As a Catholic, I'm getting a little tired of right-wingers like Newt Gingrich spewing nonsense like this.
Newt Gingrich sought to make inroads among religious voters Sunday, accusing President Obama of having “basically declared war on the Catholic Church.”
Gingrich, who converted to Catholicism himself in 2009 (his third wife, Callista, sings in a Catholic choir), was speaking about the Obama administration decision this week to require church-affiliated employers to cover birth control drugs in their health plans, regardless of religious beliefs.
Gingrich, in an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, said the decision represented “a radical Obama administration imposing secular rules on religion.”
Since Newt is a new convert, he might be surprised to learn that,
Some 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women have used contraceptive methods banned by the church, research published on Wednesday showed.
And,
A Le Moyne College/Zogby International national poll in 2007 found 67 percent of American Catholics disagree with the church teaching that artificial birth control is wrong.
And,
In particular, Catholic voters do not approve of schools teaching abstinence-only programs in schools. Six in ten (64 percent) oppose requiring high school sex education programs to only teach abstinence. They also believe insurance companies should be required to cover and pharmacists required to sell birth control pills. Three-quarters of Catholics support requiring health insurance plans to cover birth control pills (75 percent). Nearly eight in ten (78 percent) oppose allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions.
Let's get real, shall we? The U.S. government is actually on the same side of this "war" as most American Catholics. Those "secular rules" Gingrich whines about the Obama administration enforcing are already being embraced by church members, whether he knows it or not.
What really annoys me is that right-wing partisans like Gingrich side with the Vatican when it's convenient and ignore it when it's not. Want to discuss the Vatican's position on the death penalty, the Iraq War, global warming, torture or Social Security and Medicare, Newt?
Didn't think so.
