Conscience Clauses and Money Laundering

So as I sat there at Price Chopper, with my arm in the automatic blood pressure machine, I looked across the Pharmacy Department to the display of “intimacy products,” which included home pregnancy tests, lubricants…and a huge selection of condoms. And as I thought about that last set of items, I thought for a moment about conscience clauses.

I mean really…people have been making a big deal about the pharmacist who doesn’t want to dispense birth control pills against his beliefs, but what about the cashier on aisle 10 who’s not only scanning condoms that she doesn’t believe in, but is scanning them in for a person she knows isn’t married?

And what about the poor Jewish kid over on aisle 18 who has ring out someone who’s buying bacon?

Seems to me that if we don’t allow it to be an issue for the cashier, then it shouldn’t be one for the pharmacist. These conscience clauses can be part of an extremely slippery slope where we allow anyone to not do anything simply because they don’t believe in it. And that becomes very dangerous.

And then there’s that bit about the Catholic Church not wanting to pay for medical insurance that includes benefits for birth control…again because of the conscience issue. A lot of conservatives and people on the religious right have jumped on this bandwagon as a way of not being forced to pay for insurance that might cover abortions. But what about an organization whose beliefs might cause it to want to opt out of paying for something that most of us think is absolutely essential?

Like blood transfusions.

Suppose the national organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses didn’t want to pay for medical insurance for its non-member employees that covered blood transfusions? Should a Lutheran who just happened to work as a secretary in one of their offices be denied coverage for blood because the organization doesn’t believe in it? Would the conservatives and members of the religious right be quite as eager to jump on this particular “conscience clause” bandwagon, or would they finally draw a line in the sand here?

The thing is, it’s the same bloody bandwagon. And once you allow the Catholics to provide medical insurance that doesn’t cover birth control, you allow the Jehovah’s Witnesses to provide insurance that doesn’t cover any kind of blood work.

But there is a way out of this. It’s called money laundering. At least, that’s what it practically works out to be.

Let’s face it, when you get right down to it, if the Catholic Church was really serious about not paying for birth control, they’d have to follow all of their employees around 24/7 to make sure that they didn’t go to the local Price Chopper and spend any of their hard-earned pay on something from that rather large selection of condoms I gazed at.

In other words, as long as the Catholic Church is employing people who can spend their pay any way they see fit, they’re paying for birth control. The difference is that they’re not doing it directly. The money’s going to the employee, who then makes the personal decision to spend that money on a box of Trojans. And once the money is in the account of the employee, the Catholic Church can wash their hands of any responsibility for what happens with it.

So my solution is for the Catholic Church to just give everyone a health care stipend, which they can spend on any provider that they want. One that provides birth control benefits or one that doesn’t. But once that money is in the employee’s account, it’s no longer the responsibility of the church. There’s no more conscience issue because the Church isn’t directly spending the money. It’s being “laundered” through an intermediary.

But these questions open up a much bigger can of worms and raise more questions than I can try to answer right now. The big question, however, is Do we all get to opt out of paying for things we don’t believe in?

I think you know the answer to that one, but as I said, I’ll tackle that one some other time.

I See Pretty People

I’d like to have a collection of pictures of all the women I run into on a regular basis that I think are attractive.

No, it’s not for the reason you think, and no, my wife won’t be upset.

You see, for those of you who don’t know already, I’m a dork. Things that most people wouldn’t give a second thought to, I give a third, a fourth, and a 50,000th to. And one of the things that has captured my dorkly fascination has been attractiveness; what makes people attractive to us. What makes Susie attractive to Bobby, but not to Woody? More important, what makes certain women seem attractive to my wife and not to me?

Yes, you read that right, and that’s not where I’m going with this. It’s much simpler than you think.

Every now and then Cheryl will see someone and casually mention to me that she thinks she’s attractive. I almost always take a look at the woman in question and go “no thanks,” because she does absolutely nothing for me.

Then, when I do see women who I think are attractive, Cheryl’s not around for me to point them out to. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to unobtrusively take pictures of them so Cheryl and I could look them over later on, and compare the ones she thinks I should find attractive to the ones I actually do?

Now, to be fair, Cheryl usually agrees that the women I pick out are indeed attractive. It’s the women she picks out that are the issue.

What’s the difference?

Well, not that she’s been pointing any of these out, but I’m not attracted to the “drop dead gorgeous” types. Funny thing is that I can identify what women indeed fit the type; they just don’t do anything for me. No, I’m more attracted to the “girl next door” types, which shouldn’t be any big surprise, since that’s what I married. I once dated a girl next door who kept trying to be a drop dead gorgeous, and it made me crazy. Why couldn’t she like herself the way she was?

That’s the other thing, the women that I think are really attractive probably think that they’re average-looking…but are happy with it.

But I don’t always understand Cheryl’s choices. I’m like, “You think that I should find her attractive? I mean, she’s not ugly, but she definitely wouldn’t get my attention the first time around.”

And as I said, it goes beyond the differences between what Cheryl and I think makes an attractive woman; I’m interested in the whole concept for everyone. But then I know that tastes vary in everything. Some people like spicy food, some don’t. Some people love science fiction while other find it a waste of time. Some people have blue as their favorite color while others favor red. Maybe it’s just a simple case of “people are different,” and I don’t have to think much more about it.

Maybe it’s a matter of me wanting Cheryl to know what interests me before she has me turn my head to check it out, and has me say, “Um, no thanks” again.

Oh well, I guess I just have to take Cheryl to that Post Office, that bookstore, and that Target; and hope that the women I think are attractive there are on duty.

Or I could get to work on using the 12x zoom on my camera.

But then that might end up adding creepy to dorky.

¿Habla Usted Nederlandisch?

A while back I saw a bumper sticker somewhere that had an American flag on it and said Why should I have to press 1 for English? Well, we know what that person’s hot-button issue is, now don’t we?

I’ll admit that I’m a little annoyed with seeing both Spanish as well as English on the coupons I circle for my daughter to cut from the Sunday newspaper, but that’s not because I have anything against bilingualism. It’s because trying to fit the same thing in two languages on one standard-sized coupon forces them to use really tiny type that I can barely make out. In fact, I’m betting that middle-aged Hispanics are complaining that the print is “mas pequeño.”

But aside from that, I’m not one of those English Firsters who get all bent out of shape when they see Spanish “encroaching” on our All-American culture. Far from it. In fact, I’d like to find the person with the bumper sticker, as well as the person who printed the lot of them, and ask them both a very simple question:

¿Habla Usted Nederlandisch?

Now, in case you haven’t been able to figure that out, that’s bad Spanish for “Do you speak Dutch?” For, you see, Dutch was the language of the 1614 New Netherland settlements that eventually became New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut when the English sailed into New Amsterdam and took them over without firing a shot in 1664. So one could argue that all signs in New York City, and a large portion of the Northeast, should be in Dutch, rather than the English that came with the “encroachers.”

I can see, however, that those of you who paid close attention to your American History are saying, “Now wait just a minute. Jamestown was settled by the English in 1607, which means that we beat the Dutch to North America by seven years.” And you’re probably using that as the basis to say that it makes perfect sense for English to win out in the “language wars.” And it’s true, as the English settlements spread across the Atlantic coast, those founded by the Dutch and the Swedes ended up becoming British colonies, with English as the de facto language. Some of you are even saying, “We got here first, there were more of us anyway, so English wins.”

But wait a minute. It’s time for the 10-point question. What was the first permanent settlement in North America? I’ll give you a hint: it obviously was neither New Amsterdam nor Jamestown. And it wasn’t even Vinland, the Norse colony in what is now Newfoundland, settled almost 500 years before Columbus (the key word here is permanent).

Give up? The answer is St Augustine, Florida, settled by the Spanish in 1585. It remained under Spanish rule, and the Spanish language until 1763. So is it any wonder that there is so much Spanish spoken in Florida? All things considered, shouldn’t Spanish have become a major language in the United States a long time ago?

And things only get more complicated when you consider the Southwest and California, all of which were once parts of Mexico. Here we took an entire Spanish-speaking region that was almost the size of the existing United States at the time, and added it to our country. Once again, it’s amazing that it took so long for Spanish to gain the foothold that it has today.

So, you see, I’m not bothered by how Spanish is becoming used by more and more people in their everyday lives, nor am I bothered by bilingual traffic signs or government forms. It’s simply the way that languages go. First it was Dutch, then it was English, and next it will be Spanish. That’s just the way it is.

Oh…but wait. It seems that I forgot one very important language. So, for all you English Firsters out there, let me ask you this question:

How’s your Leni Lenape?

There's Just No Talking to Some People

When the story of Indiana State Representative Bob Morris and the Girl Scouts first broke, I was all set to write a letter to the editor of both our local paper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, and their local paper, the Indianapolis Star, full of the righteous indignation that only a librarian and a former Computer Literacy teacher could bring to bear on the situation. Because this was clearly a case of an elected representative believing the first opinionated rant he stumbled across on the Internet, rather than taking the time to do some real research, and checking out reliable sources. And as much as he wanted to put this behind him as a minor issue and get back to “real work,” when someone we trust to represent us and write our laws is doing so based on bad information, that’s a major issue in my book.

And then I found out that it wasn’t quite that simple. It turns out that Morris wasn’t simply misinformed, he wasn’t simply the victim of shoddy searching. His conclusions about the Girl Scouts and their supposed connection to Planned Parenthood would’ve remained the same even had he gone all the way to the tops of both organizations and gotten denials from them (after all, they could be hiding their connection).

For you see, according to the Washington Post (part of the evil liberal media complex), Morris is a member of a very small, very conservative group of people who are pulling their daughters out of the traditional Girl Scouts for their own American Heritage Girls. These people portray the traditional Girl Scouts and their organization as a group of radical, lesbian, Marxist, feminists, who don’t share “traditional family values” and are pushing abortion and contraception on young girls.

As Bill Cosby’s Noah might say, ”Right…”

When I look at a group of people like this, that is deliberately spreading misinformation, I realize that there’s just no talking to some people, and that trying to straighten them out would be like pouring sand down a rathole. They’re very much like editor J Jonah Jameson in the Spiderman comics, who at least once said, “I’ve made up my mind, don’t confuse me with the facts.” They have their beliefs…their deeply felt and held beliefs…that America is going to Hell in a handbasket, and nothing any of us, librarian or not, can say to them will change their minds, because the only information they will look for, indeed, the only information they’ll believe, is that which supports their beliefs. I’d like to think that the rest of us are a little more open to correction. I know that I am.

But there is some good news here. Despite all their noise, and the 15 minutes of fame they received, there are only 18,000 girls in the American Heritage Girls organization…compared to over 2 million in the Girl Scouts. To put this into context, the American Heritage Girls would just barely fill Madison Square Garden, while the traditional Girl Scouts far outnumber even everyone else in Manhattan. I think this shows just how influential each group is.

And despite the fact that these people seem to be a very exclusive group, who demonize anyone who doesn’t totally agree with them; the fact that they exist is one of the beauties of this country. We allow even the most far-out wingnuts to have a voice…provided they don’t hurt anyone. Conversely, the surest way to give people like this more power is to have them feel that they’re persecuted; so the best thing to do about them is to smile and nod…and then walk away.

But what about the rest of us? While it’s true that you can’t talk to some people, while it’s true that even when confronted with the facts, some people will stick to what they want to believe, the rest of us have a responsibility that this librarian feels very strongly about. That responsibility is to make sure that all of our information comes from reputable sources, and to double and triple-check it. This includes a responsibility to even check to see if those with whom we disagree are actually right, because sometimes they are.

Oh, and while we’re at it, we should each have a Girl Scout cookie.

You Will Not Do This

I’m a little late this week because I was a little sick last week. Let me rephrase that…I was a lot sick last week. I lost three days of my life to that nasty stomach virus that’s been sweeping across the United States, leaving millions of people gripping their stomachs and running for the bathroom. And at the risk of giving you much more information than you really wanted, not only was this the first time I’d thrown up in over 35 years, but Cheryl also said that when I did, I exploded.

Cheryl did yeoman’s work taking care of me and cleaning up after me. Many of you may figure that that’s no big deal, since she’s a nurse, but there are a few other things to consider. The first is that she had called in sick herself, with a head cold, when I suddenly came down with this thing, and she ended up taking care of me rather than me taking care of her. The other is that it brought back to mind an incident that happened in church many years ago.

Our pastor was telling the story of the president of a Christian college whose wife had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. When he got the diagnosis, he decided to resign immediately, and spend the rest of his time taking care of the woman he loved full-time. His associates thought he was making a terrible mistake. Surely he could hire someone to take care of his wife while he continued to run the college. Surely he could put her in a nursing home. But he was adamant – he had made a commitment when they got married, and he was sticking to it. 

As I listened from the bass section of the choir, I thought about the many patients Cheryl had to deal with at the hospital, and that she “only” has to deal with them for eight hours before she gets to come home to rest, and I decided that there was no way I wanted her trying to do that 24/7 for me. So I tore off a part of my church bulletin, and sent a note up to her in the alto section that said, “You will not do this.” 

At the same time my note was going forward, she was sending one back to me. Hers said, “Beautiful story – but just find me a nice nursing home.”

She’s right. It was a beautiful story, but it didn’t begin to even deal with reality. It didn’t deal with the reality that she knew as a nurse and that I knew as the husband of one; and neither one of us wanted the other to feel that they had to try to do by themselves what there are entire staffs available to do…to do well, and to do while getting a little time off from before you have to face it again.

For three days I lay in bed, watching as Cheryl cleaned up after me, as she brought me what little food and drink I felt like dealing with at a time, taking care of all of the household chores that I usually attend to, and I was reminded of that day in church when we both passed notes to each other. And my resolve became stronger, so if you didn’t get it when it came around the first few times, I’m telling you once again now:

When I become old and infirm, unable to take care of myself, leaking from every bodily orifice, and unable to recognize anyone, Cheryl is to put me into a nursing home. I love her too much to want her to try to put in 36-hour days taking care of me.

And if any of you try to guilt her into doing it herself, I will briefly find the strength to rise up out of my bed and smack you upside the head with my IV pole.

Looking for the Truth in a Pack of Lies

You know, I’m a big fan of the truth. Not the brutal, unvarnished truth like what AJ Jacobs did with his experiment in Radical Honesty, which he wrote about for Esquire back in 2007, and I definitely believe in lying in order to pull off a successful surprise for someone. I’m a big fan of the practical truth, the reasonable truth, the truth that’s not used in a hurtful manner.

Along with this goes the fact that I’m not a big fan of lying…except as I mentioned before, for the sake of pulling off a surprise party, or sparing someone’s feelings…or their life. And I have no problem with being “economical with the truth” from time to time. With this in mind, I really don’t need to tell the Nazis that I’ve got Anne Frank hiding in my attic (although I know of some people who believe that their obligation to always tell the truth would take them to just such extremes).

But what I hate most of all is lying in support of the truth…lying in support of something we think is good. I can’t buy this. I firmly believe that our noble goal should be able to stand on the truth, and not on outright lies or even a little bending of the truth. This is for both practical and philosophical reasons. One of the practical reasons is that if the people you’re trying to convince of your truth discover a lie, not a mistake, but an outright lie, in your argument, then they’re likely to dismiss everything else you’ve said.

And this is why I have a problem with so much of what we’ve said as we’ve tried to prevent people from smoking.

Yes, I know that smoking is a nasty habit. I know that it can kill you. But I also believe that hyperbole isn’t the way to get people to stop.

Let me start by taking a look at one of the best-known lies used in trying to fight smoking. This was the argument RJ Reynolds must be marketing cigarettes to children because more children recognized the “cartoon character” Joe Camel than Mickey Mouse. Even if this were true, it wouldn’t mean anything. Why? Because it’s quite possible that more children recognized Mr Clean than Mickey Mouse. Did that mean that Procter and Gamble is hawking cleaning products to children? I doubt it. And I don't recall seeing kids flocking to help their parents scrub that floor because Mr Clean made it look cool. But here’s the kicker…the actual situation was that more children recognized Joe Camel than the stylized Mickey Mouse outline logo for the Disney Channel. That’s something completely different, and when you ask yourself how many children got the Disney Channel at home, you can see where the problem…and the lie is.

And once you know about that lie, you start to wonder what other lies are being told in an effort stop smoking.

Then there’s the big lie…the lie that we non-smokers don’t realize is a lie, but that many smokers do. But wait, maybe this isn’t really a lie, perhaps while it’s an inaccuracy that’s simply not true. However, because many smokers know that this simply isn’t true, they don’t listen to us.

What is this lie? The “fact” that smoking causes lung cancer.

“Now wait a minute!” I hear you saying. “It’s an established fact that smoking causes lung cancer. So how can that be a lie?”

Very simple…it’s as much a lie as saying that crossing the street causes people to be hit by cars. Yes, had Johnny not been trying to cross the street, he wouldn’t have been hit by that Buick, but there isn’t a direct one-to-one correspondence between crossing the street and getting run over. Most people who cross the street don’t get hit. The same applies to smoking, and the smokers know it.

I was curious about this, so I checked it out on Wikipedia, and while roughly 80% of lung cancer deaths can be attributed to smoking, it’s not true that 80% of smokers get lung cancer. Instead, its occurrence in smokers is “only” about 14%. This means that 86% of smokers don’t get lung cancer.

So smokers aren’t deluding themselves when they say that their great-aunt Sally smoked all her life until she died in her sleep at age 92. In fact, my grandfather was a smoker, and died at age 86. Similarly, my father was a smoker, and died at age 80. As a result, when they hear us say that “smoking causes lung cancer,” as if there were a direct one-to-one correspondence, they tend to roll their eyes and ignore us, because they know it’s not true.

Then what is truth? The truth is that smoking increases your likelihood of getting lung cancer tenfold, from 1.4% to 14%. The truth is that smoking is a major factor in a number of other diseases, such as heart disease, emphysema, and stroke. Oh…and for you guys out there, it’s a key factor in erectile dysfunction. But again, while it greatly increases the likelihood of developing one of those problems, it is not a direct one-to-one correspondence. Many people…most people…do indeed cross the street every day…even in Midtown Manhattan…without getting hit by a car.

But…and here’s the important difference…you have to cross the street to get places. It’s a necessary risk. On the other hand, there is absolutely no reason why anyone needs to smoke.

Besides, as I learned when I was 19, kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.

And that’s the truth.

Isn't It Romantic?

Last Valentines Day Cheryl took me to dinner at my favorite restaurant; the Spaghetti Warehouse.

Just me. No kids, even though they both love the place too. No, this was just the two of us, celebrating Valentine's Day a day early because she had the night off and the 14th was a school night anyway. So we each grabbed our magazines and stuff, got into the van, and headed out to eat.

When we got there, we asked to be seated in the "trolley car." We like sitting in the trolley, and it also has much better light to work by. So we sat there reading our separate magazines and circling coupons while we waited for our dinner to arrive.

When our waitress came by with the mozzarella sticks, I turned to her and said, "This may not look romantic, but after 25 years, we get to just sit and read together."

The woman at the table behind us agreed.

No, it's not that we're so bored with each other that we bury ourselves into our reading when we go out. Quite the contrary, we enjoy sitting and reading together. After 25 years we don't have to stare into each other's eyes all the time anymore; and just to be somewhere anywhere, without the kids once in a while is a wonderful thing.

Many years ago, around 1980, Suzanne Britt Jordan wrote a piece for Newsweek that I wish I could find again, about how the ideal of marriage is not necessarily to always be like new young lovers, but instead, to eventually end up like old friends. She complained that those who divorced after many years because "the thrill was gone" had simply missed the point. A bonfire is great and exciting, but it doesn't keep you warm for as long as the slowly burning fire.

Hey, we might not have looked all that romantic that night, sitting there at the Spaghetti Warehouse, reading our separate magazines, and circling coupons while we waited for our dinner. But after 25 years we don't have to stare into each other's eyes all the time anymore, and just to be able to be somewhere, ANYWHERE, without the kids once and a while is a wonderful thing.

Happy Valentine's Day to all!