John Holbo:
Live by the
flaming sword of true religious spirittechnicality, die by the technicality: Dave Weigel calls this, from Yuval Levin, the ‘best riposte’ to the new HHS regulations…. [I]f this is the best they can do…. Levin’s objection is that HHS is just looking for a way… [to] say… technically we’re not… infring[ing]…. But the original complaint… [was of a] technical hitch [and that] calls for technical fix…. It isn’t the case that no one gave a damn about contraception… except as a convenient device to force religious believers to do things against their conscience for the sheer sake of forcing them to do things against their conscience…. Letting the private sector run [health insurance] is a concession to those who want the private sector to stay powerful, not a sop to those who want to throw Christians to the lions, like in the good old days. Now, courtesy of HHS, we have a fresh kludge…. Levin objects that all the change does is make a conceptual change that “makes the rule less insulting”…. Somehow removing the unintended insult, which was the only injury, is adding insult to injury….
Religious liberty is… not the right to do what you want… [but] the right to do what you must…. [G]overnment of a free society [needs to] seek for ways to allow people to live within the strictures of their consciences…. [R]eligious believers… [need[ to see if there is some way to live within the legal strictures…. (Isn’t it obvious that this cuts both ways, if it cuts either way?)…. How else could the whole thing possibly work?…
Why be a sore winner? You got your technical fix to your technical hitch. K-Lo acts as if… the fix… shows how inconsiderate they all are of the religious sensibilities of folks like her. But surely it shows the opposite: those people are obliged to take the religious sensibilities of folks like K-Lo at face value, even if they suspect (as would be quite reasonable, under the circumstances) that she is making exaggerated faces, for effect…
