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Sunday, April 03, 20051112570400
To Protect and Destroy Horizontal Controls
"Dancers cited for exposing breasts," Daytona Beech News-Journal, 27 March 2005, http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/WestVolusia/03WVolWEST02032705.htm(from White Cheech (nsfw) through Technorati).
"Blagojevich Requires Pharmacies To Fill Birth Control Orders Quickly," Associted Press, 1 April 2005, http://abclocal.go.com/wls/news/040105_ap_ns_birthcontrol_orders.html (from Tiger Hawk).
Two related stories.
Nine female dancers were charged with exposing their breasts at Softtails Saloon.
The dancers, ranging from 24 to 38 years old, were issued notices to appear in court and then released after being cited Thursday night, Volusia County Sheriff's spokesman Gary Davidson said.
Volusia County law requires women to partly cover themselves and not reveal certain areas of their bodies while dancing at businesses that serve alcohol.
Business manager Lynn Fraser, 20, was charged with allowing the violations to occur. Softtails is on U.S. 92 just east of DeLand.
Davidson said the Sheriff's Office received complaints about the dancers flashing. Plain-clothed deputies with the Sheriff's Office Crime Suppression Team visited the business Thursday. After deputies witnessed the violations, the 10 women were issued citations
and
Gov. Rod Blagojevich filed an emergency rule Friday requiring pharmacies that sell contraceptives to fill prescriptions for birth control quickly, following recent incidents in which a Chicago pharmacist refused to fill orders for contraceptives because of moral opposition.
"Our regulation says that if a woman goes to a pharmacy with a prescription for birth control, the pharmacy or the pharmacist is not allowed to discriminate or to choose who he sells it to or who he doesn't sell it to," Blagojevich said. "The pharmacy will be expected to accept that prescription and fill it ... No delays. No hassles. No lectures."
The anti-stripper law probably was probably written by moralists, while the birth control decree was issued by a Democrat. On one level they have different purposes. The Softails case is a case of government interference because of a perceived lack of virtue (horizontal control). Blogojevich's order is goernment action because of too much horizontal control. But they both illustrate a major problem with American laws.
But they share a common theme: public policy overriding private morality. They replace horizontal controls with vertical ones, or weaken civil society and strengthen government diktat . This is a tragedy, this is dangerous. Focusing on state control channels citizens higher instincts away from voluntary organizations and toward influencing government. True virtue is abandoned in favor of using state force. Internalized civility is replaced with institutionalized thuggery.
Tiger Hawk, who I agree with, spotted a vertical control I miseed. I'll close with his words
TigerHawk belongs to the "more the merrier" school of birth control, so I do not subscribe to the thinking of these moralist pharmacists. However, some of them believe that certain types of birth control, including particularly pills in a "morning after" dose, act to abort a conceived egg, and that by selling these pills they are participating in an abortion. Or maybe they just oppose contraception. In either case, I think their position is asinine.
...
The good news, though, is that small-town women have it within their own power to solve this problem: Keep a big old stock of birth control pills handy. If you don't have 'em, have friends who have 'em. If you accidently have unprotected sex, take several the next morning and several more before you go to bed the next night. Read this, and read the label on the pill so you can calculate the dose. And since I don't give medical advice, which is smart because I'm a lawyer, consult your doctor.
The Times missed a great opportunity to protect the right of a pharmacist to his conscience and flank the activists who are trying to drive birth control out of the economy. Had I been writing this morning's editorial I would have argued that the morning after pill -- "Plan B" -- be sold over the counter. If it were sold in every 7-Eleven as it should be, we would not have to write rules ordering pharmacists to choose between their God and their livelihood
18:20 Posted by Dan tdaxp in Health Mullahs, Law | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: rulesets, birth control, religious freedom