Contraception Debate and Koran Burning Riots: Difference of Degree, Not Kind:
1. At last night's Republican presidential debate (or, more properly, "Night of the Fucktards XX"), when the issue of contraception came up, Mitt Romney said it wasn't about anything but religion: "I don't think we've seen in the history of this country the kind of attack on religious conscience, religious freedom, religious tolerance that we've seen under Barack Obama. Most recently, of course...requiring the Catholic Church to provide for its employees and its various enterprises health care insurance that would include birth control, sterilization and the morning-after pill. Unbelievable... But don't forget the decision just before this, where he said the government -- not a church, but the government should have the right to determine who a church's ministers are for the purposes of determining whether they're exempt from EEOC or from workforce laws or labor laws."

(Note: Newt Gingrich said something similar, but his candidacy's dead, so fuck whatever he had to say.)

2. In addition to the outrage by Catholic leaders over the contraception requirement in health insurance, presidents of Protestant-affiliated colleges said that they are considering dropping student health care coverage over the rule because it violates their religious beliefs.

3. People who don't have health insurance are more likely to die than people with health insurance. Thus the reaction of religious institutions is to consign some people to death in order to abide by their religious beliefs.

3.5. You could make the same statement about the limiting of access to abortion services for women.

4. In Afghanistan, riots and violence erupted because Korans happened to be burned in a pile of things by NATO troops. The burning was an error, as was quickly acknowledged. But some Muslims who saw this as a violation of their religious beliefs have killed people in the riots, and two American soldiers were shot and killed over it.

5. Conclusion? Ignorant fucking zealots are everywhere. Killing people because you think someone pissed off your god is wrong. And it doesn't matter if it's done with bricks and bullets or with long-term, untreated illnesses that could have been cured with access to health care.