Anti-Religion Firestorm Breaks Out
July 2, 2014
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Liberals view faith and freedom as obstacles to Obamacare. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby that closely-held (private) corporations are not required to provide contraceptive coverage to their employees if doing so violates their religious beliefs.
In the aftermath, the Court vacated several similar cases and sent them back to lower courts to make rulings based on the Hobby Lobby ruling. The court also provided an injunction to Wheaton College to protect it from penalties for refusing to offer contraception.
Given the outrage coming from the Left, you’d think Obamacare was repealed. Far from it. All 2,700 pages remain. Faith trumped the law on just one provision.
The court’s decision has an interesting stipulation. According to Politico Pro, companies can’t just stop contraception coverage. They must go to court to obtain an exemption. But Daniel Blomberg, an attorney at Becket Fund for Religious Liberty who represented Hobby Lobby, says the ruling makes getting the exemption easy. He notes that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act “only applies to the people who assert it.” So employers will be required to register their religious objections with government one by one.
One day after the ruling, liberals pounced. The Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank with ties to the Obama administration and the drafting of Obamacare, has proposed legislative language for Congress to undo the Hobby Lobby decision and put “reasonable restrictions on religious liberty”:
“This section (referring to the existing Obamacare statute) does not authorize exemptions that discriminate against, impose costs on, or otherwise harm others, including those who may belong to other religions and/or adhere to other beliefs.”
If enacted Americans would have no freedom of religion. People of faith would be discriminated against. For 238 years the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution has stood as a vanguard against anti-religion zealots. CAP says it’s time to change that.
CAP calls Hobby Lobby a “slippery slope … that can be used to discriminate, dictate women’s health choices, evade federal protections, and promote unfair advantages in the corporate world.” But polls show a majority of women don’t believe employers should have to pay for contraception.
Don’t miss CAP’s choice of words. CAP says failure to provide contraception is “dictating choices” and “discriminating against women.” Meanwhile CAP proposes government-enforced discrimination against people of faith (including women) and has no qualms against government forcing people of faith (including women) to make choices that violate their conscientiously-held beliefs.
Women can easily get contraception. A prescription for birth control pills costs as little as $9 a month at Walmart. Women can pay for it with their paycheck, like they pay for everything else their employer doesn’t buy for them. As a tweet today sent out by @adammotzko says:
Justice Alito, writing for the majority, suggested other actions the government could take, including to assume the cost of coverage, or to give these companies the same accommodation to the mandate that it already gives to non-profits. Justice Kennedy concurred with this advice in a separate opinion.
With deception as its aim, and the elimination of religious freedom and health freedom as its goal, CAP’s proposals are in a new report audaciously titled “A Blueprint for Reclaiming Religious Liberty Post-Hobby Lobby.” Don’t believe a word of it.
Protecting your freedom every day,
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