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Secularists Are Fanatics Too
The infiltration of the secular state into the faiths of millions of taxpayers is scary
February 9, 2012
About Andrea S. Lafferty:
Andrea S. Lafferty is president of Traditional Values Coalition, a grassroots lobby that educates and speaks on behalf of over 43,000 churches nationwide on issues of pro-family concern. In that capacity, she is responsible for setting TVC's legislative agenda and formulation of policies and strategies that promote a Judeo-Christian worldview.
The rights of human conscience and religious liberty are as deeply embedded in the American experience as the Fourth of July. Surrender these two things, and we are no longer a free people.
In any conversation about the rights of conscience, Thomas More inevitably comes up. Rather than violate his own conscience by condoning a sham marriage, More suffered martyrdom rather than enjoy the wealth and protection of King Henry VIII.
[Rick Newman: Obama's Common-Sense Deficit.]
Liberty is often a balance between two vices: license and tyranny. One attempts to say there are no rules; the other makes up so many rules they are impossible to follow.
Obama's mandate to force Catholic hospitals and other religious institutions to provide for abortifacients and birth control has the unique quality of offending in both extremes. Not only does it enable license, it tyrannizes the consciences of millions of Christians of every denomination.
[New Culture War Will Help Rick Santorum, Barack Obama.]
What's worse, the infiltration of the secular state into the faiths of millions of taxpaying Americans alarms the very soul of the American character—it is precisely the overreach some have warned against for decades.
Yet this is the fallacy of political religions. Whether your belief system is revolutionary or spiritual, it is as tried and true a set of precepts or belief as any other. Some attend services on Sunday, others occupy courthouse greens. These faiths—whether they are Christian, Jewish, secular, Marxist, or otherwise—all have their creeds, adherents, and priests.
[Majority of Catholics Believe Employers Should Cover Birth Control.]
What this recent episode with Obamacare and the federal government's attack on religious liberty has shown many Americans is simple. Secularists are every bit the fanatics as they imagine others to be.
This fanaticism from the secular left is political religion right through. Their collection plate is your paycheck; their evangelization the end of a judge's gavel. All other faiths must submit or be shamed into submission—and this political religion does not suffer rivals well.
[Mitt Romney and the GOP’s War on Birth Control.]
The Catholic bishops were once proud supporters of Obamacare, having caught a lion by its tail to support its own vision of social justice. That lion has now turned 'round, the makeshift alliance between the Catholic and secular left imploded for the trap we all knew Obamacare really was.
Conscience protections are at the very heart of the American experiment. Though they are inconvenient for the radicals and the secular political religions that have consumed the American left in recent decades, the rights of conscience are fundamental human rights. Conscience cannot be repealed by Congress, conscience cannot be abrogated by judicial fiat, nor can conscience be long contained by government.
Most knowledgeable Americans have at one time or another referenced Jefferson's famous "wall of separation between Church and State" letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1803. Few others will quote the rest of the document:
Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
After all, Jefferson was a keen student of classical authors such as Cicero. If the great theater for all virtue is conscience, then the intrusion of the government into this most private of all spaces is nothing less than the definition of tyranny.
[Catholic Birth Control Fight About Healthcare, Not Just Religion.]
This is why our Founding Fathers, though they knew America to be a profoundly Christian nation, understood that to best guarantee the rights of conscience and to protect free religion, gave us a republic and not a theocracy. The defense of that republic has always cemented itself on the size, proportion, and scope of federal power.
Jefferson innately understood this. Modern Americans appreciate this as well.
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- Obamacare Birth Control Mandate Tramples Religious Liberty.
- Other Arguments
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#113995
No — The First Amendment exists to shield believers and their institutions from exactly this kind of brute force
HANNAH SMITH, Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
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#212183
No — The uproar over Obama's choice has to do with more than contraception
JEANNE MONAHAN, Director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council
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#3154126
Yes — Family planning is the most effective tool we have in reducing unintended pregnancy and abortion
JESSICA ARONS, Director of the Women's Health and Rights Program at Center for American Progress
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#510588
No — Obama is dependent upon continued feminist support for his re-election
JANICE SHAW CROUSE, Senior Fellow of Concerned Women for America's Beverly LaHaye Institute
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#59881
No — The government's assault on religious faith and practice is broad and deep
PATRICK VAUGHN, General Counsel at American Family Association
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#7119115
Yes — Religiously owned or affiliated organizations ought to play by the same rules as other employers
KATHERINE FRANKE, ELIZABETH SEPPER, Scholars at Columbia Law School
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#89399
Yes — No one is telling the Catholic Church that it cannot hold its views on contraception
ROGER N. LANCASTER, Director of Cultural Studies at George Mason University
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#993100
Yes — Nothing about this new rule will affect a person's ability to practice his or her religion
NANCY KEENAN, President of NARAL Pro-Choice America
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#108494
Yes — Contraception is a key component of basic healthcare for women of all faiths
LOUISE MELLING, Deputy Legal Director for the American Civil Liberties Union
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#118398
Yes — Birth control is not just a convenience but is medically necessary
JOAN HOFF, Research Professor of History at Montana State University
