Updated, ~16:00h EST 28 Feb. I somehow managed to post this without the "below the fold" material. I've added the missing remainder of the post, and adjusted the timestamp to match.
PZ Myers, Kevin Beck, and a host of others have weighed in on the reprehensible conduct of one Dr. Gary Merrill. The good doctor, who is a pediatrician, declined to care for a child with an ear infection because her mother has tattoos. The doctor claims to simply be following "standards Merrill has set based upon his Christian faith." In this particular case, though, I don't think we can blame his Christian faith.
Let's face it. It doesn't take much familiarity with the Gospels to figure out that Merrill's conduct would only have been featured there as an example of what not to do. The man clearly has not in any way, shape, or form internalized any of Jesus' teachings. He might call himself a Christian, but turning away a sick child because of their parent's appearance is as absolutely unChristian as one could conceivably get. If I remember my bible correctly, Jesus healed the child of a Roman officer, said things like, "suffer not the little children," and gave us the term "good Samaritan." Merrill, on the other hand, wouldn't heal the child of a tattooed woman, let a child suffer overnight, and basically acted like the Bad Levite in the Good Samaritan story. If I thought it would do any good, I'd suggest tattooing "What Would Jesus Do, You Idiot?" on the guy's hand, but it really won't.
I've got a feeling that it's really his personality that's responsible, not his religion. Every society, every culture, has jerks like this. You know the type - tinpot tyrants in their own mind, keen to impose their morality on everyone they come into contact with. In the United States, he's a Christian schmuck. In Afghanistan, he'd be Taliban. In Spain, back in the day, he'd have found gainful employment with the inquisition. But in a place where religion was frowned upon, he'd still manage to descend to his current low - in Germany in the late 1930s, he'd be a brown shirt, and in the USSR he'd be your unfriendly neighborhood third-rate party hack/KGB snitch.
People like Merrill need to be watched, and watched closely. If you don't keep an eye on the tinpot tyrants, the dictators in their own dreams, the Lord Grand High Commissioner For Faith And Morals wannabes, they scurry around the floorbords out of sight, multiplying like the cockroaches they are, sniffing for any chance to grab more power. Today, the waiting room. Tomorrow, the FDA. After that, who the hell knows.
And that, folks, is how societies wind up, right before collapse, with creatures like the brown shirts, like the Taliban, and like the KGB.
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I thought it was "suffer little children to come unto me." Suffer, in this context, means "permit".
I absolutely agree that it's not the tenets of Christianity that compelled this asshole to act as he did; it's plain that he'd have a much harder time finding Biblical justification for not treating this child than Pat Robertson and Tim LaHaye would for their various solecisms, such as persecuting gays and calling for the throwing all non-Christians into a lake of fire.
The problem is a society wherein this is even allowed to go on. If an HMO sends a patient to a doctor who then claims he won't treat her because selectively applied "appearace standards apply" as per a wall sign, at a very minimum the HMO should terminate its contract with the provider.
The point isn't that Merrill behaved like a Christian, it's that he said he did. We can't legally discriminate against each other because our parents told us blacks and Jews are evil or that women are never to be trusted, but it's snactioned to take any reading of a sky-fairy-based religious text you need. As upset as people are, they're making a lot less noise than they would if Merrill were operating an office that refused to treat Eskimos, midgets, or fat people (singly or in combination).
Yes, he's a jerk.
Yes, his justification is bullsh!t.
***must cease comment: slippery-slope argument detected***
I'll just say that being a jerk isn't illegal, and he was within his legal rights.
Well, I bet if you asked him to justify it scripturally he might throw out a combination of Leviticus 19:28, "Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD," and 2 Corinthians 6:14-17 14Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people. 17Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you."
It's the Bible. You can find a verse in it somewhere to justify any conceivable action. That's what makes it so "Holy".
as you and i both know medics and doctors who will[and have] put themselves in the reality of hostile fire to treat the wounded, the behavior of anyone to refuse treatment on any ground is immoral and criminal.i would encourage all his patients to apply some wash off skin designs and then show him. he should then refuse treatment and if you fill his calendar with these visits and the patients complaining of not receiving treatment that they were due, he'll be terminated. keep following where he goes. sooner or later , he'll end up doing interrogations with the cia.
I think the doctor's Revised Wingnut Edition says "Let the little children suffer, rather than come unto me..."