Which leaves us with a rather unfortunate intractable problem.
What do you do for the large swaths of the country where your choices are a therapist who shouldn’t really be qualified for the job due to discriminatory behavior, or no treatment at all.
Because while I understand your position, not unreasonable at face value, that you don’t want them to be your doctor anyhow, it does leave us with the rather thorny situation where this would mean potentially millions of people simply lose access to a doctor.
And I’m firmly on the side of sub optimal care is (in most situations) going to be better than no care. Exceptions exist, certainly, but on balance it’s better to have the option. After all medical treatment is non compulsory. If someone is truly better off not receiving treatment than going to a doctor that will be discriminatory in treatment, they can choose to not go. Now with mental health issues this could lead to a host of complications, and sometimes the patient may not be able to accurately weigh treatment versus non treatment, but the option still exists for cases where the doctor is truly unfit.
They have to do their fucking jobs, unless you know, someone passes a law that says they don’t. It’s no different than denying care based on race or anything else. There are plenty of racist doctors in the world (fuck I’ve known plenty of them), but magically they do their fucking jobs rather than become unemployed.
Why are all of these states coming up with similar proposals at the same time? Where do they come from?
Oh, it’s the Liberty Counsel. The fine folks that assisted bigot county clerk Kim Davis with her legal battle.
“It is only about being free to pursue your faith,” said Mathew Staver. “We have no interest in discriminating against anyone.”
Staver is the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, which has affiliated attorneys in all 50 states – drafting bills, advising lawmakers and defending clients in what they believe to be the great cultural clash of our time.
“The Supreme Court in the 5-4 opinion on marriage in 2015 lit the house on fire,” Staver said. “All we’re trying to do is control the fire at this point in time.”
And he is unfazed by corporate threats to pull out of states in protest against his work.
It’s somewhat amusing to me that these southern states hate the supposed overreach of the federal government, but when it comes to the same states and their uppity municipalities – well, the states sure as hell know better.
But in the disputed scenarios, the customers don’t have just some, i.e. unrelated, disagreement. They have a disagreement precisely about what “doing the job” means, and what that job even entails in principle.
Pharmacists dispense medicine. But what is medicine? How does it affect the definition of medicine to say that an abortive or contraceptive drug is necessarily medicine?
Therapists treat illnesses. But what is an illness? When certain ideas or desires become too strong and cause subjective suffering, can they qualify as an illness, irrespective of any moral analysis?
It’s like you want to buy a cart, and you go to some car dealer, but he doesn’t think carts are cars, so he doesn’t sell them. You can argue definitions with him, or accuse him of discrimination, but at the end of the day, there just isn’t enough common ground for a business transaction.
The most astounding observation is that the law calls the three protected convictions religious, even though none of them actually is. The first is legal, the second is moral, and the third is scientific / biological.
Academicians and armchair philosophers can argue over the meaning of “medicine” as much as they like. But the law has a very strict definition, and licensed professionals must adhere to the legal definition in the course of their work. That means knowing the legal difference between St. John’s Wort and Prozac. It means understanding that a euthanasia machine is not actually a medical device. It means keeping up on the changing status of marijuana, according to jurisdiction.
That’s a lot to know, which is why licensed professionals (unlike philosophers) are required to take an exam that demonstrates their knowledge of the law. Once they pass the exam, it’s too late to plead ignorance of the legal status of ethinyl estradiol.
It’s like you want to buy a cart, and you go to some car dealer
It’s more like you want to play with a two pound drone, which you consider a toy but the FAA considers an aircraft. Regardless of whether you agree that it’s an aircraft, you had best comply with the FAA’s legal restrictions.
There are legal definitions for what constitutes medicine (morning after pills are considered medicine). There are definitions of what constitute illnesses – particularly mental illnesses (see the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, aka. the DSM V). Those definitions evolve over time, which is part of what professionals in these fields need to stay abreast of. I agree that these are not fixed definitions, but their evolution is a matter of professional consensus and standards, rather than personal religious belief or philosophy.
Car dealerships are a whole other call of wax – I don’t think they are professionals, licensed to provide professional services (with the exception of a license to sell cars – which are themselves defined by the state – and certifications to provide professional mechanical services – which are also regulated).
On the point made upthread about there only being one provider in a community: if that provider is unwilling to provide services, strip their of their license. From a market perspective, this incents someone who actually is willing to do the job to come to that community and provide services, since suddenly there is a customer base that can be drawn upon.
In an unexpected (but welcome) bit of sanity, the Governor of Tennessee vetoed the bill that would have made the Bible the “state book” of Tennessee.
His explanation for the veto was pretty good. He said that either the Bible was the sacred Word of God… in which case making it the “state book” would be in violation of the Tennessee Constitution, or else it the bill would declare it to be a work of fiction… which would needlessly insult every Christian and Jew in the state, including himself.
It’s absurd that such a bill would make it to the desk of any governor.
I mean, ignoring the obvious legal problems… does the state legislature of Tennessee seriously have nothing better to do than absolutely useless and obvious pandering to religious nutjobs? What exactly is the GOAL of even declaring a “state book”?
If someone goes before the legislature and says, “Hay guyz, I think we should have X as our state book!” that person should be punched in the face, immediately, for fucking all values of X.
Not sure how much time you’ve gotten to spend in the lovely (lol) state of Tennessee, but while they might have much more actually important things that need looking after (including crumbling roads and bridges, massive youth poverty, crashing literacy and math competency at every grade level, a desolated manufacturing economy, serious environmental threats posed by northern neighbors’ pollution, etc.), any State Rep worth his salt there knows that they don’t need to address any of that so long as they can get their name and face attached to things like the anti-LGBT counseling bill and the Bible bill.
But hey, the mountains sure are pretty. Probably best to just visit, though…
That pandering is how their job performance is measured by their voters, though. Their constituents are getting the representation they want and deserve.
The problem with these deep-stupid states is that they even today still have substantial numbers of non-stupid citizens who are unfortunately in the minority. They are not getting the government they deserve. And not all of them have the luxury of moving out.
This is why we need stronger federal and weaker state government. Sure it would hurt the 15 or so states where the state gov’t functions, but the other 35 are just too corrupt and too ready to pass laws that hurt their citizens. Also, fixing state legislatures (take away their power to determine districts) would improve the quality of Congress as well.
