just one more attempt by the American Taliban to force their narrow agenda on all Americans. If they keep chipping away at our freedom and liberty long enough, we might awaken one morning to discover that we’re living in a country that looks a lot like Margaret Atwood’s Gilead. And that should terrify any decent, rational American.
If that’s where we end up, there will be no going back. Rights and freedoms, once lost, are virtually impossible to restore. Better that we fight to keep from losing them in the first place, especially when there’s a corrupt and willing judiciary involved.
We can’t say we didn’t have ample warning.