What are your thoughts on Chruch's refusing to wed gays?

[Aquitaine]

Why should private clubs which discriminate at will get taxpayer funded benefits?
Like tax exempt status?
Tom

This.

 

[Marisa]

Should take that as your opinion means nothing, right?

I'm well aware my opinion means squat to you. Difference is, I'm talking to you, not a church.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

If you have no medical reason that you need to have an abortion done "today" you can switch hospitals so to speak.

Not always. Take the Savita Halapanavar (sp?) case that got mentioned earlier: she was in no shape to be moved and an abortion was indicated, but couldn't be conclusively shown to be *necessary*, so the doctors waited until the fetal heartbeat stopped and then removed it. They took a gamble and lost: as it happened, the infection had already gotten so bad that it ended up killing her... though the doctors weren't in a position to say conclusively at the time that the abortion would have saved her life; this only became apparent in retrospect... and could never have been established with certainty if they had actually performed the abortion.

The hospital I work for doesn't have neurologists. If someone comes in with any kind of brain injury we stabilize them in the ER and then move them to a different facility. Same thing for behavioral or psychological issues. We don't have a psych ward. We don't take on massive trauma patients ect ect ect. Its a choice of the hospital to not be equip for these as it saves us a lot of money to simply transfer these cases elsewhere. I wouldn't say by any means that "to save money" is higher than "religious freedom" if they choose to be equip for such procedures or to not have them unless deemed emergent or necessary.

Why not? Hospital (or health ministry) budgets aren't unlimited. No hospital can provide every possible service to a perfect standard, so they're all going to have to make decisions about priorities.

There's a big difference between making decisions to maximize the benefit obtained from a fixed amount of resources and settling for less benefit from those resources that you could have gotten.

And as I alluded to earlier, the presence of Catholic hospitals can mean that secular hospitals can't be established.

Here in Ontario, hospitals get funded by the provincial government, who does accommodation plans. They'll allocate (and fund) a certain number of hospital beds to a region, some of which are in Catholic hospitals. If there's a Catholic hospital already in an area providing some services, that hospital still gets the money, which prevents it from being allocated to some other hospital that would provide services that the Catholic Church frowns on.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

Not always. Take the Savita Halapanavar (sp?) case that got mentioned earlier: she was in no shape to be moved and an abortion was indicated, but couldn't be conclusively shown to be *necessary*, so the doctors waited until the fetal heartbeat stopped and then removed it. They took a gamble and lost: as it happened, the infection had already gotten so bad that it ended up killing her... though the doctors weren't in a position to say conclusively at the time that the abortion would have saved her life; this only became apparent in retrospect... and could never have been established with certainty if they had actually performed the abortion.

This could happen with any number of medical conditions. Not knowing which path to take is far more common than we know. In such a case where the pt wants to have an abortion and it "may" be medically necessary I would say that should be considered medically necessary. In a situation where the symptoms made them oblivious as to the need of the abortion until it was too late then I can understand the issue.

Why not? Hospital (or health ministry) budgets aren't unlimited. No hospital can provide every possible service to a perfect standard, so they're all going to have to make decisions about priorities.

There's a big difference between making decisions to maximize the benefit obtained from a fixed amount of resources and settling for less benefit from those resources that you could have gotten.

Similarly no hospital can make perfect decisions for perfect outcomes. A hospital normally does not provide abortions unless medically necessary in the vast majority of cases. A quick question I would like to ask as I am not overly familiar with the case, did the woman want an abortion and they said "no"? Or was she in line with what the hospital wanted as well? It does matter to a degree.

And as I alluded to earlier, the presence of Catholic hospitals can mean that secular hospitals can't be established.

I would like to hear the support for this. The notion to me feels silly.

Here in Ontario, hospitals get funded by the provincial government, who does accommodation plans. They'll allocate (and fund) a certain number of hospital beds to a region, some of which are in Catholic hospitals. If there's a Catholic hospital already in an area providing some services, that hospital still gets the money, which prevents it from being allocated to some other hospital that would provide services that the Catholic Church frowns on.

In Canada there is a huge difference. I don't think that Church based facilities should receive any kind of government funding from the get go. Catholic hospitals are often private hospitals. The whole point is that they are to be funded by the Catholic Church rather than the government. If we were in a situation like Canada why would we ever have need of a Catholic Hospitals? I would be against a hospital of any kind receiving government pay to have any sort of discrimination of treatments. Separation of church and state issue at that point.

 

[columbus]

I vaguely recall a truly ugly scenario. Back in the sixties, Mississippi I think.
The fetal child died around six months along. No heartbeat, signs of decomposition, the whole nine yards. But the hospital had a "no abortion" policy and state law backed them up.
The mother spent weeks strapped to a hospital bed while God took His Sweet Time ending her suffering.
Tom

 

[peanutbutter63]

As a response to the OP, a very foolish choice of whichever clergy from whichever religion not to marry the LGBT community...but that's just me. On the other hand, it's a different matter if conscience is involved. I don't believe any clergy sort should be forced to do so, but I personally believe it's their loss. Again, that's just me....

 

[peanutbutter63]

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

This could happen with any number of medical conditions. Not knowing which path to take is far more common than we know. In such a case where the pt wants to have an abortion and it "may" be medically necessary I would say that should be considered medically necessary. In a situation where the symptoms made them oblivious as to the need of the abortion until it was too late then I can understand the issue.

Here's one article about the case: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...avita-Halappanavar-official-report-finds.html

From what I gather, it wasn't a matter of not knowing what path to take; it was a matter of knowing what path to take but not wanting to follow it until the doctors were sure they wouldn't be charged under Ireland's very restrictive anti-abortion laws. They knew that if they didn't wait until there was no fetal heartbeat, they could have been pulled before a board of inquiry or even a criminal court to be second-guessed on whether the abortion was really necessary.

It's because medical care is so full of judgement calls that these exemptions "to save the life of the mother" are such a booby trap. It's very rare for there to be a very clear dividing line where a doctor can say "aha! If I do X, the patient will certainly die and if I do Y, the patient will certainly live!" Doctors deal in probabilities and risk... but pregnancy itself is already a risk to the health and life of the mother, and even in cases like that of Savita Halappanavar where a patient does die for want of an abortion, the risk wasn't 100% that she would die. There's usually going to be a range of available options, and the doctor will pick the best one based on professional judgement. These "life of the mother" exemptions don't reflect the reality of the medical decision-making process.

Similarly no hospital can make perfect decisions for perfect outcomes. A hospital normally does not provide abortions unless medically necessary in the vast majority of cases. A quick question I would like to ask as I am not overly familiar with the case, did the woman want an abortion and they said "no"? Or was she in line with what the hospital wanted as well? It does matter to a degree.

According to all the reports I read, the pregnancy was wanted, but when it became obvious that it wouldn't result in a live birth, the patient repeatedly asked for an immediate abortion instead of waiting however long it would take for the inevitable miscarriage to occur spontaneously.

I would like to hear the support for this. The notion to me feels silly.

"A frequent case of natural monopoly occurs with hospital care. In more remote, rural areas, the quantity of hospital care to be provided does not exhaust economies of scale. From an economic point of view, it is optimal to have a single hospital in those areas."

https://books.google.ca/books?id=-s...q=hospital economics natural monopoly&f=false

In Canada there is a huge difference. I don't think that Church based facilities should receive any kind of government funding from the get go. Catholic hospitals are often private hospitals. The whole point is that they are to be funded by the Catholic Church rather than the government. If we were in a situation like Canada why would we ever have need of a Catholic Hospitals?

Canada has Catholic hospitals, so apparently they aren't inconsistent with "a situation like Canada".

I think that Canadian healthcare often gets misunderstood by non-Canadians. Here's a quick breakdown from an Ontario perspective (the delivery details vary a bit from province to province):

- healthcare is funded by the government.
- healthcare is coordinated by the government through Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs). The LHINs make decisions about things like how many hospital beds should be in each area of their own region, what services each hospital should offer, etc. (plus all sorts of decisions about health care outside hospitals).
- each hospital (or sometimes groups of hospitals) is run at arms-length from the government by a not-for-profit organization. They have their own budgets (which are mainly funded by the province) and make their own operational decisions (though within the rather restrictive framework of legislation and LHIN directions).
- where new hospitals have been set up, the organizations running them are generally secular.
- in some cases, where a hospital has existed from before this governmental framework was set up, it's run by an organization with a religious affiliation, Catholic being the most common.
- In my experience, LHINs don't try to force religious hospitals to do procedures they know the hospital will refuse to do.

Within this framework (and within the framework of generally applicable laws), religious hospitals are free to set up rules as they see fit, like the fertility specialist I mentioned before: as a condition of her privileges at a Catholic hospital, she isn't allowed to do IVF anywhere, not even at another hospital that's okay with it.

I would be against a hospital of any kind receiving government pay to have any sort of discrimination of treatments. Separation of church and state issue at that point.

I'm inclined to agree. Also, I haven't even gotten into our issues in family medicine: there was a fairly big controversy here last year when the medical associations were reviewing what their codes of ethics had to say about refusing services on religious grounds. Some family doctors will refuse to prescribe birth control (or refuse it to unmarried women). This is in a context where many parts of the country have a family doctor shortage, so for many people, they rely on walk-in clinics for their routine medical care. It's very common that in a town - or even a small city - with one walk-in clinic where one doctor is working at any given time, a refusal by one doctor means a complete denial of the service to the patient.

 

[dgirl1986]

I believe one may call it marriage if one wishes but I never will no matter where it happens.

Your personal use of terminology does not affect the people who marry someone of the same gender.

 

[Katzpur]

I vaguely recall a truly ugly scenario. Back in the sixties, Mississippi I think.
The fetal child died around six months along. No heartbeat, signs of decomposition, the whole nine yards. But the hospital had a "no abortion" policy and state law backed them up.
The mother spent weeks strapped to a hospital bed while God took His Sweet Time ending her suffering.
Tom

Sounds like the hospital and the state laws were more to blame than God was.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

I'm inclined to agree. Also, I haven't even gotten into our issues in family medicine: there was a fairly big controversy here last year when the medical associations were reviewing what their codes of ethics had to say about refusing services on religious grounds. Some family doctors will refuse to prescribe birth control (or refuse it to unmarried women). This is in a context where many parts of the country have a family doctor shortage, so for many people, they rely on walk-in clinics for their routine medical care. It's very common that in a town - or even a small city - with one walk-in clinic where one doctor is working at any given time, a refusal by one doctor means a complete denial of the service to the patient.

To review the points.
1) government funded organizations should be able to incite freedom of religion to deny treatment.
2) What makes an organization a religious hospital rather than a secular one if it is being funded by the government? In America they are usually funded by churches to supplement payments from insurances. In a situation like Canada where the government funds all healthcare I would be inclined to take the stance that this excepts religious hospitals from being discriminatory so long as they function with the government's funding.
3) Family clinics, if funded by the government should get the same treatment. IF you don't like it stop being a doctor.

 

[sojourner]

Should church's be punished for refusing to marry gays by loosing tax exempt status?
I post a while back that this might happen in order to force Church's to perform
weddings for gay couples and if I recall I took a lot of flack for even suggesting
such a thing could happen.

Well read this.

Churches Who Refuse Same Sex Weddings Could Lose Tax Exempt Status – Downtrend


Churches Who Refuse Same Sex Weddings Could Lose Tax Exempt Status
Now that same-sex marriage is the law of the land, there’s a very good chance that churches who refuse to perform gay weddings could lose their tax-exempt status.

The Daily Caller is reporting that in his dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts warned as much.

“Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new right to same-sex marriage — when, for example, a religious college provides married student housing only to opposite-sex married couples, or a religious adoption agency declines to place children with same-sex married couples,” Roberts wrote.



“Indeed, the Solicitor General candidly acknowledged that the tax exemptions of some religious institutions would be in question if they opposed same-sex marriage There is little doubt that these and similar questions will soon be before this Court. Unfortunately, people of faith can take no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today.”

It’s inconceivable that a Catholic Church – or any house of worship – could be forced to perform gay marriages, even if their religion prohibits it. And if they don’t, they could lose their status as a “church.”

Is this unintended consequences, or was it liberal, gay-rights advocates’ intention to destroy the institution of religion too?

Thoughts?

Churches are not enjoined by law to solemnize any marriages. I have refused to solemnize the marriage of a hetero couple whom I judged to be ill prepared.
The law doesn't say, "the church must marry all homosexual comers." Therefore, there is no reprisal for failure to do so.

 

[sojourner]

Isn't giving churches special tax privileges a violation of church and state?
Tom

No, the exemption from taxes fully divorces the church from the state. if no money exchanges hands, there is no relationship that is binding.

 

[columbus]

No, the exemption from taxes fully divorces the church from the state. if no money exchanges hands, there is no relationship that is binding.

I would agree with this if churches stayed out of the political arena. But they don't.
Many, maybe most, have become de facto tax exempt Political Action Committees.
Tom

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

No, the exemption from taxes fully divorces the church from the state. if no money exchanges hands, there is no relationship that is binding.

Value changes hands. Churches receive valuable goods and services that they don't pay for.

Government also subsidizes donations to churches with tax deductions for donors.

 

[gsa]

I would agree with this if churches stayed out of the political arena. But they don't.
Many, maybe most, have become de facto tax exempt Political Action Committees.
Tom

Right. The Southern Baptist Convention clearly supports Republican candidates, black churches usually support Democratic candidates, etcetera. It is a useless fiction.

 

[allright]

better to lose a tax exemption than to renounce Jesus and spend eternity in hell

 

[sojourner]

Value changes hands. Churches receive valuable goods and services that they don't pay for.

Government also subsidizes donations to churches with tax deductions for donors.

yeah, but "value" is different from "owed money."

 

[sojourner]

I would agree with this if churches stayed out of the political arena. But they don't.
Many, maybe most, have become de facto tax exempt Political Action Committees.
Tom

Yeah, that's not right. Fortunately, some have lost their 501c3 status by doing that sort of nonsense.

 

[columbus]

Yeah, that's not right. Fortunately, some have lost their 501c3 status by doing that sort of nonsense.

Really?
I've never heard of that happening. Any links to a report of this?
Tom