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eNews for Faith-Based Organizations
January 23, 2012

Editor: Stanley Carlson-Thies
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In this issue
No Change to Contraceptives Mandate/Narrow Exemption
Religous Leaders Unite to Defend Marriage and Religious Organizations
Pope Speaks About the Freedom of US Religious Organizations
President's Religious Freedom Day Proclamation
Worth Reading
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No Change to Contraceptives Mandate/Narrow Exemption
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The answer, delivered on Friday, was: No change

 

Religious groups of various faiths have been protesting ever since the federal government announced in the summer that all health insurance plans, except for those offered by churches, will have to cover a wide range of birth control measures. The mandatory drugs and procedures that must be offered by almost all health plans starting this August includes all contraceptives, including two abortifacient drugs, sterilization, and reproductive counseling.

 

The administration's exemption for religious employers was broad enough to protect from the mandate only churches and religious orders. But it was crafted not to protect religious organizations that serve the public (and not only co-religionists) or that offer material or psychological help (and not only prayer or preaching). Churches would be exempt from violating their consciences about paying for drugs and procedures they reject as immoral, but parachurch organizations (faith-based service organizations) would not be exempt. Also not exempt: individuals with a conscientious objection to paying for those drugs; owners of secular organizations with a moral objection; religious colleges and universities--they would have to include the drugs and procedures in the plans not only for their employees but also for their students.

 

Note that the contraceptives mandate applies to all health insurance plans--it is not a condition attached to federal funds such that a religious organization can avoid the violation of its convictions by refusing a federal grant or contract.

 

Not only Catholic leaders, but also evangelicals and orthodox Jews, among others, protested the mandate, because it requires including contraceptives, or because it includes abortifacients, or because of the evil of forcing religious employers to pay for "preventive services" they regard as immoral. And they protested the exemption that essentially defines most faith-based service organizations as not being religious at all. That's a terrible precedent to put into federal law and practice.

 

On Friday the administration gave its answer to all of the protests is: No change! No budging. No accommodation. No change in the mandate, for example, by eliminating the most controversial drugs, Plan B and ella, from required coverage. No change in the exemption, not even to protect church-governed charities.

 

The administration blandly assured everyone that it had carefully listened to the many protesting religious leaders. But it judged that no change was necessary. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services said, "I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services."   

 

Oh, there was a concession, one change: the administration announced a one-year delay in imposition of the birth control mandate for nonprofit employers who currently do not pay for contraceptives in their health insurance plans because of their religious convictions. This delay, Secretary Sebelius said, "will allow these organizations more time and flexibility to adapt to this new rule."

 

In other words, this is not a year to negotiate a change that would accommodate religious convictions. No, just a year for the organizations to learn to suppress their moral qualms.

 

A year delay, many observers noted, puts the deadline for these protesting organizations safely on the other side of the presidential elections.

 

Among the responses to Friday's announcement:

 

* Galen Carey, VP of Government Relations for the National Association of Evangelicals, said, "No government has the right to compel its citizens to violate their conscience.  The HHS rules trample on our most cherished freedoms and set a dangerous precedent."

 

* Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, called the decision "outrageous." "It's analogous to giving a man on death row a one-year stay of execution. You can follow your conscience for one more year."

 

* Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, "Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn't happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights."

 

* Even the Washington Post blasted the administration, saying that it should have expanded the exemption and calling the one-year delay a "feint at a compromise."   

 

Remedies: Two religious colleges, Belmont Abbey College (Catholic) and Colorado Christian University (Protestant) have already sued the federal government. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty represents the two colleges. Other religious institutions of higher education are contemplating lawsuits. And several bills have been introduced into Congress to deal with the religious-freedom and conscience concerns in the health reform legislation, including the problem of the birth control mandate.

 

Adding insult to injury, some defenders of the administration, to fend off charges that its actions diminish religious freedom, try to heap credit on it simply for upholding the law. For example, Sarah Posner, at Religion Dispatches, has written, "[T]he notion that the federal government has somehow discriminated against Catholics is rendered even more absurd by the hard numbers: in 2011 alone, according to the federal government database at www.usaspending.gov, Catholic Charities received over $753 million in federal funding. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has not, as the president promised on the campaign trail, reformed faith-based funding to ensure, among other things, that groups receiving taxpayer aid do not discriminate in hiring." But, of course, the federal government awards funding to particular private organizations not as an act of favor but because those organizations appear to be the most cost-effective suppliers of services; and what critics term "religious job discrimination" in fact is a management practice that is undergirded by federal laws and court decisions.   

 

Take Note:  The Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance organized two letters from leaders of organizations of various faiths, protesting the mandate and narrow exemption.

 

Dec. 21, 2011  

 

August 26, 2011  
Religious Leaders Unite to Defend Marriage and Religious Organizations
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On January 12, some 40 Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish religious leaders released "Marriage and Religious Freedom: Fundamental Goods That Stand or Fall Together, An Open Letter from Religious Leaders in the United States to All Americans." 

 

Excerpts:

 

"Some posit that the principal threat to religious freedom posed by same-sex 'marriage' is the possibility of government's forcing religious ministers to preside over such 'weddings,' on pain of civil or criminal liability.  While we cannot rule out this possibility entirely, we believe that the First Amendment creates a very high bar to such attempts.

 

"Instead, we believe the most urgent peril is this: forcing or pressuring both individuals and religious organizations - throughout their operations, well beyond religious ceremonies - to treat same-sex sexual conduct as the moral equivalent of marital sexual conduct.  There is no doubt that the many people and groups whose moral and religious convictions forbid same-sex sexual conduct will resist the compulsion of the law, and church-state conflicts will result.

 

"These conflicts bear serious consequences. They will arise in a broad range of legal contexts, because altering the civil definition of 'marriage' does not change one law, but hundreds, even thousands, at once. By a single stroke, every law where rights depend on marital status - such as employment discrimination, employment benefits, adoption, education, healthcare, elder care, housing, property, and taxation - will change so that same-sex sexual relationships must be treated as if they were marriage. That requirement, in turn, will apply to religious people and groups in the ordinary course of their many private or public occupations and ministries - including running schools, hospitals, nursing homes and other housing facilities, providing adoption and counseling services, and many others.

 

"So, for example, religious adoption services that place children exclusively with married couples would be required by law to place children with persons of the same sex who are civilly 'married.'  Religious marriage counselors would be denied their professional accreditation for refusing to provide counseling in support of same-sex 'married' relationships. Religious employers who provide special health benefits to married employees would be required by law to extend those benefits to same-sex 'spouses.' Religious employers would also face lawsuits for taking any adverse employment action - no matter how modest - against an employee for the public act of obtaining a civil 'marriage' with a member of the same sex.  This is not idle speculation, as these sorts of situations have already come to pass.

 

"Even where religious people and groups succeed in avoiding civil liability in cases like these, they would face other government sanctions-the targeted withdrawal of government co-operation, grants, or other benefits. . . .

  

"In short, the refusal of these religious organizations to treat a same-sex sexual relationship as if it were a marriage marked them and their members as bigots, subjecting them to the full arsenal of government punishments and pressures reserved for racists. These punishments will only grow more frequent and more severe if civil 'marriage' is redefined in additional jurisdictions. For then, government will compel special recognition of relationships that we the undersigned religious leaders and the communities of faith that we represent cannot, in conscience, affirm. Because law and government not only coerce and incentivize but also teach, these sanctions would lend greater moral legitimacy to private efforts to punish those who defend marriage."

 

Pope Speaks About the Freedom of US Religious Organizations
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On January 19, Pope Benedict XVI spoke to visiting US Catholic bishops about "politics, secularism, and Christian culture." 

 

Excerpt:

 

"The legitimate separation of Church and State cannot be taken to mean that the Church must be silent on certain issues, nor that the State may choose not to engage, or be engaged by, the voices of committed believers in determining the values which will shape the future of the nation.

 

"[I]t is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the Church's public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres. The seriousness of these threats needs to be clearly appreciated at every level of ecclesial life. Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion. Many of you have pointed out that concerted efforts have been made to deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices. Others have spoken to me of a worrying tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience."
President's Religious Freedom Day Proclamation
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On January 13th, President Obama issued a proclamation commemorating Religious Freedom Day and celebrating the adoption in 1786 of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.  A notable passage:

 

"As our Nation has grown, so too has its diversity of faiths, cultures, and traditions; today, individuals of rich and varied beliefs call America home and seek to follow their consciences in peace.  Our long history of religious tolerance and pluralism has strengthened our country, helped create a vibrant civil society, and remained true to the principles enshrined in our founding documents."

 

Sadly, in an increasing number of instances--the administration's refusal to meaningfully respond to the religious freedom concerns occasioned by its contraceptives mandate is just the latest--these fine words are not being translated into federal policy.
Worth Reading
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Stanley Carlson-Thies, "A Big Victory for Religious Freedom--But How Wide?" Capital Commentary, Jan. 20, 2012. Commentary on the Hosanna-Tabor Supreme Court ruling.
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The Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance works to safeguard the religious identity, faith-based standards and practices, and faith-shaped services of faith-based organizations across the range of service sectors and religions, enabling them to make their distinctive and best contributions to the common good.