Religious liberty was still twitching in the weeks before the election. An emboldened President Obama, fresh off his electoral victory, will put an end to that. Make no mistake, he’s coming in for the kill shot. And soon.
Tim Carney writes:
The Obama administration this month, in defending its health plan’s contraception mandate, articulated a narrow view of the First Amendment’s religious liberty protections…
But why should only religious institutions be allowed to exercise their consciences? The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law … prohibiting the free exercise” of religion. Should government be allowed to force ordinary people to violate the moral laws to which they subscribe?
David Green says no. Green and his family own Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts-and-crafts stores. They sued the administration on the grounds the contraception mandate prohibited their free exercise of Christianity by forcing them to pay for abortifacient morning-after pills.
The Greens weren’t arguing that morning-after pills should be illegal. They weren’t even trying to keep their employees from using them. They just didn’t want to implicate themselves in what they saw as immoral activity.
The administration responded with an unsettling argument: The Greens aren’t protected by the First Amendment’s “free exercise” clause in this case because they operate a secular business. “Hobby Lobby is a for-profit, secular employer,” the Obama administration wrote in a brief, “and a secular entity by definition does not exercise religion.”
Part of the administration’s argument is that the mandate controls the corporation’s actions but it does not apply to individual owners.
So, in short, you have a right in this country to be a Christian. And you have a right to be a business owner but you don’t have a right to be a Christian business owner. The Obama administration looks like its going to do its best to make Christianity a part-time venture. A one day a week tradition. You see, you can cling to your guns and religion. When we say. And only when we say.
It’s a funny thing that so many leftist Catholics say they rebel against the authoritarian nature of the Church. And then they go vote for leftist politicians who want to force everyone to bend to their will. I’m thinking it’s not that liberal Catholics have a problem with authority, they just want the authority to agree with them.
And the thing is, that at some point the authoritarian will eventually turn on them too. And while the Church only proposes, the government mandates. And what the government mandates, it backs up with force.
To contrast it clearly, the Church says its doors are always open. The authoritarian government eventually comes knocking at yours.
HT http://washingtonexaminer.com/carney-re-elected-obama-takes-aim-at-religious-liberty/article/2513129?utm_source=Washington%20Examiner:%20Opinion%20Digest%20-%2011/12/2012&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Washington%20Examiner:%20Opinion%20Digest#.UKHHkFvK3IV
