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The left, not social conservatives, threatens religious liberty
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Now hear this: No Republicans on the national political scene, including Rick Santorum, threaten our religious liberty. Many Democrats, including President Obama and Senate Democrats, do. And they've struck again with the Senate's defeat of the Blunt amendment.
President Obama, who seems to spend as much time community organizing as he does attending to his executive duties, doubtlessly conspired with his crack opposition research trolls and the liberal media to shoehorn the contraception issue into the 2012 presidential campaign.
What do I mean about Obama's spending time community organizing? Well, he is using the office of the presidency to intimidate the Koch brothers into disclosing their donors' names. He and his minions falsely, with malice aforethought, accused the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of receiving foreign contributions, with no evidence, and when challenged to substantiate it, they taunted that it was up to the chamber and its defenders to prove a negative. Obama's Justice Department has taxpayer-funded employees posing as ordinary American citizens and posting pro-Obama agenda comments on various websites. His Justice Department attacks Republicans genuinely attempting to monitor actual voter fraud and protects his friends who engage in real-life voter intimidation. I could go on.
What do I mean about Democrats and their cronies shoehorning the contraception issue? I'm hardly among the first 100 people to point out that George Stephanopoulos gratuitously injected into a GOP presidential debate a bizarre question about contraception. Mitt Romney was so taken aback he was almost rendered — uncharacteristically — speechless.
In no time, talk shows and the Internet were abuzz about the issue, and a video of Rick Santorum talking about contraception went viral. Even some on the right — though not social conservatives — were apparently led to believe that if elected president, Santorum would single-handedly usher in a Catholic theocracy. It didn't seem to matter that in that same video, Santorum expressly assured us that he would not attempt to force his views on contraception through legislation.
When you ask complainants to specify exactly how Santorum or any other social conservative represents a threat to religious liberty or would even remotely infringe on any of our constitutional rights concerning it, you get nothing but innuendo and fantastic hysteria. Read more here. |
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FIRST-PERSON: Hunting Bambi
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NOTE: You will want to read every word of this fine article.
By Mark Coppenger
Feb 20, 2012
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Mark Coppenger
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) -- These days, the Obama administration is catching heat for overriding religious sensitivities with its insistence that employers supply contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacients to all workers who desire them. I think it's good to remember that this isn't the first time the state has frustrated one denomination or another where children were involved. But there's a big difference here: Where once they intervened to protect children from strange religion, they now dismiss the scruples of all believers who find the prevention or elimination of children objectionable. The government used to be aggressively pro-child; now they're intrusively anti-child.
For background, let's look at a few cases from the late 20th century:
In 1975, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that Liston Pack, pastor of the Holiness Church of God in Jesus Christ in Carson Springs, Tenn., was creating a public nuisance with his snake-handling services. Justice Henry was concerned the practice occurred "in a crowded church sanctuary, with virtually no safeguards, with children roaming about unattended, with the handlers so enraptured and entranced that they [were] in a virtual state of hysteria."
In 1980, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that Jehovah's Witness Jessie Mae Jefferson must undergo an emergency Caesarian section, even though she and her husband were confident that, contrary to the doctors' opinion, the Lord had healed her body. (She had been diagnosed with placenta previa.) Besides, she believed that transfusions attendant to the procedure violated the church rule against "eating" blood. The court overrode these concerns, saying that "the intrusion involved into the life of [the Jeffersons] is outweighed by the duty of the State to protect a living, unborn human being from meeting his or her death before being given the opportunity to live."
In 1990, a Massachusetts jury determined that Christian Scientists David and Ginger Twitchell were guilty of involuntary manslaughter for having let their 2-year-old son Robyn die from peritonitis. Instead of turning to surgeons to correct Robyn's dangerous bowel obstruction, they relied strictly on prayer, and the bowel ruptured.
The legal precedent is simple: Put your kid at mortal risk, and we will stop you, no matter how deeply you may feel that you're doing the right thing on religious grounds. But now we've moved in a new direction: When people of faith find the "morning-after pill" to be an instrument for aborting newly-conceived children, their concerns must be dismissed to make sure the nascent human being can be killed. The White House is dodging and weaving to say that insurers rather than employers must foot the bill for the lethal chemical concoction, but it comes to the same thing as premiums rise to cover these "freebies." And what if the insurance companies have moral reservations? Never mind that when Uncle Sam is on a search-and-destroy mission for unwanted babies. Read more here.
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Women speak out against HHS mandate
WASHINGTON (BP) -- The battle over the Obama administration's contraceptive/abortion mandate is about religious freedom, not the availability of birth control, women leaders inside and outside Congress say.
Speaking at a Capitol Hill news conference Thursday (March 1), two House of Representatives members and spokeswomen for 10 organizations explained their opposition -- and that of millions of other women -- to the controversial requirement.
"The other side is trying to make this appear to be about access," Jeanne Monahan of the Family Research Council told reporters.
"Let's be clear," she said. "This is not about access. This is about religious liberty."
The women expressed their opposition to the mandate less than two hours after the U.S. Senate turned down an attempt to protect religious freedom and conscience rights under the controversial rule. Senators voted 51-48 to table -- and essentially kill -- an amendment designed to guard the "religious beliefs or moral convictions" of those offering and purchasing insurance under the health care law enacted in 2010.
The rule, finalized in January, requires health insurance plans to cover without cost to employees sterilizations and contraceptives, including those that can cause abortions, as part of preventive services. The contraceptives, as designated by the federal government, include drugs -- such as "ella" and the "morning-after" pill Plan B -- that act after fertilization and destroy a human embryo.
Religious liberty advocates have criticized what they have described as an inadequate religious exemption in the mandate and said an accommodation announced Feb. 10 by President Obama would still require religious organizations to be complicit in paying for employees' abortion-causing contraceptives through their insurance companies. They also have pointed out the president's compromise would not protect faith-based insurance plans or individuals who object to paying for such products.
"Clearly, the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment is intended to protect people from such trampling of their religious convictions," according to a statement from the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) read by Kenda Bartlett, a trustee of the Southern Baptist entity. "Unfortunately, the Obama administration has declared that religious conviction is not an acceptable reason for exemption from this requirement.
"The Obama administration has declared war on religion and conscience. This must not stand."
Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R.-Tenn., said at the news conference, "It is the first time ever, the first time ever in this country, that we are seeing a fee on faith. ... And when that happens, religious liberty is not free." Read more here.
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