Don't tread on me

While I'm on my soap box about right wing bigots trying to force the rest of us to conform to their beliefs, let me extend this to include the recent flap about birth control and medical insurance coverage.

Sometimes the point is made better by writers of Letters' to Editors than by the professional pundits.  Maybe it's the requirement for brevity that makes them so pithy and so right-on.

Here are two from this week's Newsweek concerning their recent article by Peter Boyer about Cardinal Timothy Dolan's indignant position that the Obama health care plan was trying to force the church to support contraception against its principles:

"Churches have all the freedom in the world to explain their belief systems and to define behavioral expectations.  But it remains the choice of the individual to follow a church's precepts.  Dictatorial Catholics, evangelicals, and others need to accept the fact that others' personal decisions, including those regarding contraception, are simply not theirs to make."

     Michaelens Gorney, Johns Creek, GA."

"I wish Peter Boyer had asked Cardinal Timothy Dolan why he doesn't object to insurance covering Viagra.  After all, Viagra is a drug used by men who want to have sex.  Is the Catholic Church going to make sure this sex is with their wives and for procreation purposes only?  What if an unmarried man wants a Viagra prescription -- how is that OK?"

      Becky Bartlett, Nazareth, PA.

 Very well put.

Ralph