Evangelical Leader: Jail Over Obamacare Mandate

OrthodoxNet (via LifeSiteNews) ^ | 2/9/2012 | Ben Johnson

[ezfindit]

One of the most influential evangelical leaders in the United States says Christians should go to jail rather than comply with the Obama administration’s mandate to provide all contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs, in their health care plans.

Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told LifeSiteNews.com “we will not comply” with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious institutions to cover abortifacient products such as Plan B, Ella, and the IUD.

“We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write our letters from the Nashville jail, just like Dr. King wrote his from the Birmingham jail,” Dr. Land said.

[michigancatholic]

Actually this is really excellent (and I’m not Baptist):

“Why would the Obama administration do this? Are they that tone deaf to people’s feelings? Or are they so ideologically driven that they are going to force this issue based on their ideology?”

He thinks it is ideological, Land said.

He doesn’t think Obama “can claim stupidity as an excuse,” Land said, citing reports that Vice President Joe Biden and former Chief of Staff William Daley warned the president it would be a mistake.

Obama “listened to the female ideologues in his White House staff who were arguing what has been consistently argued by the Obama administration. That is — that sexual rights trump religious rights,” Land said.

As an example of this pattern, Land pointed to the president’s recess appointment of Chai Feldblum to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, because she was “too radical” to gain Senate confirmation. He cited Feldblum’s support for favoring gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered rights when they collide with religious freedom rights.

“Well, similarly, the Obama administration is arguing that their belief that a woman’s right to have contraception and abortifacients paid for as part of her health services trumps the religious freedom and conscience concerns of Catholics and other Christians,” Land said. “So it is typical of their elevation of sexual rights. It is typical of their diminution of religious freedom rights.

“This is part and parcel of their decision to go forward in attacking the ministerial exemption hiring clause to religiously affiliated institutions,” he said. “Their position was so radical that they had a nine to nothing Supreme Court ruling against them [in January from a court that included two of Obama’s own nominees].”

Dr. Richard Land, http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=37147