Once again, I don’t have the time to fully explore the issue I’m about to raise. Sorry about that. Nevertheless, I still want to share with you an interesting quote that was recently referenced by Andrew Sullivan, then picked up by the always excellent Josh Marshall and now seems to be wending its way though the blogosphere. (I heard about it via Mark Evanier’s post on the subject.) Seeing as I’m always one to hop on the bandwagon, I will now repeat the quote followed by Sullivan’s remarks:
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference … I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.” — President John F. Kennedy.
At the time, the speech was regarded as an attempt to refute anti-Catholic prejudice. Today, wouldn’t the theocons regard it as an expression of anti-Catholic prejudice? Wouldn’t [Senate Majority Leader] Bill Frist see President Kennedy as an enemy of “people of faith”? Just asking.
As I said, I don’t have time right now to say too much about this, except to note that I’m not at all comfortable with the increasing influence of certain modes of religious thinking in this country. It’s not that I have a problem with “people of faith.” (Living in Utah, I am surrounded by them and call many of them my friends.) It’s that I think the religious people who are making the most noise these days would likely have a problem with me.
I’m not talking about ordinary live-and-let-live church-going folks here. I’m talking about those who openly desire the reformation of this country as a religious state (specifically, a state founded upon their particular brand of Christianity, which from my perspective isn’t terribly Christian at all.). I’m talking those who think that everyone who doesn’t believe as they do are less moral than them, or worse, a threat to society. These are people who would impose their religion on everyone through acts of public policy. People who encourage random stupidity like pharmacists withholding prescribed contraceptives because they have moral objections as to how they’re used, as if that’s any of the pharmacist’s concerns. As if the purpose for that prescription is even within the pharmacist’s knowledge; I happen to know that some women take birth control pills for reasons other than contraception, something that wouldn’t show up on a prescription. (An excellent op-ed in yesteday’s Trib suggests a common sense solution to this prescription dilemma: pharmacists who have moral objections to how some medications are used should find another line of work, because it isn’t their place to judge their customers’ conduct or needs.)
I don’t question for a moment the right of the Christian far-righters to think that the world is going to hell in a bucket, if that’s how they see things. I could even make a pretty compelling argument that their view is correct, although I wouldn’t point to the same evidence they use. But I’ve got a big problem with self-righteous, self-important, blue-nosed, killjoy prudes passing judgment on those around them and deciding it’s their purpose in life to put all those sinners in their place. Um, no, guys, that’s God’s job. Your job is to raise your families as you see fit, prepare for whatever you think is coming in this life or the next, teach your children the things you think they’re not getting from a secular public school system, and butt the hell out of everyone else’s business.
OK, rant over and back to work…
A fundamental tenet of religious expression is evangelism. That is, you have a God-given right to tell other people that you think they should be Christian (or Jewish, or Buddhist, or whatever) too. You have a God-given right to say, “I think we should do X, because X is what my religion teaches me we should do.” That right is not merely protected but actually enumerated in the First Amendment. It’s big, and inviolable.
More generally, we all have a freedom of conscience. If a pharmacist doesn’t want to dispense a certain drug, he doesn’t have to. We don’t tell him to stop being a pharmacist. Rather, we respect his freedom.
What if the situation were different? What if pharmaceutical company X call it DrugCo had an AIDS drug that it refused to give to poor people with the disease in Africa? What if a pharmacist refused to fill prescriptions for drugs made by DrugCo? Would he be excoriated as a fanatic, or lauded as a man of conscience?
People have the freedom to make decisions for themselves, period. While you can certainly disagree with them, you can’t call for that freedom to be taken away. Not for pharmacists, not for anybody.
For the past few decades, the United States has been a pretty unfriendly environment for people of faith. People who believed in God and went to church on Sundays were quietly laughed at, thought to be unsophisticated, dismissed as rubes. That pendulum is now swinging back the other way, toward a more tolerant society. That’s good. But the irony of the situation is that people who criticize Christians for being intolerant are, themselves, being intolerant by referring to them as “self-righteous, self-important, blue-nosed, killjoy prudes.”
Makes you think, don’t it?
Yes, Jeff, it does make me think. It makes me think I was a fool to ignore my mother’s advice about talking religion in public. However, since the damage is already done, a couple of points:
First, I never said anything about taking away anyone’s freedom. I never suggested that laws should be passed forcing “conscientious objector” pharmacists to go against their personal morality. I said what many people say when they encounter someone who is reluctant to fulfill the duties of their job: if that person finds their work situation intolerable, for whatever reason, they ought to consider a change. I once left a job because I wasn’t comfortable with the ultimate purpose to which my work was going to be used. Objector pharmacists are perfectly free to do the same.
Next, on the subject of tolerance, I suspect you’re just trying to bait me by suggesting that I am a hypocrite. I guess it all depends on how you define things. If I am a hypocrite, I’m hardly the first, because hypocrisy runs rampant on both sides of the culture war. However, I would not consider myself intolerant in general terms. I don’t hate religious people merely because they believe in God. I have never “quietly laughed at them,” and I do not consider them to be unsophisticated or rubes. I live in Utah; I’m surrounded by religious people every day of my life. If I truly had a big problem with people who go to church on Sundays, I’d have no friends and be one miserable camper, neither of which is so, regardless of how it may seem on this blog. As I stated in my post, most of my friends are religious, and I respect them and their opinions, even though I frequently disagree with them. I like to think that they respect my views in return.
I do, however, have a problem with a particular subset of religious people who aren’t content merely to conduct their own lives by their own codes but also want to tell everyone else how to conduct theirs. These people — who may be of any sect, by the way, be it Mormon, Jew, Christian Evangelical, Wiccan, whatever — do not respect me or my views, so I find it pretty difficult to return the favor for them. It’s human nature to resent those who look down upon you or pass judgment upon you or tell you how you “ought to be living.”
Which is why, to get back to the original point of my post, I think it’s a good idea to leave as much overt religiosity out of our politics as is practical. Because faith-specific rhetoric and legislation that appears to favor one particular sect or philosophy breeds resentment and alienation, and that isn’t healthy for our society in general.
A pharmacist does not have the freedom to decide which drugs he/she will dispense. Their job is to dispense drugs. Period. If they have a moral problem with what a particular drug is used for they should keep it to themselves, at least while they are at work. Yes, they have freedom of conscience, just as we all do. But the workplace isn’t always a place where that can or should be expressed. A pharmisist doesn’t specifically know why a particular drug is being prescribed, and it is none of their business to know why. I personally take birth control pills. I take them to control a very serious and extremely painful disorder called endometriosis. The ONLY drug to treat this disease is birth control pills. My prescription forms do not indicate what condition the pills are being taken for. And I shouldn’t have to explain it to the pharmisist. That reason is between my and my doctor. If my doctor determins I need to take a particular pill, ANY pill, it is the pharmasist’s job to dispense that pill.
As for Jeff’s analogy of DRUGCO and the hypothetical AIDS pill, if a pharmisist refused to dispense a drug to me because of something the drug company is doing, I’d have a major problem with that. Say your mother has a very serious illness and the ONLY drug that can help her is from DRUGCO. Do you feel the same about the pharmisist refusing to carry any of their pills? Yes, DRUGCO should be penalized somehow for refusing drugs to one particular place, but should other sick people also be penalized for it?
Couldn’t have said it better myself, hon.
The thing is, pharmacists aren’t the same as storekeepers, who are perfectly justified in picking and choosing what products they carry. Pharmacists are an adjunct of the medical profession, an intermediary between doctors and patients. It isn’t their place to second guess a prescription’s purpose or to judge the use for which a med is going to be used, because they don’t have the doctor’s knowledge and they know nothing of the individual patient’s circumstances. If they suspect the meds are going to be used for illegal purposes, they can call the police. But if they just have personal moral issues with how the drugs are used, they’re going to have to find some way of living with it, or find another job.
Gee. I’m sorry. I must have missed the amendment that says we’re all free citizens except for pharmacists. Clue for you: We’re all free to make choices of conscience. Every last mother-lovin’ one of us. Whether you like our choices or not. This “freedom for me, but not for thee” stuff is really starting to go too far.
Oh, and as for that “It isn’t their place to second guess a prescription” stuff, that’s just plain wrong. Article II of the Code of Ethics of the American Pharmacists Association says that it’s a pharmacist’s duty to place “concern for the well-being of the patient at the center of professional practice.” Translated into plain English, that means that pharmacists aren’t just drug-dispensing machines. They are medical professionals who have an ethical responsibility to second-guess every single prescription that comes in.
That’s why we have pharmacists instead of just selling all drugs over the counter. They are health-care professionals who are bound by ethics and moral conscience.
You want to leave religion out of politics? All I have to say to that is “tough beans.” Our country was founded, in part, on the principle of free expression of religion. You can’t tell somebody to stop talking about God just because you don’t want to hear it.
So now who’s being defensive, Jeff? I guess we all have our days…
Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? This whole pharmacist thing is really only about one issue: sex. The “conscientious objectors” aren’t refusing to hand out meds for high blood pressure. They’re refusing to dispense birth-control pills, and they’re doing it because they don’t like the most probable reason why that woman is taking them. They refuse because they think the woman on the other side of the counter shouldn’t be doing the Big Nasty without a wedding band on her finger, or because the pharmacist doesn’t believe in contraception under any circumstances, or because the pharamacist equates the pills’ function with abortion. Well, here’s a clue for you: it’s none of the pharmacist’s bloody business what that woman is doing in her bed.
If it turns out that the pharmacist’s suspicions are correct and this hypothetical woman is sinning up a storm, then, by his own beliefs, that woman will be judged for her actions by God Himself, not the hypothetical pharmacist. And if it turns out that the woman is taking those pills for reasons other than the desire for a fancy-free sex life, then that pharamacist is denying her the medication that’s been prescribed by her doctor to treat her medical condition, which I would guess is a major violation of that code of ethics you quote.
I’ll say it again: it is not the pharmacist’s place to judge the morality of his/her customers — which is what this situation is really all about, not any faux “concern for the well-being of the patient” — and if that pharmacist cannot reconcile his or her personal morals and ethics with the demands of the job, then it’s time to find another job. It’s not a question of denying anyone’s freedom. It’s a question of fulfilling one’s professional duties. If you can’t do that, for whatever reason, you shouldn’t be in that job. It’s a simple equation.
As for your assertion that “you can’t tell somebody to stop talking about God just because you don’t want to hear it,” you are, as usual, missing my point. I don’t think people should stop talking about God, and I don’t believe for a moment that senators are ever going to stop voting based on what they’ve learned in Sunday school. But I do think it’s absolutely wrong to push one group’s particular vision of morality on everyone else in society. That is, after all, the evangelicals’ big gripe against secularism, isn’t it? They don’t like someone else’s idea of right and wrong being pushed down their throats? What makes it proper for them to do the same thing, just because the balance of power seems to have shifted for the time being?
So people only have freedom of conscience if you approve of their decisions?
I don’t think that’s how it works, Jason.
And for the record, evangelicals’ big gripe against secularism is the creeping relativism that says that people shouldn’t try to hold other people to a moral standard.
I’m afraid I just don’t see how someone’s freedom is denied by asking them to keep their noses out of other peoples’ business, Jeff.
And how does maintaining an individual’s freedom of conscience jibe with trying to “hold other people to a moral standard,” anyway? Isn’t our hypothetical pharmacist denying his customer’s freedom of conscience because he doesn’t approve of her decision to have non-reproductive sex? Or does freedom of conscience only apply if one’s conscience adheres to a particular doctrine?