Secular Left's Intolerance of Religious Freedom*

Secular Left’s Intolerance of Religious Freedom*
In pursuit of the truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Saturday, December 3, 2011

“With Advent underway, get ready for the annual debate over whether stores should say, Merry Christmas” (offensive to non-Christians, critics say) or “Season’s greetings (a capitulation to political correctness, many Christians say)…

“Social liberals claim they promote tolerance, preventing oppressive Christian conservatives from “imposing their morality” on everyone. But the state of the culture war in America today is almost the opposite. The secular Left is using the might of government to make it harder for religious people to live their own lives according to their faith.

“Nancy Pelosi, who regularly loudly declares herself a faithful Catholic, last week belittled the Catholic hospitals: “They have this conscience thing,” she sneered about the hospitals that want to be free not to abort unborn babies. How ironic that Pelosi and like-minded liberals call themselves “pro-choice.”

“Newt Gingrich put it well in the recent Thanksgiving Family Forum in Iowa: “If you look at the history from the mid-1960s, we’ve gone from a request for toleration to an imposition of intolerance. We’ve gone from a quest to understand others to a determination to close down those who hold traditional values…

“… Department Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a rule outlawing any new insurance plan that doesn’t fully cover the cost of all contraception, including “morning-after” pills that can also cause abortions. The rule included a conscience exemption for “religious employers,” but it defined “religious” so narrowly that it applies to virtually no one…

“Belmont Abbey College is a Catholic college in North Carolina that was founded by Benedictine monks. In all likelihood, the “religious employer” exemption won’t protect Belmont Abbey, and the school will be forced to buy contraceptives for its students, in violation of the Church’s teaching.

"College President Bill Thierfelder wrote in a memo, “As a college, we find our center in Jesus Christ Not only in our teaching, but also in our actions. Our policies must mirror our beliefs – we simply cannot do what we believe is morally wrong. We are not imposing our beliefs upon anyone else. We respect the constitutional right of faiths to freely exercise their religion. We simply want that constitutional right given to us as well.”…

"In a legal complaint in the District federal court, the college contends that Sebelius’s free-pill-for-all mandate is simple persecution: “Had Belmont Abbey College’s religious beliefs been obscure or unknown, the government’s actions might have been an accident,” the complaint allows. “But because the government acted with full knowledge of those beliefs, and because it allows plans not to cover these services for a wide range of reason other than religion, the Mandate can be interpreted as nothing other than a deliberate attack by the government on the religious beliefs of Belmont College and millions of other Americans.”

The Obama administration is deliberately making it illegal for Catholics to live as Catholics. This is the standard fare from today’s Left…”

*Timothy P. Carney, the Examiner’s senior political columnist, tcarney@washingtonexaminer.com 11-28-2011

George H. Kubeck