Soapbox

Morality Clause

   Q: Can a clerk at a gun shop refuse to sell a gun to someone who has a legal right to purchase, if his conscience tells him the person is dangerous?

    I ask this question because the Michigan Republicans passed a bill that says Michigan grocery store clerks may refuse to accept Food Stamps for payment of qualifying purchases if they have "moral objections" or BELIEVE THAT ACCEPTING FOOD STAMPS AS PAYMENT IS 'A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE" '
    And under the bill, the clerks, whose consciences would be so sorely wounded by selling people food to feed their kids, cannot be fired by their employers for refusing to do their jobs.
   Can you imagine a legislature being so concerned- not about how many hungry people are in their state, but about protecting the jobs of people who refuse to sell food to hungry people and then claim that its their conscience that prevents them?

Conscience. I do not believe that word means what they think it means.

   They passed a similar law saying doctors can refuse to treat you- for ANY condition- as long as they simply claim it bothers their alleged conscience. Heart attack, obesity, venereal disease, impotence- doctors (and grocery store clerks) are the newly appointed morality police. All in the name of religious freedom, of course, and protecting their delicate little consciences.

   But clearly, such people HAVE no conscience. No heart, no compassion, and absolutely no shame.

   A teenaged friend of mine wondered, in disbelief, what possible reason there was to do this: if there is a single argument "for" this bill that makes sense.
I believe that the 'for" argument goes: 'If I decide that my religion says that letting people buy food with food stamps (taxpayer money) is immoral, then telling me that I have to sell it to them anyway because it's my job violates my religious freedom.' (Wah wah wah, I'm so oppressed!!!)

   So… no, dear, not an argument that makes any sense.

   To me, it's about controlling and scapegoating people. It started with the right to refuse to sell women emergency contraception on the grounds that they are 'bad women' and it's somehow against your religion to enable 'bad women' to continue their evil ways, and gosh, just ringing the cash register makes you part of it. (Of course they say its about killing babies, but since emergency contraception doesn't do that, it's just a smoke screen for misogyny)

    If it stopped right there it would be horrible enough, but to even suggest that any religion says you must not feed hungry people is just disgusting.

    I guess the idea is that our economy is a mess because of all the lazy people using food stamps, so we should punish and shame them. Even though a huge portion of people using food assistance programs are, in fact, not lazt at all and work full time at Walmart, and are so poorly paid that they can't even feed their kids without help!

    Now if someone told me that, for this reason, their religion said that they must not shop at Walmart, that would make more sense to me.

    But that returns me, on this day of sadness and horror, to my original question. Are there any legal protections for a clerk at a gun shop who refuses to sell a customer a gun which they seem to be legally able to purchase because their conscience tells them that the man is dangerous and their religion tells them "thou shalt not kill"?
    The answer to that comes indirectly, as that same Michigan band of thieves and idiots known as the legislature, on the very morning when a mad man was gunning down 20 children in their classrooms, passed a law saying that teachers, principals, janitors and I assume, safety conscience parents, must be allowed to carry concealed weapons IN SCHOOLS.
    So I'm guessing that's a resounding 'no' to my question.

    NOt sell a gun to someone? My goodness, who ever could think that any religion might demand that you try to stop a possibly dangerous madman from obtaining a deadly weapon?? Because, so the argument advanced by Ann Coulter goes, the only way to stop these mass killings is to have more guns.
    But of course we have more guns, year after year, and since Obama's election the number of guns purchased has exploded! More and more and more guns every year- and in 2012  we have had more people killed in mass shootings than any year in our  history.
    So is there some critical weight, some tipping point at which more guns finally becomes enough guns to actually stop mass killings?  Whatever it is, we clearly haven't reached it yet.

    "Where were the metal detectors at this school?" someone cried. Seriously? It's an elementary school! I really don't think I could face the day knowing my kids were attending a kindergarten where they had to pass through a metal detector.  We don't need metal detectors at schools and movie theatres and grocery stores- what we need in this land is an insanity protector, that will go off with screaming lights and sirens whenever a person completely devoid of reason and conscience passes through.

   If Michigan had one of those in Lansing, the legislature would be out of business.