Category Archives: Religious Liberty

“Girls” of All Ages

I’ve watched the recent insurance/contraception controversy play out with an increasing sense of unreality. The GOP attack on the HHS rules seemed so transparently political–after all, some 26 states have had similar rules for years, and somehow religiously-affiliated hospitals and universities have lived with them. I chalked it up to the same partisan frenzy that accompanies every single thing this administration tries to do.

And while I still think that’s true of the faux outrage by Boehner and Romney and many others, I have also reluctantly concluded that many of these privileged white males who want to defund Planned Parenthood and outlaw abortion also–unbelievably–want to deny women access to birth control. These advocates of “limited government” really do want to use that government to control women’s bodies. Their reaction to Obama’s masterful “compromise” strips the veneer off their argument that their concern was all about the First Amendment (a “concern” that incidentally demonstrated their lack of understanding of First Amendment jurisprudence).

The GOP argument was that requiring religiously-affiliated employers to pay for health insurance that included birth control violated the employers’ religious liberties. The Obama administration said fine, then the insurance companies will offer that coverage–free–directly to the employees. (The insurance companies have no problem with that, because birth control saves them money; abortions and live births are both far more expensive than contraception.) The religious employers don’t have to pay for the coverage; they don’t even have to tell employees it’s available-the insurance companies will. Problem solved.

Except, evidently, it isn’t solved, because those uppity women will still have access to free birth control. So the attacks–considerably less coherent, but no less furious–continue.

It is absolutely amazing that in the 21st century, there are still men–and some women–who believe women should be kept barefoot and pregnant. It seems unbelievable, but there is no other plausible explanation.

I don’t know if other women are as angry as I am about this contempt for women and our most basic rights. I think many are. My favorite bloggers, Margaret and Helen, certainly are.

All I know is that the 2012 election is increasingly shaping up as a contest between the 21st century and the 1950s, when grown women were “girls” and men made all the rules.

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A Political Eddie Haskell

As I was driving to work yesterday,  NPR was broadcasting a snippet of a speech made the night before by Mitt Romney. That’s when it hit me. I’d been trying for weeks to pin down who it was that Romney reminds me of, and with the patent insincerity of that speech, it finally clicked.

Mitt Romney is the Eddie Haskell of politics.

Eddie Haskell, for those of you too young to remember, was the disgusting little sycophant on “Leave it to Beaver.” The character was so vivid, his very name became synonymous with dishonest sucking up.

In the speech fragment I heard, Romney was feigning outrage over the new regulations promulgated by HHS, requiring all employers who offer health insurance–including religious employers like hospitals and universities–to include coverage for contraception. As I previously blogged, there are legitimate concerns when government issues regulations that are intended to protect or benefit the general public when those rules run afoul of some folk’s religious beliefs. But there was no such nuance in Romney’s attack–not to mention any recognition of the fact that several states have imposed similar regulations for years. Nope, according to Mitt, Obama was purposely attacking religion, and he wouldn’t do that if he were President. No siree!

Let’s just deconstruct that attack.

Romney is a Mormon, and the federal government long ago outlawed polygamy. The effect of that prohibition was to deny Mormons the ability to live by what was at the time considered an essential tenet of their religion, yet Romney has never criticized that restriction–indeed, he has said he agrees with it. The HHS regulation, on the other hand, does not require anyone to use birth control in contravention of their religious beliefs; it merely requires them to make that option available to employees who come from different religious traditions and/or hold different beliefs. The regulation doesn’t apply to churches–just to large religiously-run organizations like hospitals and universities, where employees represent a wide diversity of backgrounds and faith traditions.

There are plenty of laws that have incidental effects on religious practices. For example,laws requiring schoolchildren to be vaccinated pose problems for Christian Scientists. Quakers believe they should not be required to pay taxes that support wars (the courts have not been receptive to that argument). Laws requiring photo IDs for driver’s licenses are a genuine dilemma for fundamentalist Muslim women whose beliefs require them to wear full burkas. (Somehow, I doubt Mitt would get too worked up over that one, since the base he is so shamelessly pandering to tends to be virulently anti-Muslim.)

None of these “attacks on religion” have merited even a passing mention from Mitt Romney.

That’s the problem with channelling Eddie Haskell. The insincerity overwhelms the message.

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God and Caesar

In his regular Monday e-letter today, noted theologian Martin Marty tackles the recent uproar over HHS regulations requiring religious institutions—including charities, hospitals and schools–to provide health insurance to their employees that covers some procedures with which their church and members disagree. He notes that this sort of conflict between government rule making and religious dogma is hardly new.

“We could have added any number of others that had to do with the collision of interests pitting “the common good” versus “individual freedom,” especially freedom of religion. Pasteurization of milk, vaccination, and chlorination of water were among them. Beyond the needs of the body but dealing with the body politic have been vast numbers of others: the military draft, Sabbath and Sunday laws, and compulsory flag-salutes were or are among them. Often small religious groups best raise conscience matters. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Scientist, Seventh-Day Adventists, Latter-Day Saints, the Amish. None of the issues could be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, so majorities of voters or legislatures or justices ruled. This means that they used “coercion against conscience,” driving some citizens to inconvenience and prison. There were often accommodations and compromises along the way. Somehow the republic survived.”

 These are uncomfortable issues, because they don’t fall neatly into the American presumption that every argument has a “right side” and a “wrong side.” In these situations, policymakers are faced with a conflict of rights. 

Citizens have the right to believe as they see fit, although the practice of those beliefs has often been curtailed by the courts. You can believe in smoking peyote, for example, but if “laws of general application” forbid drug use, you can’t actually smoke it. (For what it’s worth, I think the Court was wrong in that case, but what if your religion required sacrificing your first-born? Certainly, the government could intervene.) The law requires parents to provide medical treatment to their seriously ill children even when their religion rejects such treatment.  Etc.

The conflict, as Marty points out, is between what we believe to be necessary for the public good and respect for the beliefs of all citizens. The resolution of that conflict requires us to exercise restraint–it is not enough to say “the majority of people want this.” The Bill of Rights is–as I keep telling students–a counter-majoritarian document. In America, the majority does not always rule. We are obliged to respect the beliefs and practices of people with whom we disagree so long as those beliefs and practices do not harm others.

What constitutes harm, as Marty reminds us, has been a matter of debate throughout American history.

In this case, the harm was to the many thousands of employees of religious organizations who don’t share that organization’s beliefs. Should a Protestant nurse working in a Catholic hospital be denied coverage for birth control, when such coverage is required in other places of employment? On the other hand, should the religious employer providing that insurance be forced to enable her use of contraception? What does respect for individual rights and religious liberty require?

I tend to feel the Administration made the right call on this particular issue, but in a country that truly respects religious autonomy, these conflicts between God and Caesar are never inconsequential.

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A Question for the Godly

The New York Times recently reported on a town clerk in upstate New York who was refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, despite passage of the recent New York law recognizing such unions. She cited evangelical Christianity as a bar against performing her official duties.

“For me to participate in the same-sex marriage application process I don’t feel is right,” Rose Marie Belforti told The Times. “God doesn’t want me to do this, so I can’t do what God doesn’t want me to do, just like I can’t steal, or any of the other things that God doesn’t want me to do.”

I’m impressed by Ms. Belforti’s godliness. But since she seems to have an intimate relationship with God, and seems to know what He/She wants with such precision, I’d love to ask her a couple of questions. For example, how does God feel about her issuing licenses to divorced folks? People who’ve previously been convicted of crimes God disapproves of?

But most of all, I’d like to know how God feels about her continuing to take a government paycheck while refusing to perform the duties she’s being paid for. Isn’t that like stealing?

Ms. Belforti is absolutely entitled to her religious beliefs; however, she is not entitled to work for the government. If she can’t do her job–for whatever reason–she should be replaced by someone who can.

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Pathetic Policy Discourse

There are a lot of examples of what happens when those making policy don’t know what they are talking about, but here’s one that just annoys the hell out of me every time it comes up.

The New York legislature is preparing to vote on whether the state will recognize same-sex marriage. The Times reports that one of the “concessions” being demanded is explicit language protecting churches that refuse to officiate at such unions.

I know I harp on the importance of constitutional literacy, but this is a perfect example of what happens when even the most basic, rudimentary constitutional knowledge is absent.

The First Amendment religion clauses not only protect all of us from governmentally-imposed  religion, those clauses also protect the free exercise rights of religious organizations. That means–at a minimum–that government cannot force churches to engage in activities that are counter to their beliefs. Churches and other religious organizations are even exempt from civil rights laws when hiring for religious positions. Bottom line, it would be unconstitutional to demand that clergymen officiate at same-sex weddings, and any effort to sue them for refusing to do so would be immediately tossed out of court.

Furthermore, the “marriage” that government recognizes is civil marriage only. Government classifies people as married for purposes of determining who is entitled to the 1000+ legal benefits that accompany recognition of that contractual relationship. Civil and religious marriage are different. Governments do not and cannot “sanctify” a marital union–for that, people have to go to their respective churches (a growing number of which are willing to do so). Our constitution separates church and state (no matter what Michele Bachmann and her ilk think), and that separation means government has no authority over religious doctrine and belief.

When political actors demand statutory “protection” for churches, you can be sure the actor is either dishonest or ignorant (not that these categories are mutually exclusive). Granted, adding language that duplicates the existing constitutional protection doesn’t require proponents of same-sex marriage to give anything up. But it implicitly suggests that–absent such language–the government could make the demand in the first place, and adds to the ever-growing stupidity of our national discourse.

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