Dear Catholic Church:

I am following with interest the contraception debate and am coming to you with a request of my own. I can’t in good conscience contribute anymore of my religiously unaffiliated dollars to your universities, hospitals, and other institutions in the form of my taxes, which help to fund the federal student loans your students take out to go to your schools, the Medicare and Medicaid programs that pay for your hospital services, and help fund the federal grants your institutions are no doubt awarded. Since, as a taxpayer, I can’t pick and choose where my tax dollars go, I would hope that in the future, so that we all may go forward with a clear conscience, you will no longer accept federal funds, much of which will be paid for by the tax dollars of women who disagree with your position.

You see, I believe that Obama Administration’s position is just and right. It protects women who don’t believe in birth control by not forcing them to exercise the option to acquire it, and it protects the rights of the majority of women who disagree with that particular point of doctrine. Through your rhetoric, though, you have shown that respect for a belief system is, in your institutional eyes, a one-way street and so I would like to withdraw my support.

You are welcome to try to change my mind through public relations campaigns, op-eds,Rick Santorum, and other means of persuasion. However,  I must draw the line at your attempt to pick and choose what laws you will follow based on “belief” while accepting my non-Catholic dollars in the form of federal payouts. (I would like to warn you that your efforts at persuasion will probably be futile; my grandfather left your church as young man and none of us has yet seen fit to return.)

I am also distressed that your rhetoric has fired up those ill-tempered, small-minded men of the right. The cry of religious freedom appeals to those men who say they believe so sincerely in liberty right up until it requires them to get out of a woman’s vagina.

Let us just be clear that you understand my position: When you avail yourselves of the money and talent of those outside your belief system to contribute skills, creativity and expertise to your hospitals and universities, you are asking them to set aside any uneasiness they may have about your doctrine out of respect for your shared vision of what can be accomplished in that workplace. You are asking them to work on your behalf towards the shared goals of education, providing health care, poverty relief and other charitable endeavours without letting incompatible beliefs obscure the mission. It should be a partnership of respect, but your position makes clear you are more interested in exploitation. Women get a lot of that.

So the question isn’t, in my mind, about the constitutional or legal issues. It’s about respect. You are asking your female non-Catholic employees and, indeed, female taxpayers to respect your beliefs to allow you to serve a higher social good. But it appears that you respect women so little that you are unwilling to do the same.