Whose Conscience Should the Government Violate Next?
Many of you have heard about the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of nuns providing care for the elderly, who are now taking on the Obama Administration over the Affordable Care Act's (ObamaCare) contraception mandate. Religious exemptions from the ObamaCare contraception mandate are often made for government-approved entities, but the Obama Administration has deemed the nuns, who work exclusively with the elderly, unworthy of an exception.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently granted the Little Sisters of the Poor a temporary injunction, so they do not have to violate their religious beliefs by offering health insurance that covers contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs. The Obama Administration, however, is asking the Supreme Court to force the nuns to obey the contraception mandate.
For those who do not understand that the mandate is a violation of religious liberty and conscience or recognize the outrageousness of the Obama Administration's insistence on enforcement, perhaps these Constitution-violating suggestions for possible mandates in the future will be enlightening.
One party's mandate is another group's loss of freedom.
Can you imagine the reaction of these groups if the government forced them to comply with made-up mandates?
• Animal rights activists must hunt and kill animals to make fur coats they will be forced to wear.
• Vegetarians and vegans must eat meat.
• Feminists must promote patriarchy.
• College professors must campaign for Tea Party candidates, earnestly.
• Global warming activists must take a cruise to the Antarctic, get their ship stuck in ice, and have fossil-fuel-burning ships and helicopters rescue them (oh wait...)
• Planned Parenthood affiliates must donate money to crisis pregnancy centers to promote adoption.
• Teachers' unions must pay their dues to charter schools.
• Labor unions must pay union wages and benefits to the homeless they hire to protest businesses that won't unionize.
• U.S. presidents, congressmen, and senators must send their children to D.C. public schools.
• Hollywood stars supporting "climate change" legislation must drive their Priuses cross-country for appearances and premieres; no more flying domestically or internationally.
• Tax-and-spend advocates can no longer take deductions on their tax returns; they will send in more money than is due from them.
• Celebrities advocating for more gun control cannot have armed bodyguards.
• GLAAD activists must denounce marriage for homosexuals and promote heterosexuality in schools.
• All movie and television show producers will espouse conservative principles and ideas, and the bad guys must always be heartless, greedy liberals.
• Greenpeace activists must hunt whales, eat them, and use the blubber to provide heat and light on their ships.
• Occupy Wall Street protestors must get jobs.
• Billionaires decrying the fact they pay a smaller percentage in taxes than their secretaries must declare their investment income as a salary so they pay a higher percentage and take no deductions (see above.)
• Atheists must donate (even tithe?) to a religious institution, weekly.
• MSNBC hosts and anchors must attend re-education classes taught by Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Mitt Romney, and the Little Sisters of the Poor.
• Abortion advocates have to reconstruct an aborted baby to make sure all the parts are there and not stuck inside the mother.
• "Bro-choicers" will be mandated to become daycare providers.
• Wind farm owners must also be bird and bat breeders to replace all the birds, especially eagles, and bats killed by the wind turbines.
• People opposed to coal-fired power plants will no longer be allowed to charge their electric cars, iPhones, iPads, or coffeemakers with electricity from coal-fired power plants.
Can't you just hear the shouts of outrage that would erupt if these mandate were real? Well, the mandate being forced upon the Little Sisters of the Poor is real. The nuns are fighting for their rights to exercise religious freedom in the United States of America.
Right now the Obama Administration is going after the nuns; will your Constitutional rights and freedoms be next?
Brenda Zurita is Research Fellow at Concerned Women for America's Beverly LaHaye Institute.