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And shall we pray that health insurance in the US will become not a prize awarded to folks with good jobs and their legal spouses & dependents, but rather viewed as it is in the rest of the industrialized world - as the birthright of every citizen?


Sharon

Erummm, Sharon, that's kind of a complicated issue. Who pays for all that "free" health care in those other countries?

And how did this thread go from homosexuals to pharmaceuticals, that's what I'd like to know! (nyuk nyuk )

The question of 'benefits' is usually the prime factor when one talks about married couples vs. domestic partners.

Wouldn't it be nice if this became a moot issue because everyone had healthcare, regardless of one's age or marital status?

(Did anyone else see today's USA Today articles about emergency medical response times in the various cities of the nation? Scary, but I think I'm moving to Seattle!!)

Blessings!

What is the interest of the state in regulating the marriage contract? Isn't it to promote procreation?

Hard to believe, since "the state" also regulates (and encourages) the "right" to abortion.

Nothing is free, Sharon. Not even a free lunch.

JThur posted:

"Nothing is free, Sharon. Not even a free lunch."

So, let's get together and decide which to do.

Should we as a people pay to build more and better bombers and bombs beyond number?

Should we as a people pay to police how other people decide to govern themselves and invade another country?

Should we see to it that a portion of the money collected from us for that purpose be diverted to pay for quality health care to sustain the life that is our right as Americans?

I suggest that we define quality health care as that which is enjoyed by select members of the Executive Branch (and, as I understand it, members of House and Senate, and their dependents) at public expense.

Since they aren't members of a regular health care plan in the private sector and we pay for their health plan, I think that we should also have health care financed by the public sector. Seems like social justice to me.

Come to think of it, I'd like to join the pension plan that members of congress have voted for themselves. If not, perhaps they could join the regular government pension plan.

Then we could use the savings to fund a public health insurance plan or maybe we could use the savings to help fund social security for our young.

I'm with Sharon on this.

Steve

"The Times they are a 'changin!!!!!!!!!!!!"

That's what they thought about public education too. Now, we have parochial schools, private schools and academies, homeschooling, etc. to remedy the "solution."

The original topic deals with unions between homosexuals. Unions or marriages is another business that the government has gotten into. The public sector is so successful in convincing us that marriage is their business that Catholic Christians think they only have to get a civil divorce to remarry.

My family insurance plan premium with my former employer was $1,500/month. Who pays that? In the history of companies granting benefits, where was the government? What originally started within the private sector is now demanded to be a "right." When companies pay benefits they also limit the number of new hires. Either you have many employees without benefits or you have a lesser number with benefits. Its all economics.

This pathetic misunderstanding can have dire consequences. One fellow coworker couldn't understand why he had to begin paying $60 a month contribution for his health insurance benefits when times got rough (read: recession). For a number of years the company was paying 100% of our insurance premium. I asked him if he preferred being unemployed and having no insurance? He didn't want to answer. He just complained until he was laid off with 80% of our division.

Rights don't mean squat if there are no means. Take, for instance, a woman's right to an abortion in this country. She has a right, but if no nurse is willing to scrub for a doctor, it won't happen. Many abortions in the Cleveland area did not happen because nurses walked out and refused to scrub for the procedure. This little iota goes unreported in the media. Now, we have a little problem here. One's "right" conflicts with those who will not accept that right. That "right" only exists in one's head. Should we force an unwilling nurse to participate in an abortion procedure to satisfy one's rights to an abortion? Now, consider this: we speak about the right for a public supported education (read: public tax-supported education) and we take hard earned money from parents who wish not to participate in this experiment, parents who send their children elsewhere to get an education. Yet, our "right" to a public supported education mandates the right to steal from your pocketbook. Some "public" school systems are made up of only 40% of a county's student body, yet the majority of the population must support it even though 60% of the parents send their children to non-public schools. This preference also includes members of congress and public school teachers, those who have motives for keeping such a system in place.

Now back to my insurance means. Do we limit the number of employees and grant more benefits or do we hire everyone and pay none? Any time you grant the public sector (read: government) control over a business you invite trouble. They still can't make do with today's publik school system. The tax laws work against parents who send their children to private schools or who prefer homeschooling. But that tax is mandatory and legal. Yet it is also taxation without representation. I cannot understand how anyone who prefers to opt out of the public supported school system can support a public financed health care system. Will the government succeed in this area where they have failed in others?

But back to the homo-unions. The Church is warning us about another trend that it considers threatening. Can we, as faithful Christians, recognize the warning or are we to busy thinking of rights first?

There are several caveats to the examples I gave above. Why did the public sector or government confiscate the marriage business? How has civil divorce made a mess of our Christian understanding of marriage, especially one blessed in the church? Why did the public sector or government confiscate the education business? How has public education help promote our Christian understandings? The government wants to grant rights to unions between homosexuals during a time when the media just had a circus with pedophile priests and cover-up bishops. What are we inviting here? Don't we get it?

Joe

I can see your point. But what I think is that all human endeavors are subject to the stupidities that are characteristic of our fallen nature. Whether education, healthcare, commerce, taxes, workplace safety, housing, military operations or legislation, inadequacy is all around us. But so too is inadequacy present in the private, non-governmental sector. (Land O' Lakes just today recalled a few tons of butter in 20 states - it has metal particles in it. Last month, several tons of beef from a processor in Illinois were recalled - e-coli. Etc.)

While some folks despair of the government ever getting things 'right', including perspectives on abortion or domestic partnerships, the overall principles of "No Government Interference" or perhaps "Less Government Interference" should be the hallmark. So, the same principle that doesn't interfere with a parent's right to educate the kids at home, also doesn't interfere with the availability of an abortion. Or a person's right to co-habit with whomever they choose. Or a person's right to stand on the street corner and proclaim the President and the Congress to be idiots. (Happens a LOT in Washington!)

As for the health insurance issue, I understand completely what you are talking about. The same for Medicare and Medicaid. But the fact remains that a lot of the current procedures are the result of intense lobbying pressure on the government by folks with their snouts in the trough. [My Mom, after her stroke, became paralyzed on her complete right side. She is currently living in a nursing facility. I hand over ALL her monthly social security and {tiny!} pension income minus $30 - for toothpaste, shampoo, tissues, lipstick and - oh yeah - clothing - to the nursing facility. The state supplements that to the tune of about $5,000 per month. I want to bring her home, or better to an apartment with another elderly woman, and have a home health aide or LPN stay with them to give meds, bathe them, dress them, etc. That would be $10,000 per month from the state plus their retirement money. Can't do it. Governmental regulations REQUIRE that that money be spent on a "licensed facility". Lobbyists from the American Health Care Association, ie, the nursing home lobby. Your health care benefits are the subject of the same influence. Just like your meds - 50% less in Canada and Europe for the same pills.

So, when unmarried folks would like to obtain parallel benefits for their "main squeeze" (I'm dating myself by using that term!!), it's not seeking special benefits or treatment, just parallel.

And I agree with Sharon that if we could just make sure that all of our people, married or not, were going to be cared for when they got sick, then our country would be a lot better off. Especially the older folks and the kids, for they are the ones who are most likely to be taken advantage of.

So, "unions" or "commitment ceremonies" for those who choose not to or cannot marry, are basically OK with me. Just like the commitment of religious order members to their communities, or the oath of the armed forces to serve, it is the voluntary choice of a person to be where and with whom he or she chooses. And that freedom to make commitments should be respected.

Because once that freedom to make the commitment is gone, then allegiance to anyone or anything, including the Church, is in jeopardy. And that is the beginning of dictatorship.

Blessings!

//So, "unions" or "commitment ceremonies" for those who choose not to or cannot marry, are basically OK with me.//

You are absolutely absurd. Are these representative of the Christian tradition? Folks are pushing for these relationships to be considered on par with traditional or conventional marriage. They are not.

//Because once that freedom to make the commitment is gone, then allegiance to anyone or anything, including the Church, is in jeopardy. And that is the beginning of dictatorship.//

I don't follow your logic. Either you have passed up twenty centuries of what Christianity means by "freedom in Christ" or I have misread you. What, pray tell, is the meaning or understanding of "freedom" that is not based on God? The freedom to say that I have come before the community to take my bride in marriage is different than Mike and Spike being free to cohabitate as lovers. One type of freedom is marriage, the other is shameful (cf. Romans 1). Don't equate my marriage with the shameful doings of lustful men who want to get it on with each other. We're not talking about the same thing here.

We ARE free to do what we want - even sin. In this, you are correct.

Joe

Well, Joe, your hypothetical Mike and Spike have no need of a government-regulated contractual union to "get it on with each other." Why would they even want to go through the effort & expense?

But I hardly think that a 30-year monogamous, loving partnership between Adam and Steve is to be equated with your hypothetical lusty Mike and Spike, either.

If the government is in the business of regulating marriage (for the express purpose of a stable environment for procreation and raising children, supposedly), then they should probably deny that privilege to the infertile, the elderly, the selfish DINKs, and others incapable of or disinterested in procreating or raising children.

The Church doesn't deny marriage for those reasons, but perhaps the government should. Either that, or the government should get out of the marriage business altogether. Then the Church won't have to worry about being pressured to marry a man and a llama, a woman and her son, a tablecloth and a footstool, etc. by a government that has no interest in the institution of marriage, by rights a religious covenant.

I'll tell you what debases heterosexual marriage -- prenuptial agreements, Las Vegas chapels, reality TV gimmickry, and a wedding industry that causes young girls to look forward to nothing their whole lives except the picture-perfect storybook wedding and when it doesn't go according to plan, the quickie no-fault divorce. And the whole concept of marriage as a legal contract flies in the face of what it spiritually is supposed to be, a manifestation of the Kingdom.

But the good ol' boys who screamed "state's rights" over slavery and segregation are now trumpeting a federal amendment to "protect" heterosexual marriage. Funny...

//Well, Joe, your hypothetical Mike and Spike have no need of a government-regulated contractual union to "get it on with each other." Why would they even want to go through the effort & expense?//

My hypothetical Mike and Spike? No, they don't need the government to get it on with each other. But when it ends up being demands for insurance protection,

//But I hardly think that a 30-year monogamous, loving partnership between Adam and Steve is to be equated with your hypothetical lusty Mike and Spike, either.//

We're all called to love one another. What do you mean by a "monogamous, loving partnership?" Can you qualify the difference between a MLP and simply being friends?

//If the government is in the business of regulating marriage (for the express purpose of a stable environment for procreation and raising children, supposedly),//

For procreation and raising of children?

//...then they should probably deny that privilege to the infertile, the elderly, the selfish DINKs, and others incapable of or disinterested in procreating or raising children.//

Do they?

//The Church doesn't deny marriage for those reasons, but perhaps the government should. Either that, or the government should get out of the marriage business altogether.//

So, what are you saying with your hypothetical denials?

//Then the Church won't have to worry about being pressured to marry a man and a llama, a woman and her son, a tablecloth and a footstool, etc. by a government that has no interest in the institution of marriage, by rights a religious covenant.//

The topic deals with "unions between homosexuals", not with llamas and footstools. What are you talking about?

//I'll tell you what debases heterosexual marriage -- prenuptial agreements, Las Vegas chapels, reality TV gimmickry, and a wedding industry that causes young girls to look forward to nothing their whole lives except the picture-perfect storybook wedding and when it doesn't go according to plan, the quickie no-fault divorce.//

This is good for another topic/thread. Feel free to start one. The topic of THIS thread is "Unions between homosexuals" and the Vatican's response to this growing trend.

//And the whole concept of marriage as a legal contract flies in the face of what it spiritually is supposed to be, a manifestation of the Kingdom.//

Exactly. Hence, the demand for "rights" and not responsibilities. The civil government is NOT interested in any Kingdom of God.

//But the good ol' boys who screamed "state's rights" over slavery and segregation are now trumpeting a federal amendment to "protect" heterosexual marriage. Funny... //

What "good ol' boys" are you talking about? I don't quite follow how federal amendments to 'protect heterosexual marriage' (please explain) has anything to do with the Vatican's document against the current trend for homosexual unions.

If only we had half the energy and defense to protect the sanctity of marriage (between a man and a woman) ...

Joe

Just for the record, I don't believe anybody here is suggesting that good things come for free. It is a peculiarity of the current American "system" and an artifact of history that employers are responsible for the major portion of health insurance costs.

Sharon

Benefits are not responsibilities.