READING THE SIGNS
Distorting the issue cannot mask attack on religious liberty
Media and political supporters of President Obama’s Health and Human Services mandate continue to intensify their efforts to recast the administration’s assault on religious freedom as merely a controversy over “contraception.”
The strategy actually began to take shape weeks before the administration announced its mandate, when during a Republican presidential debate panelist George Stephanopoulos, seemingly inexplicably, asked several GOP candidates if they believed state governments had the right to ban contraception.
Where did that come from? Who, in any state, is talking about banning contraception?
A clearer picture of what may be going on emerged after the president issued his diktat mandating that under Obamacare, employers — including religiously affiliated agencies and institutions — must provide insurance coverage for “contraceptives” (and abortion-inducing drugs) regardless of the teachings of their faith. Amid the ensuing outcry against this blatant attack on religious freedom, the administration and its media and political allies — in vintage Orwellian fashion — endeavored to flip the issue on its head, portraying it as an attack not on religious freedom but on the freedom to use contraceptives; the very red herring that former Democratic operative Stephanopoulos had pulled, seemingly out of thin air, several weeks prior.
We obviously have no way of knowing whether Stephanopoulos was willfully acting in concert with the Obama Administration — as his former Clinton Administration colleague, Dick Morris, insists he was — laying the groundwork for the “anti-contraception” spin that would become the administration’s line in defending its attempted suppression of religious freedom. Perhaps it was all just an amazing coincidence.
What we do know is that, again, no one is talking about using the government’s coercive powers to prohibit contraception. The only use of government coercion here is in the Obama Administration’s determination to force Catholics and others to participate in something our Church teaches is morally wrong; trampling on our First Amendment protections in the process, with implications that go far beyond the issue of “contraception.”
Now, that same distortion is being directed against the Republican presidential candidates — Rick Santorum in particular — who have spoken out against the president’s anti-religious freedom mandate. Media figures in the past week repeatedly misrepresented this opposition to Obama’s assault on religious freedom as opposition to “contraceptive” freedom, with Alan Colmes claiming on Fox News — without any documentation — that Santorum wants to enact as “public policy” his personal, Catholic religious beliefs on contraception.
Lawrence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” claiming that Santorum wants to make the campaign “about contraception,” triumphantly declared that “if he succeeds” in doing so “he’ll lose all 50 states.”
It is absolutely absurd to suggest that Santorum — or any of the GOP candidates who have spoken up for religious liberty — are trying to make the campaign “about contraception.” Rather, it is the Obama mandate supporters who seem determined to do so — first by distorting the issue itself; then by distorting the positions of candidates and public officials who oppose it; and finally, if all else fails, by falsely accusing such candidates and public officials of seeking to “impose their religious beliefs” on others; a canard that for Catholics calls forth disturbing echoes of a time — one we all hoped had passed — when Catholics were told they must check their faith at the door if they aspired to public office.
All the more reason for us to redouble our efforts — not to force our religious beliefs on others, but to stop the Obama Administration from forcing us to violate those beliefs.
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