Pooyie!

POOYIE! June 2013

It's good, it's bad and it's just plain crazy.

C'EST BON
Bishop Michael Jarrell struck a careful, conciliatory tone when he tacitly endorsed Boy Scout troops sponsored by churches in the \Lafayette Diocese welcoming gay scouts into the fold. Roughly half of all Boy Scout troops in Acadiana are sponsored by Catholic Churches, making the bishop's leadership on this issue more than token. Jarrell's carefully worded epistle to local branches of the Boy Scouts of America followed a contentious secret-ballot vote by the organization's National Council to allow gay young men into scouting. The vote satisfied neither the left nor the right: Scouting's progressive wing will still push for the BSA to remove its ban on gay scout leaders; conservatives see the outcome as a betrayal of scouting's core principles. If you're a supporter of LGBT equality, as we are, this should be seen as a critical first step. Arguably the most important aspect of the National Council vote - one that is rarely if at all mentioned - is the implicit recognition that sexual orientation is not a choice. What 12-year-old would "choose" to be gay?

PAS BON
Moral leadership met the meat clever of politics when the state House of Representatives voted against an expansion of Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare. Opponents of the expansion cited concerns over future costs to the state, although the feds would have paid 100 percent of the expansion of Medicaid in Louisiana for the first three years and the lion's share of the expansion costs thereafter, allowing an estimated 214,000 uninsured Louisiana residents to get health coverage. Both the Legislative Fiscal Office and state Department of Health and Hospitals, in separate analyses, projected Louisiana would save hundreds of millions of dollars over the first several years if it accepted the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. DHH's worst-case scenario suggested the state could be on the hook for as much as $1.7 billion over the first decade. But compared to the nearly $16 billion in federal dollars that would flow into Louisiana through the Medicaid expansion, even DHH's worst-case scenario sounds like a reasonable admission price. Lost in this often-partisan debate is a central question: How does a Legislature dominated by Christians countenance hundreds of thousands of low-income Louisiana residents living without the benefits of health insurance?

COUILLON
We would loved to have been a fly on the wall when Sen. Page Cortez, R-Testosterone, explained to the women in his life why he successfully pushed an amendment to water down to the point of what's-the-point a bill that would have required all Louisiana employers to pay women the same as men. The bill, with the Lafayette Republican's amendment making only state agencies subject to the equal-pay provision, was approved by the Senate 24-11. Cortez is a nice guy. We like him. And we believe the claim in his legislative biography that he "will always strive to work for the best for the citizens of District 23 and the State of Louisiana." Well, half the citizens of District 23 and the state. Lady folk, back to your hearths!