Posted on 11/12/2012 1:22:22 PM PST by NYer
Today's must-read comes from Tim Carney: Re-elected, Obama takes aim at religious liberty. A bit:
Green and his family own Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts-and-crafts stores. They sued the administration on the grounds the contraception mandate prohibited their free exercise of Christianity by forcing them to pay for abortifacient morning-after pills.Read the entire piece. Carney makes it all very clear. (And in the process, he reminded me of the Washington Post's Lisa Miller and her disdain for the "smugly fecund." I commented on that here.)
The Greens weren't arguing that morning-after pills should be illegal. They weren't even trying to keep their employees from using them. They just didn't want to implicate themselves in what they saw as immoral activity.
The administration responded with an unsettling argument: The Greens aren't protected by the First Amendment's "free exercise" clause in this case because they operate a secular business. "Hobby Lobby is a for-profit, secular employer," the Obama administration wrote in a brief, "and a secular entity by definition does not exercise religion."
Part of the administration's argument is that the mandate controls the corporation's actions but it does not apply to individual owners.
So, people have First Amendment protections as long as they don't start businesses. If they do, and if they operate their businesses according with their own consciences, they "become laws unto themselves," as the Obama administration puts it.
So this is who the Left has in mind when it says conservatives are trying to legislate morality: people who dare to follow their moral and religious beliefs, as opposed to a code devised by bureaucrats regulating a secular state.
Catholic ping!
Repeat after me - Nixon was reelcted too...look waht happened!
However, his opposition (dems and libs) controlled the Congress and Media.
However, his opposition (dems and libs) controlled the Congress and Media.
The Greens aren’t protected by the First Amendment’s “free exercise” clause in this case because they operate a secular business.
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Hmmmmm...so Catholics who practice their faith CANNOT practice it if they have secular jobs or run secular businesses?
Gee...what happens when all the Catholic hospitals, schools and charities close down? What happens when all the practicing Catholics refuse to pay taxes that are used for abortion, euthanasia, sterilization, etc.?
until Reagan - just four years later. We can watch as Tea Party congressmen and Senators hold out for a good deal. We can watch as the next round of elections brings a few more TEa Party people into the congress - two more years. Then ask yourself who will be their candidate - not Hillary she will be closer to 70 than 65. Not Biden closer to 80 and then we have - Harry Reid, Jerry Brown or that Democart in Illinois...not
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