Hypocrisy and the NY Times

So there is a big furor happening in America now concerning the governments plan to have medical insurance cover birth control. "A provision of the 2010 healthcare reform law mandates that basic birth control services for women be included in as part of any employer-provided health insurance plan." 

Not surprisingly the Catholic Church stood up and said that they would fight this.

Not surprisingly this brought about criticism of the Catholic Church by various groups including the Freedom From Religion Foundation which ran the following ad in the NY Times:

Here is the ad's copy:

Dear ‘Liberal’ Catholic: 

It’s time to quit the Roman Catholic Church. 

It’s your moment of truth. Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? Whose side are you on, anyway?
It is time to make known your dissent from the Catholic Church, in light of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ ruthless campaign endangering the right to contraception. If you’re part of the Catholic Church, you’re part of the problem. 

Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club? Why are you aiding and abetting a church that has repeatedly and publicly announced a crusade to ban contraception, abortion and sterilization, and to deny the right of all women everywhere, Catholic or not, to decide whether and when to become mothers? When it comes to reproductive freedom, the Roman Catholic Church is Public Enemy Number One. Think of the acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, social evils and deaths that can be laid directly at the door of the Church’s antiquated doctrine that birth control is a sin and must be outlawed. 

A backer of the Roman Catholic presidential candidate says that if women want to avoid pregnancy we should put an aspirin between our knees? Catholic politicians are urging that the right to contraception should be left up to states? Nearly 50 years after the Supreme Court upheld contraception as a privacy right, we’re going to have to defend this basic freedom all over again? 

You’re better than your church. So why? Why continue to attend Mass? Tithe? Why dutifully sacrifice to send your children to parochial schools so they can be brainwashed into the next generation of myrmidons (and, potentially, become the next Church victims)? For that matter, why have you put up with an institution that won’t put up with women priests, that excludes half of humanity? 

No self-respecting feminist, civil libertarian or progressive should cling to the Catholic faith. As a Cafeteria Catholic, you chuck out the stale doctrine and moldy decrees of your religion, but keep patronizing the establishment that menaces public health by serving rotten offerings. Your continuing Catholic membership, as a “liberal,” casts a veneer of respectability upon an irrational sect determined to blow out the Enlightenment and threaten liberty for women worldwide. You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop. 

If you imagine you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research — you are deluding yourself. If you remain a “good Catholic,” you are doing “bad” to women’s rights. You’re kidding yourself if you think the Church is ever going to add a Doctrine of Immaculate ContraCeption. 

It is disgraceful that U.S. health care reform is being held hostage to the Catholic Church’s bizarre opposition to medically prescribed contraception. No politician should jeopardize electability for failure to genuflect before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. (Question to ask your Bishop: Does he hold up an umbrella against the rain? Isn’t that just as “unnatural” as using a condom or diaphragm?) 

Your Church hysterically claims that secular medical policy is “an assault against religious liberty.” You are savvy enough to realize that the real assault is by the Church against women’s rights and health care. As Nation columnist Katha Pollitt asks: Is it an offense against Jehovah Witnesses that health care coverage will include blood transfusions? The Amish, as Pollitt points out, don’t label cars “an assault on religious liberty” and try to force everyone to drive buggies. The louder the Church cries “offense against religious liberty” the harder it works to take away women’s liberty. 

Obama has compromised, but the Church never budges, instead launching a vengeful modern-day Inquisition. Look at its continuing directives to parish priests to use their pulpits every Sunday to lobby you against Obama’s policy, the Church’s announcement of a major anti-contraception media campaign — using your tithes, contributions and donations — to defeat Obama’s laudable health care policy. The Church has introduced into Congress the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, ” a bill to place the conscienceless Catholic Church’s “rights of conscience” above the rights of conscience of 53 percent of Americans. That the Church has “conscience rights” to deny women their rights is a kissing cousin to the claim that “corporations are people.” The Church that hasn’t persuaded you to oppose contraception now wants to use the force of secular law to deny contraceptive rights to non-Catholics. 

But is there any point in going on? After all, your misplaced loyalty has lasted through two decades of public sex scandals involving preying priests, children you may have known as victims, and church complicity, collusion and coverup going all the way to the top. Are you like the battered woman who, after being beaten down every Sunday, feels she has no place else to go? 

But we have a more welcoming home to offer, free of incense-fogged ritual, free of what freethinker Bertrand Russell called “ideas uttered long ago by ignorant men,” free of blind obedience to an illusory religious authority. Join those of us who put humanity above dogma.
As a member of the “flock” of an avowedly antidemocratic club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet? Please, exit en Mass. 

Very truly,
Annie Laurie Gaylor
Co-President
Freedom From Religion Foundation

Following on this the groups "Stop Islamization of Nations" and the "American Freedom Defense Initiative" tried to place an ad in the NY Times pointing out the destructive elements of Islamic groups and their influence on American culture. To make their point, they copied the language and style of the ad that was run by the NY Times criticizing the Catholic Church.

Here is the ad and its copy:

Open Letter to "moderate" Muslims: 

It’s time to quit Islam. 

It’s your moment of truth. Will it be religious freedom, freedom of speech, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or imams and their wrongs? Whose side are you on? 

In light of the ongoing, ruthless, international jihad against non-Muslims, the 1,400-year record of institutionalized oppression of women, the 18,560 Islamic attacks across the world since 9/11, and the endangering of free peoples across the world, if you’re part of the Islamic jihad, you’re part of the problem. 

Why are you aiding and abetting Islamic leaders who have repeatedly and publicly announced a jihad to subjugate Christians, Jews, Hindus, and all non-Muslims, and to deny the rights of all women everywhere, Muslim or not?

Think of the acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, social evils and deaths that can be laid directly at the door of the Islam's antiquated doctrine that commands jihad and genocide. 

If you imagine you can change the mosque from within — get it to lighten up on Jew-hatred, hatred of women, hatred of non-Muslims, hatred of gays — you are deluding yourself. If you remain a “good Muslim,” you are doing “bad” to the rights of women and non-Muslims everywhere. You’re kidding yourself if you think the mosque is ever going to expunge the Qur'an of its violent texts that inspire jihad, or interpret them out of existence. 

Your mosque hysterically claims that freedom of speech and the truth about jihad and Islamic supremacism are “an assault against Islam.” You are savvy enough to realize that the real assault is by the mosque against human rights. A captured internal document of the Muslim Brotherhood declares that its goal in the U.S. is "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house." Is that an agenda you endorse? 

Obama has compromised, but Islam never budges. Instead, it is fully embarked upon a stealth jihad, using the Justice Department to force businesses and educational institutions to accommodate Islamic law -- the same Islamic law that denies thefreedom of speech, mandates death for apostates, and oppresses women and non-Muslims.

Why put up with an institution that dehumanizes women and non-Muslims -- fully 9/10ths of humanity? Ask your imam: Does he support Hamas? Hizb'Allah? The destruction of Israel? Does he condemn the slaughter of Christians in Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iraq, etc.? Does he vocally denounce Islamic honor killings, FGM, forced marriages, child marriage, polygamy? As a "moderate" Muslim, you tell yourself and the world that you have chucked out the violent doctrine and hateful, oppressive decrees of your religion, and yet you keep identifying with the ideology that threatens liberty for women and menaces freedom by slaughtering, oppressing and subjugating non-Muslims. 

There is a more welcoming home for you!

Join those of us who put humanity above the vengeful, hateful and violent teachings of Islam's "prophet." 

As a member of the “umma,” of an avowedly hateful, supremacist, and antidemocratic club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet? Please, exit en mosque. 

Very truly,
Pamela Geller
President, Stop Islamization of Nations, American Freedom Defense Initiative
Robert Spencer
Vice-President, Stop Islamization of Nations, American Freedom Defense Initiative

The ad's style and wording were specifically chosen to mimic an ad that attacked a Christian group, but replaced the Catholic Church with Islam. In so doing it was a fairly interesting method of testing their hypothesis that too many in the west, including such self proclaimed vanguards of truth and defenders of society as the NY Times. If the NY Times ran the ad, then the group would get its message out on an equal platform as the anti-Christian ad. If, however, the NY Times were to reject the ad, would it point to the very thing that the group was trying to make known?

Well, in fact the NY Times did refuse to publish the ad. Their stated reason was for the sake of the troops fighting in Afghanistan, so as not to put them in any further danger.

This of course rang hollow with many who couldn't help but point out the instances in the past when the NY Times ran articles that violated national security and knowingly put people in harms way. You can read about that more in depth here: REJECTED! WHAT THE NY TIMES WON'T RUN: COUNTER-JIHAD FACTS WHAT THE NY TIMES WILL RUN: ANTI-CATHOLIC SMEAR ADS. Included in their write up is a copy of the letter sent by the NY Times stating their reasons for rejecting the ad.

Now I'm obviously not the first, nor even the second, to write about this episode but I can't help but use what tools I have to help get this message out into the public.