Monday, April 20, 2009

The Epistemology of Bryan

For weeks Bryan Fischer has championed loudly House Bill No. 216, a piece of dreck legislation which extends to pharmacists the right to refuse medical treatment to patients on the basis of ‘conscience.’

In addition to completely subverting the ethics of the profession, HB216 actively enables medical discrimination on the basis of personal bias. It gives a pharmacist the right to intervene in a physician-patient relationship and refuse any course of treatment he or she dislikes.

Yes, it’s just that bad. It’s so patently silly we can’t bear to discuss it further.

However, Fischer’s support of HB216 offers some intriguing insight into his whacky epistemology.

Bryan has long been a forceful opponent of any legislation that offers what he calls ‘special protection’ to specific communities. For example, any time anti-discrimination legislation for gays and lesbians appears, Bryan bellows to his followers a call to arms.

Fischer justifies his opposition to this type of legislation for two reasons. The first (his naughty secret) is that he hates homosexuals for awkward personal reasons. But the lynchpin of his public argument is that Bryan believes, contrary to evidence and reason, that homosexuality is a choice. According to this logic, if you choose to be something, that something does not warrant special protection.

Based on this, one might expect Bryan to be consistent and apply the same principle to special protection for pharmacists. After all, no one is born a pharmacist. To our knowledge, no geneticists have succeeded in identifying the 'pharmacist gene.' It’s clearly a lifestyle choice that can be overcome with proper support and ample prayer.

Fischer’s inconsistency belies his efforts at logical reasoning. You can’t deny anti-discrimination legislation to gays and lesbians on the basis of ‘choice’ while ignoring that principle for pharmacists.

That is, unless you're a vortex of hypocrisy and this isn't really about protecting pharmacists.

3 comments:

  1. "Protecting pharmacists" my ass. It's about limiting access to contraceptives.

    In Bryan's world, the only good woman is one who is barefoot and pregnant.

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  2. Every time Fischer and Ripley put their demented heads together on anything, you know the subtext is about limiting a woman's ability to control her own body. (I also have a tendancy to start humming, "Imagine me and you, and you and me...)
    BF and Rip believe that emergency contraception is abortion because in some cases, EC prevents a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall. However, the CDC defines a pregnancy as beginning at implantation...when life becomes viable. EC has no impact on an existing pregnancy. Case in point, my 10 year old son.
    So, rather than basing their beliefs on fact, they base them on Scripture (somehow I feel like reproductive science may have been a little shaky 2000 years ago).
    Here is the reality: Limiting access to birth control pills and EC WILL INCREASE THE NUMBER OF ACTUAL ABORTIONS. Period. WTF is so hard to understand about that?

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  3. Bryan is a hypocrit.

    Following his ideas on government intervention, Christianity itself is a choice and is therefore not granted any defenses or protections by the government.

    One is not born a Christian, one can change their religion at will. So why treat it any differently than anything else?

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