There’s a meme going around, apparently originating from a commercial sponsored by the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis, as reported by LifeSiteNews:
“You wouldn’t force an atheist to buy a Bible,” says a woman in the opening shot of the ad. “It’s that simple.”
“You wouldn’t force a vegetarian to buy you a hamburger,” adds another. “It’s that simple.”
The ad concludes: “Why, then, would you ask a Catholic employer to purchase your birth control?
This meme is a completely false analogy and represents the shallow one-step thinking which is driving masses of low-information voters.
We do force vegetarians to purchase hamburgers. I have personally eaten hamburgers purchased with taxpayer dollars. Some of those taxpayers were vegetarians. I have also sought council from chaplains paid for by taxpayers and I’ve seen bibles purchased with taxpayer dollars. They’re in the federal supply system. Some of those taxpayers who paid for those bibles were atheists.
When you hear the word “simple” in a discussion about a controversial issue, chances are you’re about to hear a misleading statement thought up by a manipulator to sway people who are too stupid or mentally lazy to think critically about what they hear.
This “hamburger” meme sounds good until you think about it, or spend a few minutes with Google. It’s as false as other right wing analogies, like those which compare running a government to running a business, or those that equate respecting the rights of non-Christians with enforcing Sharia law. They’re all just nonsense.
We force vegetarians to buy hamburgers and we force atheists to purchase bibles because doing so meets the needs of the men and women who have signed up to serve their country far away from home. The Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis doesn’t realize that we do those things and clearly wouldn’t support doing so if they did. It’s simple, the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis doesn’t support the troops.
BnmnG 