Freedom Line Blog

While the media seems to have moved on from the firestorm over religious liberty that was kicked off by Obamacare’s contraception mandate earlier this year (a fight that is now making its way through the courts), the threat to freedom of conscience only continues to grow. In today’s DC Examiner, Tim Carney looks at some of the troubling developments throughout the nation:

Last week, New Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that the state government can force a wedding photographer to shoot a gay wedding, even though she holds the view that marriage is between one man and one woman — and even though New Mexico doesn’t perform same-sex marriages.

… Is a baby sitter still free to choose which families she’ll work for? Can a doctor still choose which procedures she’ll perform? Actually, a Michigan court has already answered that one, saying an in-vitro fertilization clinic violated a woman’s rights by refusing her IVF on the grounds of her being unmarried.

… This is how the culture war generally plays out these days: The Left uses government to force religious people and cultural conservatives to violate their consciences, and then cries “theocracy” when conservatives object.

One aspect of this fight that bears highlighting: one need not share the gay marriage or IVF views of the people targeted in these cases to understand the threat to fundamental freedoms. In fact, one need not even be religious.

At the heart of all of this is that government at all levels is increasingly trying to constrain freedom of association — the right to say “get lost and leave me alone.” And when the government takes away your right to say “no”, few other freedoms have any meaning.

The excellent once and (potentially) future U.S. Rep. David McIntosh explains here how Congress can work to override Barack Obama’s assault on religious liberty. Good stuff.

[Cross-posted at The American Spectator]

At the University of Mobile’s twelve23 site, I again examine the Obama assault on religious liberty.

Key passage:

To be very clear, this is a matter extending far beyond Catholic institutions. A recent letter by 300 leading scholars objecting to the mandate included signatures by Mike O’Neal, the president of Oklahoma Christian University; Thomas Hibbs, Honors College Dean at Baylor University; Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; professors of neurobiology, chemistry, biochemistry and other sciences from numerous colleges; law professors from across the country; Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik, Director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, Yeshiva University; and Chuck Colson, the beloved founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

The letter called the rule “unacceptable,” “morally obtuse” and “an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other people of faith and conscience.”

J. Christian Adams has an eloquent commentary today on the import of the Obama Administration’s latest effort in its war against traditional Christianity, and on the resistance to it from well-motivated people of all faiths.

One key passage is here:

The real reason the White House was steamrolled is that the Left doesn’t understand what it is up against.  Rachel Maddow, for example, thinks people of faith oppose the Obama mandate because it provides “a convenient partisan cudgel to use against Democrats.”  To Maddow, profound religious conviction couldn’t explain the backlash.  Instead, “partisan cudgels” provide an explanation more familiar to her.

Consider further the always caustic and usually wrong Eric Boehlert of the Soros-funded Media Matters.  Boehlert says the fight with the churches “feels like 1962, we’re arguing over ‘birth control’ in 2012.”  Boehlert doesn’t understand this fight isn’t about birth control, but religious freedom.

Boehlert doesn’t understand that the usual Leftist tactic of mockery and ridicule won’t work on these opponents.  Name calling is nothing compared to what faith communities are willing to endure.

As many others have noted, the president’s “compromise” announced Friday is no compromise at all. It’s still an authoritarian violation of religious freedom. And it still is part of a larger war by the administration, one which, fortunately, it has been losing, as in the 9-0 shellacking the Supreme Court gave to Obama in the Hosanna-Tabor case.

This president has no regard for freedom, and none for traditional Christian or Jewish faith. He is dangerous. It’s a good thing, as Adams points out, that faith and freedom are not so easily cowed.