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I’m not saying there will be no consequences! There actually were lefty pacifists during Vietnam who stopped paying their taxes because they objected to the war. While they were nuts, they did at least follow up on their conviction. Of course, the government got the money anyway, ultimately, and some of them also went to jail.

But I’m talking about laws that affect behavior that is considered to impact on one’s personal morality. US law is based on the Constitution, which is shaped by natural law theory. In other words, the state cannot simply come along and impose some idea that the state feels may be good for it but which has no justification or support in natural law. (Islam does not accept natural law, btw, which is why all of their “law” is basically ritual law and they regard the violation of ritual law as being on the same level with something that we might regard as a moral offense, such as murder.)

Until now, the US has always respected the individual conscience in moral matters: hence the conscientious objector status granted to pacifists.

But we are living in an era when the state is trying to take over every aspect of individual life and define even the bases of our behavior, completely independent of the moral law upon which this system was built. The Church must protest against this and should not accept it.

"...But I'm talking about laws that affect behavior that is considered to impact on one's personal morality..."

We have already crossed that Rubicon. Once you (we) have accepted the basic premise that government has the power to legislate on issues of personal perogative such as drug use, equal protection in private businesses, that choice has been made.

The first amendment does not speak to which laws the Church may or may not follow. There is no such thing as a "separation of church and state" in the Constitution.

The first amendment speaks only to the right to freely exercise ones religion and the proscription against the state establishing any one religion as the state religion. The church must follow civil and criminal law or, if they choose not to, pay the legal price for their failure to comply with those law.

Freedom is a two-edged sword. You have the freedom to ignore any law, but you must pay the price for failing to obey it (unless you are a Democrat politician).

All laws impinge on the realm of "morality." It is our concept of morality that brought humanity to make laws. The church annot break or refuse to obey any law simply because it goes against its tenets without having to pay the price for that decision.

Izzy was correct in her analogy discussing Muslims. Another example; if the Church is offended by America being involved in some war, would it then be okay for its members to violate the laws against betraying your country? Certainly they could choose to act against the interests of our nation, but there would be a huge price.

The problem lies not in DC's decision to force compliance, but in the existence of the discrimination laws themselves. No private endeavor, whether it be religious or commercial should be forced by law to hire anyone. A private entity should be able to refuse to hire or do business with any individual or group it chooses for any reason it chooses and the government (at least according to the Constitution) should have no say in the matter whatever.

Of course this same church has been at the forefront of the civil rights movement and was instrumental in the passing of the very laws it is now attempting to side-step. The Catholic Church has been in the forefront of the "Social Justice" movement and now finds itself being hoisted by its own petard...ironic isn't it?