The Issue Is Religious Liberty

 Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: I want to revisit the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby case today in view of some of the news coverage and punditry from the talking heads (not to mention spin from liberal Democrats we will hear ad nauseam from now until Election Day). The central issue of this debate is not the legality or availability of contraception. It is religious liberty.

The left is trying hard to confuse Americans about that fact. A pro-abortion and fake Catholic group ran a full-page ad in yesterday's Washington Post. It posed the question, "Who in their right mind would want a woman's boss in charge of her birth control?"

The ad stated that arguments about religious liberty were "fake" and accused Catholic bishops of trying to "impose their religious views on all Americans."

That was the same line of reasoning pursued yesterday by Justice Kagan, who rhetorically asked if employers should be able to exclude vaccines and blood transfusions from insurance policies based on religious objections to those procedures. In Kagan's view, the right to free birth control trumps all other considerations.

It's a mystery to me where Justice Kagan finds this imaginary right. But the Constitution is clear about the right of religious liberty! And that is the point -- this is not a debate about contraception.

While the Catholic Church has moral objections to contraception, there is no law in the United States limiting it use. The Supreme Court settled that issue fifty years ago.

Moreover, I can say without any fear of contradiction that from the very beginning of the republic until now there has never been a day in America when contraception was not as readily available to men and women (even your kids in the public schools) at lower cost than it is today. In fact, it's not that hard to find it for free. No matter what the outcome of the Supreme Court's decision in the Hobby Lobby case, contraception will continue to be widely available in America.

So, I repeat -- this is not a debate about the legality or availability of contraception.

This case is about our constitutional guarantees of religious liberty. Are they real or not?

It has implications for other constitutional protections like free speech, freedom of assembly and the right to bear arms. Will those rights continue to be whittled away by the big government juggernaut that is trying to tell us what to buy, what to eat, how much to drink, what temperature to set the thermostat?

There are two main aspects of this debate.

First, can the government force religious institutions to subsidize something that goes against the teachings of that particular religious group? It would be a dark day in America if the highest court in the land declared, "Yes, we can put a nun in jail if she refuses to allow one penny of her organization's funds to abort a baby or provide sterilizations."

That is precisely the dispute in Little Sisters of the Poor vs. Kathleen Sebelius. In December, Justice Sotomayor temporarily blocked the Obama Administration from persecuting these nuns while their case continues to work its way through the appeals process.

If there is an employee working for the Little Sisters who disagrees with the teachings of the Catholic Church, the remedy in a free country is for that employee to seek employment somewhere that offers an insurance policy that covers contraception, sterilizations and abortions.

Hobby Lobby And Abortion - The second aspect of the debate is whether a closely held business owned by a religious family can be forced through their business to pay for services that violate their religious beliefs. That was the issue at the Supreme Court yesterday.

If religious liberty applies only to churches and not individuals, then there really isn't freedom of religion. If it only means that the government can't force your wife to have an abortion, but it can force you as an employer to pay for your employees' abortions, that's not much of a right.

But that is exactly the power the Obama Administration claimed it had during yesterday's hearing. Consider this exchange between Justice Anthony Kennedy, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, representing the Obama Administration, and Chief Justice John Roberts:

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Under your view, a profit corporation … could be forced in principle to pay for abortions. … your reasoning would permit that.

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, I think that … it would depend on the law and it would depend on the entity. It certainly wouldn't be true, I think, for religious nonprofits. It certainly wouldn't be true for a church.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: I'm talking about a profit corporation. You say profit corporations just don't have any standing to vindicate the religious rights of their shareholders and owners.

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, I think that if it were for a for­profit corporation and if such a law like that were enacted, then you're right, under our theory that the for­profit corporation wouldn't have an ability to sue. But there is no law like that on the books. … [Emphasis added.]

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: I'm sorry… There is no law on the books that does what? …

GENERAL VERRILLI: That requires for­profit corporations to provide abortions.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Isn't that what we are talking about in terms of their [Hobby Lobby's] religious beliefs? One of the religious beliefs is that they have to pay for these four methods of contraception that they believe provide abortions. I thought that's what we had before us.Just to be clear, the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, are evangelical Protestants. They do not object to contraception. In fact, an attorney representing the Green family noted that the insurance plan offered to Hobby Lobby employees covers 16 out of 20 forms of contraception -- just not the four abortion-inducing methods demanded by Obamacare. And, clearly, the Obama Administration believes it can demand even more. The Left's Assault On Faith

The Left's Assault On Faith This is the most important point to understand: For at least half a century, the left has been using the language of tolerance to intimidate conservatives into silence and force its agenda on the rest of the country. Sadly, it has succeeded in convincing many conservatives and religious Americans that, even though they may have strong feelings about abortion and marriage, they have no right to use the law to "force their views on somebody else."

Pontificating liberals love to lecture conservatives by saying, "You can't legislate morality!"

We have repeatedly warned that the people making this argument have a long history of being extremely intolerant. As they have gained strength, their real intention has become more transparent. They are not simply asking for an America where they can live the way they want. Rather, they want an America where you will live the way they want.

Remember that full-page ad I mentioned at the beginning of this report? Liberals were accusing Catholic bishops of trying to "impose their religious views on all Americans." The exact opposite is true. The Obama Administration, under the guise of health care, is using the power of big government to force religious Americans to pay for its radical abortion-on-demand agenda.
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Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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