Megan McArdle takes Kevin Drum to task for wanting to force the Catholic Church out of the business of providing charity services to “the sick, the poor, and the dispossessed.”
Drum agrees with the Obama administration’s view that if the Church is going to provide such services to the general public, i.e., to all the needy without regard to their religious affiliation, it should have to offer insurance coverage to its workers for contraception etc., just as other providers to. “If we’d been talking about, say, an Islamic hospital insisting that its employees bind themselves to sharia law,” Drum argues, “I imagine the ‘religious community’ in the United States would be a wee bit more understanding if the Obama administration refused to condone the practice.”
I dunno. I think it’s just as easy to imagine that the Obama administration might be much more willing to offend Catholics than Muslims, who after all, contribute much more “diversity” to American life.
