That is Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Despite the unfortunate photo, which looks like the last thing an altar boy sees before being taken into a booth for some private confessin', Lori actually co-wrote the zero tolerance policy for child-fucking priests or, as it's known everywhere else, "Wait, You Mean There Wasn't a Zero Tolerance Policy for Child-Fucking in the Catholic Church Already?". He's also a warrior for all things churchy in this vile, depraved secular nation.
Now, the Rude Pundit didn't realize he'd be talking for two days in a row about Jews and pork, but yesterday Bishop Lori testified, as part of an all-male panel, before the House Oversight Committee during its hearing on the Obama administration's continuation of a Bush-era policy, already passed in 28 states, including being signed into law by Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee when they were governors, that employers who provide health insurance for their employees, including businesses and institutions run by religious groups, with the exception of houses of worship, must include female contraceptive coverage.
But then Bishop Lori had to go and offer this as his opening statement: "For my testimony today, I would like to tell a story. Let’s call it, 'The Parable of the Kosher Deli.'"
You really should read the whole thing. It's like something that Woody Allen might have written. No, really, it's totally hilarious. One of the top religious leaders in the country sat before a congressional committee and went on for, like, twenty minutes about, shit you not, a mythical America where kosher delis are forced to serve pork: "Once upon a time, a new law is proposed, so that any business that serves food must serve pork. There is a narrow exception for kosher catering halls attached to synagogues, since they serve mostly members of that synagogue, but kosher delicatessens are still subject to the mandate."
You'd really think a bishop might not want to associate Catholicism with porking, but there you go.
And Lori pounds this analogy like a weeping monk savagely masturbating to punish himself for evil urges: "[T]he question generated by a government mandate is whether the government will impose its belief that eating pork is good on objecting Orthodox Jews. Meanwhile, there is no imposition at all on the freedom of those who want to eat pork. That is, they are subject to no government interference at all in their choice to eat pork, and pork is ubiquitous and cheap,
available at the overwhelming majority of restaurants and grocers. Indeed, some pork producers and retailers, and even the government itself, are so eager to promote the eating of pork, that they sometimes give pork away for free." "Pork" is mentioned 18 times in the whole thing.
Of course, then it gets even more porcine and awful, with ham making its malevolent appearance when talking about the recent compromise the Obama administration made on the issue (of birth control, not pork): "You are free to call yourself a kosher deli; you are free not to place ham sandwiches on your menu; you are free not to be the person to prepare the sandwich and hand it over the counter to the customer. But we will force your meat supplier to set up a kiosk on your premises, and to offer, prepare, and serve ham sandwiches to all of your customers, free of charge to them. And when you get your monthly bill from your meat supplier, it will include the cost of any of the 'free' ham sandwiches that your customers may accept. And you will, of course, be required to pay that bill." Seriously, this shit would kill at a comedy club.
But never fear: "This story has a happy ending. The government recognized that it is absurd for someone to come into a kosher deli and demand a ham sandwich." Thus the parable ends, with the recognition that the government cannot compel delis to serve ham. And that's cool. But what the fuck does that have to do with contraception coverage for employees at St. Joesph's Hospital?
By the way, someone should point out to all the pork-tossers that whether or not to eat pig meat is a thing some Jews believe, but they're not bugfuck insane about it. The Rude Pundit gets the feeling that Lori would have loved to drag Muslims into the equation, but was too much of a wimp to do so because this is the rhetorical equivalent of someone running pigs near a mosque.
The deep desire of Lori and other religious and political leaders is to divorce the discussion of contraceptive coverage from the rights of women and make it about "religious freedom." They want to say they're drawing a line in the sand against a church-hating president, and, hey, first they came for the Catholics and some such shit. But, at the end of the day, all these men, and it has been mostly men, have done is show how much some religions want to control the bodies of women, women who decided long ago that they don't want that control.
