Obama Administration: We Can and Will Force Christians to Act Against Their Faith

Obama Administration: We Can and Will Force Christians to Act Against Their Faith
By Terence P. Jeffrey
December 29, 2012
Subscribe to Terence P. Jeffrey's posts



David and Barbara Green of Hobby Lobby

(CNSNews.com) - In a legal argument formally presented in federal court in the case of Hobby Lobby v. Kathleen Sebelius, the Obama administration is claiming that the First Amendment—which expressly denies the government the authority to prohibit the “free exercise” of religion—nonetheless allows it to force Christians to directly violate their religious beliefs even on a matter that involves the life and death of innocent human beings.

Because federal judges—including Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor—have refused to grant an injunction protecting the owners of Hobby Lobby from being forced to act against their Christian faith, those owners will be subject to federal fines of up to $1.3 million per day starting Tuesday for refusing to include abortion-inducing drugs in their employee health plan.

The Obama administration is making a two-fold argument for why it can force Christians to act against their faith in complying with the regulation it has issued under the Obamacare law that requires virtually all health care plans to cover, without co-pay, sterilizations, contraceptives, and abortion-inducing drugs.

The first argument the administration makes against the owners of Hobby Lobby is that Americans lose their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion when they form a corporation and engage in commerce. A person’s Christianity, the administration argues, cannot be carried out through activities he engages in through an incorporated business.

“Hobby Lobby is a for-profit, secular employer, and a secular entity by definition does not exercise religion,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Stuart Delery in a filing submitted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma.

“Because Hobby Lobby is a secular employer, it is not entitled to the protections of the Free Exercise Clause or RFRA [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act],” Delery told the court on behalf of the administration. “This is because, although the First Amendment freedoms of speech and association are ‘right enjoyed by religious and secular groups alike,’ the Free Exercise Clause ‘gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.’”

In keeping with Delery’s argument, the Washington Post, as a corporation, can use its First Amendment-protected freedom of speech to write editorials in support of the Obama administration imposing its contraception mandate on businesses like Hobby Lobby. But the members of the family that created and owns Hobby Lobby, because they formed Hobby Lobby as a corporation, have no First Amendment freedom of religion that protects them from being forced by the government to act against their religious beliefs in providing abortion-inducing drugs.

The second argument the administration makes to justify forcing Christians to act against their faith is more sweeping. Here the administration argues it can force a person to act against his religion so long as the coercion is done under the authority of a law that is neutral and generally applicable—in other words, as long as the law was not written specifically to persecute Christians as Christians, the government can use that law to persecute Christians.

Hobby Lobby is a family business. David Green created it in his garage in Oklahoma City in 1972. He and his wife, Barbara, and their three children—Steve, Mart and Darsee Green Lett-- have grown the business to where it now operates 500 stores in 41 states. David Green is Hobby Lobby’s CEO; Steve Green is its president; Mart Green is vice CEO; and Darsee Lett is vice president. Mart Green is also CEO of the privately owned Mardel chain of Christian bookstores, which operates 35 stores in 7 states. Through Hobby Lobby, the Greens have created more than 13,000 jobs. Mardel has created 372 jobs.

The Greens, who are Evangelical Christians, do not suspend their religious beliefs while running their businesses. Instead, they strive to run them fully in accordance with their Christian beliefs. They are unanimous in stating that they have always “sought to run Hobby Lobby in harmony with God’s laws and in a manner which brings glory to God.” They do not have two sets of morals—one for when they are at church or at home and another for when they are working on their businesses. They have only one set of morals—that they strive to follow at work or any other activity. For example, they close their business on Sundays, so their employees can spend that day with their families, and they pay their full-time workers a minimum hourly wage of $13, which is far exceeds the federal minimum wage.

They also provide their employees with a generous self-insured health care plan, and they even operate an on-site, cost-free health clinic at their corporate headquarters. But, guided by their Christian faith, the Greens believe that human life begins at conception and that aborting on unborn life is wrong. In keeping with this, they do not cover in their employee health plan abortions, abortion-inducing drugs or IUDs that prevent implantation of an embryo.

Unlike Catholics, the Greens do not believe that contraception and sterilization are morally wrong.

In September, the Greens, Hobby Lobby and Mardel bookstores sued Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the departments of Health Human Service, Labor and Treasury. Their complaint said that the Obamacare contraception mandate violates their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion because supporting abortion or counseling for abortion is contrary to their religious faith.

As the mandate now stands, the Greens must begin complying with it on Jan. 1. On Nov. 11, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton refused to grant a preliminary injunction to stop the mandate from being enforced on the Greens while the court decided their case on its merits. In his ruling on the injunction, Judge Green determined that the Greens were not likely to establish they had a right to “free exercise” of religion while operating Hobby Lobby.

‘[T]he court concludes plaintiffs have not established a likelihood of success as to their constitutional claims,” said Judge Heaton. “The corporations lack free exercise rights subject to being violated and, as the challenged statutes/regulations are neutral and of

general applicability as contemplated by the constitutional standard, plaintiffs are unlikely to successfully establish a constitutional violation in any event.”

The Greens appealed their request for an injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. A panel of two appeals court judges refused their plea. They then appealed to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who sits over that circuit, and she declined to reverse the lower courts and issue an injunction.

When Sotomayor ruled against a preliminary injunction on Thursday, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the Greens, issued a statement indicating that the Greens would not start complying with the mandate on Tuesday and that they would continue to pursue their case in federal court.

“Hobby Lobby will continue their appeal before the Tenth Circuit,” said Becket Fund General Counsel Kyle Duncan. “The Supreme Court merely decided not to get involved in the case at this time. It left open the possibility of review after their appeal is completed in the Tenth Circuit. The company will continue to provide health insurance to all qualified employees. To remain true to their faith, it is not their intention, as a company, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs.”

As the nation approaches the much publicized fiscal cliff, it also approaches a moral cliff: Will the Obama administration compel Christians to act against their faith? As of now, the answer seems plain: Starting Tuesday, it will.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/oba...will-force-christians-act-against-their-faith

 

This is Totally against our Constitution, Our countrys foundations, and our Faith! Obamacare IS unconstitutional!

 

Throw the Greens in prison.

 

greens/

 

Surely this discussion is totally theoretical since there are very few, if any, Christians in the USA?

 

More progressive tolerance.........

 

You are still free to believe and practice your religion, your religious beliefs however do not go higher than the law though and that has always been the case. Just look at a practical past example the draft when it was still allowed many people could still have been a pacifist but it was irrelevant, even George Washington forced every able man to own a gun around 1790 if I remember right. It could be someone's religious belief that we should not give aid to Israel because they disagree with their policies it does not give them the right to not pay taxes, many rastafarians practice their religion with marijuana but this does not negate the drug laws or the money spent on it by the government. If people don't understand the difference between infringing religious beliefs and having laws that every person has to follow then I would recommend taking some night classes in constitutional law before claiming that this is a first amendment issue.

Though just as an added if you believe the actual law is unconstitutional then that is a separate issue I'm just addressing the idea that having a law that people disagree with on a religious grounding is somehow an infringement of their religious beliefs protected by the first amendment (which protects your right to hold to your religious beliefs with no government taking away your right to believe in it or for your practices as long as it is within the bounds of the law first.)

 

And the government has no right to force a religion to change its religious beliefs to fit their world view either.

Thus the freedom to practice said religion is compromised.

 

I'd shut that mother(*)(*)(*)(*)er down, and drop the 13,000 newly unemployed in Obama's lap...let HIM explain why they no longer have a job.

 

1) This article is over dramatizing the issue, the owners of Hobby Lobby can practive their faith.
2) Kathleen Sebelius, has every right to any insurance coverage.

 

If this company is forced to pay the daily fine you will see Christians coming out of the woodwork to defend them.

No politician wants to come off as being anti-christian and it will be a fight the democrats will lose. Obama has exempted many companies from the healthcare law so why he wants to take on Christians is confusing.

 

Does the insurance plan cost more with abortion pills included, or is it the same with or without?

 

According to the article, they are not forcing any religion to change. They are forcing a for profit company to follow the law. See the difference.
Personal beliefs aside.

 

FORCE. Without it, progressive leftism would die on the vine.

 

The companies you're talking about only have time-limited (expiring at the end of 2013) exemptions from a single provision of the law--exemptions that were instituted in accordance with the text of the law itself.

 

Force is used all the time whether it be people using the government to implement laws, make sure people abide by them or to get laws changed. That is the first and last are normally only done when people feel like the second way is being used unjustly because usually people can go through the process of law to get things passed.

 

"Obama Administration: We Can and Will Force Christians to Act Against Their Faith"

I sometimes wonder just when the republiscum and the religious right will get tired of telling the same old lies and distortions. I don't think they ever will. They suffer from a combination of religious bigotry, mental incapacity, and, on the part of some of their leaders, a totally corrupt willingness to exploit their followers for political gain.

I should not complain. They have done more to discredit religion than the most determined atheist.

 

It is interesting you feel that way since purely religious laws that should have never been on the books have only relatively recently, been overturned in favor of our temporal and secular morals Ordained and Established by our Founding Fathers.

Besides, the precedent involved distinguished between artificial persons claiming religious morals and practices and real persons who may actually practice their faith.

 

But when has President Autocrat ever shown any care about what is written in the United States Constitution? By the time 2016 is finally finished, we won't even recognize what the "United States" has mutated into....

 

Maybe, but only after the Right disintegrates due to a lack of any sufficient Cause to keep "arresting development" even if through the coercive use of force of the State.

 

It has been presented, that artificial persons have no "religious rights" simply because they are artificial persons and not real persons.

 

When governments can FORCE you to act against your religion the Republic is dead.

 

From one perspective and in the alternative, why is it that mostly only human sexuality is proscribed through morals established the Age of Iron?

If morals are a form of absolutism, then it could easily be claimed that it is really the Iron Age moral of foot washing that is the most important in modern times; and, that the world is going to "hell and a hand basket" simply due to that Moral being discarded in modern times.

Advances in the understanding of human sexuality render Iron Age morals obsolete in modern times. However, foot washing is a timeless form of respect and tradition.

 

Dislikes Montoya disliked this post


Guess Montoya thinks it's fine for the government to force Christians or any religion for that matter to act against their faith.