Victorian C36, sex work and the CPC god-and-pony show

If last week's opportunistic display by the Harper government Con MPs at the special Justice Committee's hearings about C36 wasn't enough, today's rightwing fundamentalist religious histrionic zealotry given voice by CPC useful idiot Bob "Douchert" Dechert amply illustrates Poe's Law.

The collective CPC and its individual MPs' squalid, Christian Taliban-like beliefs about sexwork are deeply gynophobic, cruel and oppressive as well as redolent of 19th century England hypocrisy.  Not only is Bill C36 unlikely to survive a Supreme Court of Canada challenge, it expresses the worst of Harper Cons base support's most vile attitudes towards women as victims, and sex as inherently evil unless redeemed by holy marriage.

It brings to mind this sexist joke, an artefact of 1950s assumptions, that first-year law students may still hear from a creaky member of the Old White Boys' Club:

Having been propositioned by a well defined and uptown prostitute one evening, a successful single gentleman agreed to have consensual sex with the young lady for the sum of $500.00. After the evening ended the gentleman handed the young lady $250.00. The prostitute immediately demanded the balance and threatened to sue if she didn't get it. "That's a laugh!" the man stated, "I'd like to see you try." A few days later the man was surprised to receive a summons ordering him to appear in court as a defendant in a lawsuit. The man hurried to his lawyer's office and explained the details of the case. His lawyer said, "She can't possibly get a judgment against you on such grounds, but it will be interesting to see how she presents her case." After the usual preliminaries, the parties appeared in court ready for trial.

The prostitute's lawyer addressed the court first, "Your Honor, my client, this lady here, is the owner of a piece of property, a garden spot surrounded by a profuse growth of shrubbery, which property she agreed to rent to the defendant for a specific length of time for the sum of $500.00. The defendant obtained exclusive possession of the property, using it extensively for the purpose for which it was rented. However, upon evacuating the premises, he paid only one-half of the amount agreed upon. The rent was not excessive since it is restricted and exclusive property and we ask that judgment be granted for plaintiff and against defendant in the amount of $250.00.

The defendant's lawyer, thrown back by what he had just heard, pondered the opening remarks for a moment and stood to present his off-the-cuff version of the case, "Your Honor, my client agrees that the young lady has a fine piece of property, and that he rented such property for a period of time, and that he even derived a degree of pleasure from the transaction. However, my client found a well on the property upon which he placed his own stones, sunk a shaft, and erected a pump. All equipment belonging to my client and all labor being performed by him. We allege that these improvements to the property were sufficient to effect an offset of the unpaid portion of rent and further allege that the plaintiff was adequately compensated for the fair market rental value of such property. We, therefore, ask that judgment not be granted for plaintiff and that the defendant be awarded his attorney's fees and costs incurred in the defense of this frivolous action."

The prostitute's lawyer replied, "If it pleases the court your Honor, my client agrees that the defendant did find a well on the property, and that he made the improvements to the property as alleged. However, had the defendant not known the well existed, he would have never rented the property. Furthermore, upon evacuating the premises, the defendant removed the stones, pulled out the shaft, and took the pump with him. In doing so, he not only dragged his equipment through the well-manicured shrubbery, but left the well with a hole much larger than it was prior to his occupancy, making it easily accessible to small children, thereby creating a possible danger to the health and general welfare of the public. We, therefore, ask that judgment be granted as requested in the complaint.

Judgment for the plaintiff in the amount of $250.00!

Imagine it being told by the chortling, snorting, oinking CPC MP Robert Goguen, whilst MP Joy Smith supplies demure gasps in the background.

If you want to hear a *good* joke, read this brilliant parody of the slut-shaming "Rescue Rhetoric".

The Christian Taliban Strikes Again

Fetus fetishists revel in any injury or complication associated with abortion. Almost daily, LifeShite and others like it crow about 'another' ambulance reported -- by one of their clinic harassers of course -- taking someone to hospital from a clinic.

They dance in the streets when a clinic is investigated for any cause, often at their own instigation.

They worship predatory quacks as anti-heroes.

But what really gets them creaming their Depends is a death that can be linked to abortion.

There's been one such recently in the US but what they are doing with this one is utterly despicable -- even for them.

Here are the facts so far. A 29-year-old woman was 33 weeks pregnant when something went catastrophically wrong.

I can say 'catastrophically wrong' because this was very much a wanted pregnancy. A name had been chosen, nursery decorated, and a online gift registry set up.

How she got to Dr Carhart is unclear but understandable because since the assassination of Dr Tiller he is one of the very few specialists left in the US who can and will perform a late-term abortion.

Of course, Dr Carhart has been relentlessly targetted by the same domestic-terrorism enablers who helped murder Dr Tiller. I imagine his clinic is under constant surveillance.

So, something went wrong with the pregnancy, then something else went terribly wrong and the woman and wanted fetus both died.

That's about all we should know about this tragedy until it is investigated properly.

Except it is not all we know.

More than 150 demonstrators gathered near the clinic Monday to step up their efforts to draw national attention to the case, asserting that the clinic’s leader, LeRoy Carhart, was directly responsible for the woman’s death and that she had come to his office for a multi-day abortion procedure when she was 33 weeks pregnant.
. . .
On Monday, opponents of abortion carried signs with statements such as “A fetus is a child” and “Life is not a choice.” One demonstrator held up a large photograph of the woman who died, identifying her by name next to the abbreviation “R.I.P.”

How did they know her name, her circumstances, the procedure?

Jill Fucking Stanek found out. (No link. I have redacted the name, for all the bloody good that will do now.)

I did not report on the death last week of a patient of late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart because I did not have corroboration.

I now do.
. . .
I confirmed the identities of the victims through two sources. After a name ID was received from an impeccable informant, sidewalk
counselors at the abortion clinic positively identified NAME’s obituary photo. NAME's obituary also states she “passed away suddenly.”

Following is the information and timeline pieced together through those and other sources. Operation Rescue’s Cheryl Sullenger is to be commended for her work exposing this terrible tragedy.

The self-congratulatory post included a link to the damn gift registry, since taken down. But Stanek gleefully presents a screen-cap she'd taken, no doubt anticipating that a grieving family would desperately want that sort of reminder to disappear pronto.

One sentence is given to the reason.

Approximately two weeks ago NAME learned her daughter suffered from fetal anomalies.

Oh, just some pesky little anomalies that NAME happened to learn about -- on a whim, no doubt.

Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak writes.

Lots of people are opposed to the kind of late-term abortion that preceded the death of a woman in Maryland last week. I understand that.

But everyone should be opposed to the blatantly illegal violation of her privacy and the exploitation of her death by protesters using it to make their point.

Her name and photo have appeared on protest signs, in blogs and in newspapers.
. . .
[At the protest. . .] “It was a perfectly healthy young woman that died,” said Michael Martelli, executive director of the Maryland Coalition for Life, an antiabortion advocacy group.

And how would you know that, Mr. Martelli? Do you know her?

No, he doesn’t, he told me.

Well, silly Ms Dvorak. Doesn't she know that any fetus fetishist is far more knowledgeable than specialist OB/GYNs?

And now as Ms Dvorak says, the dead woman's photo and name and circumstances, as well as her family's, are being bandied about by a bunch of gore-loving panty-sniffers.

The scumsuckers have massively violated the Privacy Rule of something called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA). But the office that deals with complaints is backed up and 'has not yet taken any enforcement actions against hospitals, doctors, insurers or anyone else for rule violations'. So, good luck with that, potential complainants.

The scumsuckers are crudely manipulating a private tragedy for their own purposes. They are merrily cloaking their joy in glurgey statements of faux condolences. They are rejoicing at finding yet another sad, sad case to twist and inflate and misrepresent.

They show themselves to be what they are: merciless haters who wish death on women who don't comply with their edicts.

In fact, just like the other Taliban.

Faux-secularism and Christian Talibans

In the wake of Contempt Party leader SHithead's odious fear-mongering about *Islamicist terrism*, reaction to the Republican ParTea's ersatz debate last evening is note worthy.

Mona Eltahawy observed on Twitter that the Christian zealots chasing the Republican ParTea nomination for US president were as overtly religiously fanatic as any member of the Muslim Brotherhood she has interviewed.

Check out the responses on Twitter; the hashtag is #Tebate

Meanwhile, over in ostensibly secular France which has taken extreme legal measures to ban public wearing of the niqab and burqa, politician and career bureaucrat Marie-Luce Penchard displays her religious allegiance - a talisman against those errant European Islamophobes who assume that all brown-skinned folks are Ay-rab immigrants.

Some last words to chew over the next days of glurge and mawkishness - with the exception of the brilliant Radio-Canada series Portraits du 11 septembre, here.

“The 10th anniversary of [September 11] should be a time for reflection on how we can build a more inclusive society to end extremism,” NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar [...] “Let’s all guard against knee-jerk demonizing and overheated rhetoric.”

Added: Antonia Zerbesias' brilliant observation that more Canadians will die as a result of air pollution than as *victims of Islamicism*. And the SHithead government continues its clear-cut-and-burn campaign at Environment Canada.

Bonus: Alison at Creekside. hahahahaha! Steve kicks off 9/11 blather week.

Maledict's Spanish Tour

Meanwhile, the Poop is spreading joy in Spain. ^NOT

Violence flared last night as a demonstration against the Pope's arrival in Madrid turned ugly.

Anti-Pope protesters marched on the Spanish capital's central Sol plaza to voice their concerns about the 50 million euro price tag of the four-day trip.

But what was being billed as a peaceful protest changed when marchers began taunting the thousands of pilgrims who were congregating in the area.

Yeah, spending 50 million euros on a visit by a corrupt enabler of child abuse when 40 percent of people under 25 are unemployed is a grand idea.

And it's not like there isn't other trouble in the world.

Best protest sign (from Twitter).

By the company they keep. . .

To counter the efforts of the anti-conservative, pro-labour group Working Families, a new astroturf grassroots organization has been formed, according to the Toronto Star.

So, who are they?

Tristan Emmanuel, campaign manager on the 2009 leadership bid of PC MPP Randy Hillier (Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington) and now People For A Better Ontario’s development manager, said the group is “small-c conservative” and has nothing to do with Hudak’s campaign.

“Absolutely not — that would be tantamount to blatant hypocrisy. That’s one of the concerns that we have with Working Families. We made a concerted effort to make sure that there is absolutely no linkage between the two of us on any level,” said Emmanuel, a long-time activist of conservative causes.

Hmmm. No connections, eh?

Warren Kinsella has list of Emmanuel's , er, accomplishments, which I don't think he'd mind my republishing here.

Toronto Sun, March 31, 2009 - MPP Randy Hillier officially joined the race for leader of the Ontario PC Party yesterday with a pledge to abolish the Ontario Human Rights Commission and outlaw mandatory union membership…Hillier’s spokesman is Tristan Emmanuel, a political and religious activist who has organized protests against same-sex marriage.

Toronto Star, May 15, 2009 - The federal Conservatives are crying foul against their provincial cousins in Ontario for alleged misuse of the national party’s membership list…The missive was sent to Andrew Boddington, Tristan Emmanuel, Mark Spiro and Paul Sutherland, senior campaign officials with candidates and MPPs Christine Elliott (Whitby-Oshawa), Randy Hillier (Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington), Tim Hudak (Niagara West-Glanbrook) and Frank Klees (Newmarket-Aurora), respectively.

Wikipedia – Emmanuel was a candidate for the socially conservative Family Coalition Party in the Lincoln electoral division in the 1995 Ontario provincial election. He was quoted as saying, “It’s time to have a principled party that understands there’s a higher power than the government, a power we believe is God.”

Wikipedia - Emmanuel ran against prominent federal politician Sheila Copps in a 1996 by-election as a candidate of the Christian Heritage Party of Canada. He argued that Canada’s Young Offenders Act should be abolished and corporal punishment reintroduced to schools, and was quoted as saying, “If an eleven-year-old murders someone, I think his life should be taken.”

Wikipedia - In April 2003, he organized a “Canadians for Bush” rally in Queenston Heights, Ontario, to support the American invasion of Iraq. The rally was attended by several prominent federal and provincial politicians, including Stockwell Day and provincial cabinet ministers Jim Flaherty and Tim Hudak.

Wikipedia – [The release quoted] excerpts from several of Emmanuel’s writings, asserting that he had described gay men as “sexual deviants” and Islam as “as far from peace, as hell is from heaven” in separate articles written in 2002.

Wikipedia – Emmanuel campaigned against the legal recognition of same-sex marriage in Canada in 2005, organizing several rallies across the country, including one outside Parliament Hill in Ottawa and another at Queen’s Park outside the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

Wikipedia – In a 2005 interview with the Hamilton Spectator, Emmanuel described homosexuality as “a choice,” said that he regarded it as “the wrong choice, a bad choice,” and further argued that “the state shouldn’t sanction wrong choices.”

In short, he's a faaaar rightwing Christianist nutter.

Tristan Alexander Emmanuel is a Canadian political and religious activist. He is the founder and former president of the Equipping Christians for the Public-square Centre (ECP Centre), and is perhaps most notable for his opposition to same-sex marriage. He is now the president of Freedom Press Canada Inc., a niche publishing company that he founded in 2003.

Let's dig a little, shall we?

First, Freedom Press Canada. Small house obviously, but oh look who's on its list of authors: Gerry Nicholls, he of Ivory Tory fame.

The now defunct Equipping Christians for the Public Square Centre has tossed its torch to:

NoApologies.ca website to be managed by Tim Bloedow and ChristianGovernance

Legal Advocacy and Defence efforts to continue with other organizations, including at Christian Legal Fellowship

Education and awareness directed through the Association for Reformed Political Action

More connections! It was at ARPA's website that DJ! found the information on Tim Hudak's 2009 abortion stance. (He would defund abortion, he said.)

And it was the head of ARPA who wrote about that flap in The Star, basically saying that anyone interested in Hudak's position on abortion is immature, graceless, and engaged in sensationalist 'gotcha' politics.

Altogether a nice gang of dinosaurs who'd drag Ontario back to the 19th century.

And this is the company that Tim Hudak keeps.

DJ! thought Ontario voters should know this.

ADDED: gritchik has more. And WEIRDER. Emmanuel is not just a RWNJ Christianist, but an egomaniac to boot.

ADDED: Check them out yourself. People for a Better Ontario.

ADDED: It seems there's some doubt about whether Tristan Emmanuel is his real name. Hmmm.

Is Michele Bachmann a Fag Hag®?

Gee, I dunno. Listen to the beginning of this.




JoeMyGod had it first. (Read the hilarious comments there.)

Now, Mother Jones is on it.

Politico's James Hohmann published a story Tuesday on the unique role of Rep. Michele Bachmann's husband, Marcus, on the campaign trail. Aside from the obvious points about how he's had to pick up the slack on the home front since his wife left for Washington, the piece notes a few of the recent controversies that could become "liabilities" on the campaign trail—namely, the fact that his family farm received subsidies, and that his Christian therapy practice accepted Medicaid funding.

That might be a stretch. The fact that Marcus Bachmann received farm subsidies is bad because they're the kind of government handout the candidate loves to hate, but it's really not the kind of thing that sways voters—especially when you consider that a lot of Republican primary voters also receive farm subsidies. There is one part of the Marcus Bachmann story, though, that is already becoming an issue for the Bachmann campaign.

In addition to the fairly commonplace practice of accepting Medicaid payments, Bachmann's Christian therapy clinic has also been accused of dabbling in something called "conversion" or "reparative" therapy, in which gay people are supposedly cured of their gayness through steady doses of prayer. The American Psychiatric Association does not endorse "conversion therapy" and has suggested it might have damaging mental health consequences. But as Hohmann's story notes, Marcus Bachmann is not a member of any of Minnesota's three major professional organizations for psychologists. For Marcus Bachmann, this is bigger than science; it's a moral imperative. Gays, he has said, are like "barbarians" that need to be "disciplined."

. . . The problems don't end with the therapy, though. Marcus' fiercely anti-gay language has itself spawned the predictable, unsubstantiated "takes one to know one" backlash.

Lotsa fun links at Mojo. Celebs, including Cher, weighing in. Andrew Sullivan has a couple of very funny clips.

And for more fun, follow MarcusBachmanIsSoGay.

When the Christian Taliban loses Ireland

. . . you know it's in beeeeg trouble.

First, this:

Ireland's longstanding abortion legislation could change due to a ruling expected to be handed down by the European Court of Human Rights next week.

When two Irish women and one Lithuanian woman who were forced to travel to Britain for abortions they took the action against the Irish state five years ago.

Yay, EU!

But, but, but. . . (emphasis mine)

When Pope Benedict XVI departed from previous Church doctrine two weeks ago by saying condoms are acceptable in certain cases, Catholic-dominated Ireland was so distracted by news it might need an economic bailout that it barely noticed. There was a time, though, when a Vatican softening on the contraception veto would have made the top headline in Irish newspapers. A time when, in Ireland, things like condoms, pills and diaphragms were not just taboo, but outright illegal, according to a 1935 law forbidding the import and sale of contraceptives. In the 1970s, Irish feminists would challenge their government’s anti-birth control policies by staging protests like massive condom-buying expeditions to Northern Ireland, where contraception devices were legal. But this was still an Ireland where taking on the Catholic Church was socially daring and politically suicidal.

But the Ireland of today has the world’s largest percentage of married women under 49 using contraception, according to the United Nation’s 2010 Human Development Index. The UN figure of 89 per cent of women using birth control includes those who resort to so-called natural contraceptive methods, with which the Church has no moral qualms, but Irish studies looking exclusively at artificial contraception show use among 18- to 24-year-old girls is well over 90 per cent. It’s a startling change of social attitudes, some 30 years after the government lifted the birth-control ban in 1979, and one that illustrates how much the Church’s influence has waned in a country that was once a stronghold of Catholicism in Europe.

Among the Irish clergy, there is a sense “the battle has been lost” on birth control, said Garry O’Sullivan, editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper. In a historic upset, contraceptives, it seems, have gone from being social taboos to no longer being a topic for Sunday sermons. “The bishops have stopped pushing the issue,” said O’Sullivan. “People have moved on.”

Sanity busting out all over.

Take that, Pope Maledict!

h/t for the abortion law link to Sister Sage

Adoption/Bigotry Conundrum

The Christian Taliban says: Abortion is murder.

It also says: Homosexuals are evil.

So, what happens when a Talibanny confronts a woman with an unplanned pregnancy who has been successfully brainwashed?

SHE calls it 'the adoption conundrum'. Sure is.

Very occasionally, women who are in crisis pregnancy, will discuss and consider adoption. In my experience it is sometimes more common for younger women, especially ‘under age’ teenage girls to think about adoption. In a previous job, when I was helping pregnant girls aged 13 – 17, they would often enquire about adoption, but just as quickly say that they didn’t want their baby to go to homosexual couples. Here in London, when a pregnant lady broaches the possibility of adoption, she is more hesitant, but nonetheless will have the gut reaction that she does not want her baby to go to a homosexual couple. But outside of our centre, who is listening to these women?

This blogger (warning: religious glurge at link) doesn't say whether these women would rather abort than be a party to an evil gay adoption. But it's possible, no?

Rather, she -- I assume it's a she -- whinges about the rights of birth mothers to be bigoted.

In the debate on who should be entitled to adopt children – gay/lesbian couples or a heterosexual family – why aren’t the voices of women who do not want their children to go to homosexual ‘unions’ ever heard? This includes a woman in crisis pregnancy or a woman who for whatever reasons has her child taken from her by government bodies. Might this be a plausible reason why the biological mothers are kept gagged – because if it were more widely known that they did not want their children going to homosexual ‘unions’ that the pro-homosexual adoption lobby would lose their trump card? After all, the lobby groups that support gay adoption talk about it being a ‘right’ to adopt a child, but what right is left to the biological mother? Does she not have the right firstly to freedom of speech where she can say that she does not want her child to go to a homosexual couple? And secondly, does she not have the right to decide that her child who is her flesh and blood ought not to go to a homosexual couple? This talk and bluster about so-called ‘rights’ is very selective –so much so that the rights of ‘the mother of origin’ aka the biological mother are often forgotten altogether.

(Love all those scare quotes.)

Right. And how about birth mothers who don't want their children to go to couples of different ethnic origins? Different religions?

Don't they have rights too, dammit?

I have a (white) cousin who was dating a black guy. Her asshole fundy father actually threatened to kill her if she didn't stop seeing him. She left the province and didn't look back. (Apparently, daddy dearest was heart-broken. I say 'apparently' because I never had anything to do with the jerk again.)

So, if a fundy father would kill a grown-up daughter out of bigotry, it seems to me that some of that fine twisty-pretzelly logic the fetus fetishists love could be worked up and around to justify the abortion of a fetus otherwise destined for a gay couple. After all, don't they believe that the only moral abortion is their own particular, very special-circumstances-driven abortion?

h/t http://www.bigbluewave.ca/2010/11/adoption-conundrum.html

Holy CRAP!

Literally.

Nine members of a Michigan-based Christian militia group have been indicted on sedition and weapons charges in connection with an alleged plot to murder law enforcement officers in hopes of setting off an anti-government uprising.

In court filings unsealed Monday, the Justice Department accused the nine people of planning to kill an unidentified law enforcement officer, then plant improvised explosive devices of a type used by insurgents in Iraq to attack the funeral procession.

It sounds like these Christian fundamentalist terrorists were being watched and were arrested over the weekend because there was a unspecified 'action' planned for next month.

They call the group the 'Hutaree' which means 'Christer soldier' in Crazy.

There's already a brief Wiki entry for them -- there's a link to their website there.

They talk about waging war against the Antichrist and we know who these nutjobs think the Antichrist may be.

In case the point is not perfectly, terrifyingly clear, the Christian Science Monitor notes:

The Hutaree is one of 127 armed militias in the US, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a nonprofit organization in Montgomery, Ala., that tracks hate groups nationwide. That number has increased 200 percent since 2008, when there were 42, SPLC says.

There is “no question” the catalyst was President Obama’s election, says Heidi Beirich, the center’s director of research. A similar upswing took place after President Clinton’s election in 1993. Militias and the antigovernment groups that spawn them often become more active when the federal government turns more liberal.

Or more black.

Southern Poverty Law Center lists 512 'patriot groups' -- only 127 of which are deemed militias.

And this is the country that Stevie Peevie wants Canada to be more like.

Uganda's 'Death Penalty for Homosexuals' Bill: The USian connection

Unfrickingbelievable.

As a gay Ugandan, Frank Mugisha has endured insults from strangers, hate messages on his phone, police harassment and being outed in a tabloid as one of the country's "top homos". That may soon seem like the good old days.

Life imprisonment is the minimum punishment for anyone convicted of having gay sex, under an anti-homosexuality bill currently before Uganda's parliament. If the accused person is HIV positive or a serial offender, or a "person of authority" over the other partner, or if the "victim" is under 18, a conviction will result in the death penalty.

Members of the public are obliged to report any homosexual activity to police with 24 hours or risk up to three years in jail – a scenario that human rights campaigners say will result in a witchhunt. Ugandans breaking the new law abroad will be subject to extradition requests.

"The bill is haunting us," said Mugisha, 25, chairman of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a coalition of local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex groups that will all be banned under the law. "If this passes we will have to leave the country."

Surprise, surprise, the Murrican Kristian Taliban is party to it. Watch.

Cashing in on Stupak

So, what is at stake for the Christian Taliban in the attack on women's rights in the USian healthcare debate?

According to Wendy Norris at RH Reality Check, plenty.

What the Stupak-Pitts amendment does for the Catholic health care system is omit a competitive advantage secular and other religiously-affiliated hospitals without doctrinal restrictions can use to simultaneously market their services to both the expected influx of newly insured patients and the outpatient medical professionals who will treat them.

By restricting insurance coverage of women's reproductive health care, the competitive barriers faced by Catholic institutions will be eliminated — provided the amendment is not stripped out of the final bill that emerges from House-Senate health care reform conference committee. Which is why pro-choice advocates should expect nothing short of a full-frontal attack by the Vatican on conservative Senators.

Get a load of these numbers:

One in six patients are cared for in 624 Catholic hospitals scattered throughout the U.S. in 2006, according to the Catholic Health Association. The church also operates more than 800 post-acute care, senior living and skilled nursing centers across the nation. All told, $84.6 billion was spent on Catholic church-affiliated care.

But Catlick healthcare is restricted by misogyny faith in what services it can provide.

Add those restrictions and compound it with two simple facts: 73 percent of the now uninsured are of reproductive age and the leading cause of death among people aged 15-44 is accidents.

In essence, the people most likely to benefit from the proposed public option and insurance exchange will undoubtedly be seeking the type of care Catholic hospitals refuse to provide as a matter of religious principle. And these prospective patients are young and will conceivably need care for many decades to come.

For the business arm of the Catholic church it's a theological and economic two-fer.

Sniffing panties/punishing sluts PLUS raking in the dough. I'd call it not just a two-fer but a religio-cash-gasm.