OBAMA ADMINISTRATION 'COMPROMISE' DOES NOT PROTECT RELIGIOUS FREEDOM FOR ALL



Today I received this email from Helen Alvare:

Greetings Jean,

Once again, the Obama Administration has delivered an unacceptable “compromise” regarding the HHS Mandate and religious freedom.

Today the White House expanded the exemption to church-affiliated non-profit organizations, but refused to extend it to individuals and for profit business owners—such as the Greens with Hobby Lobby.

I have reviewed it and have several takeaways:

1. The first "expansion" of the exemption is as small as the government could make it.  Religious organizations which exist to spread the faith (i.e. Churches)-- when they also do things like serve the poor or educate kids in a religious school--may have the exemption for those ministries as well as the Church itself.

2. Religious institutions who are not primarily in the business of spreading the faith-- likely hospitals, schools, etc.-- can have the exemption after a complicated "self-certification" procedure, but their employees and students will get free contraception without their employers' input--under separate policies issued directly from the insurance company.

3. My third observation is not about the law, but about the administration. Their desperation to get contraception, early abortifacients and sterilization into the hands of every woman and girl would be comical if they weren't in such deadly earnest. These new regulations are very long and very convoluted and very intent on exempting the fewest folks possible. I doubt most other provisions of the health care law have received this kind of attention.

4. Individuals and businesses which are not religious institutions are completely unprotected… THIS IS DISTURBING.  In America, the right of religious freedom extends to all.

I can’t do better than echo Alan Sears, President of the Alliance Defending Freedom legal group who has said, “Religious leaders and their organizations cannot be bought off with personal immunity, in exchange for abandoning their fellow believers and their own flocks to federal subjugation of their freedoms.  It behooves none of us to preserve our own 'freedom,' when no one in our audience will be allowed to accept and live by our Gospel witness.”

I more than suspect that this is an attempt to divide us and thereby to conquer…..why? We are winning both in the courts (by 10 to 4 so far) and in the court of public opinion.

The government has no business putting religious freedom on the negotiating table, or picking and choosing who is allowed to exercise faith.

I encourage you to speak out against this “compromise” with your family and friends, and on your Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. Send letters please….copying them to the President, the Vice President (America’s top political Catholic, remember?) and Secretary Sebelius. Their addresses are below.

Thanks for sticking with us in this fight,
Helen

http://womenspeakforthemselves.com/
https://www.facebook.com/WomenSpeakForThemselves
https://twitter.com/womenspeak2012

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

 Vice President Joe Biden
 Old Executive Office Building
 Washington, DC 20501          

Secretary Kathleen Sebelius
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, S.W.
 Washington, D.C. 20201

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