Richard AmmonToday’s NY Times carries a headline story:
Bishops Were Prepared for Battle Over Birth Control Coverage
(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/us/bishops-planned-battle-on-birth-control-coverage-rule.html?_r=1&hp)
By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
Look at the photo of this overfed, overweight, arrogant cleric dressed in embroidered costume squatting on his ornately carved throne sporting his gold archbishop ring. (Can there be anything further from Jesus!?) 
It is the image of an ignorant, backward hierarchy stuck in irrelevant archaic dogma about how to control the lives of other people with irrational and dangerous ideas about modern life–the use of birth control in the sexual bedroom privacy of consenting adults and the church’s opposition to the ceremony of love called gay marriage.
His, and the other Catholic bishops, are airing their dirty dogma in public and complaining that new federal healthcare programs infringe on their ‘religious freedom’ – an oxymoron if ever there was one. Religious freedom to dictate, intrude, opine and scold consenting adults about personal efforts to prevent disease or control the size of a family or whom to love.
Where these unmarried, allegedly sex-free clergymen (we all know about that!) find the gall to pronounce bedroom rules for faithful Catholic congregants and oppose the emotional validity of same-sex love is beyond belief; their gall is beyond modern standards of integrity, decency and free will in a democratic society.
Religious freedom to do what? Govern the conscience of 21st century life based on flimsy multi-interpretations of an alleged book of scriptures that is so riddled with fantasy, revenge, cruelty, archaic and inhumane proscriptions and a distorted messianic fable of a man claiming to be a blood relative of a deity who could ‘save humanity’ from their sins (according to whom?). How presumptuous is that? A single carnal person in the desert of the Middle East claiming to have influence (forgiveness) over the natives of Australia, Siberia, Godwanaland who are supposed to be sinful creatures at the moment–or the months before–birth.
This whole bizarre mythology has been organized, codified, systematized and parsed into shreds of mere opinion, policy, ecclesiastical ‘law’ and egregiously out of date advice for modern life. And these puffed up, bizarrely costumed men are so fervent in their distorted beliefs that they dare to mount a public campaign for their bigoted, unhealthy and unsubstantiated opinions which they justify as part of their ‘faith’.
This is first-class delusional thinking. Human beings are the ‘free souls’ of their own choosing, their own fate, if you will. We were not born into sin, not all born into a heterosexual orientation, not accountable to a manufactured religious belief system that is one of the most materialistic and wealthy industries in the modern world stacked full of golden treasure and huge marble statues and cathedrals.
This is not a system of spiritual guidance; it is a system of spiritual violence and aggression against individual liberty (to define and manage marriage) and against the inherent human nature of homosexuals.
Once more, shame on the Catholic church for their sin of sexual scandals and shame on the church clergy who perpetuate their sin of presumptuous control (and intrusion into government policies) that is not acceptable in 21st century life.
Said very-well-fed Dolan of New York (aka the archbishop, whatever that means) in a distorted statement, “never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn’t happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights.” The hubris and hypocrisy of this comment is staggering. “Violates their conscience” !?. The real offense is the church’s intrusion into the personal conscience of free people to choose their lifestyle without coercion or correction by an antiquated and irrelevant religious institution.
Dolan notes that the Bill of Rights does mention freedom of religion in the First Amendment. It was put there because religion was and is one of the most dangerous threats to individual freedom. The pilgrims sought religious separation from other Christian sects they rejected. The flip side of the First amendment should be: Religion shall make no law or dogma respecting the establishing of or prohibiting free exercise of choice.
Shame! Shame!
