Kennesaw Georgia is a city of about 30,000 people in Cobb County Georgia. In 1982 Kennesaw passed an unusual ordinance mandating that every head of household maintain a firearm and the ammunition therefore. The city was named by Family Circle Magazine in 2007 as one of the nation’s “10 best towns for families”. Crime rates there are less than half the national average, the lowest in its county. Like Switzerland, the city is used by gun rights activists to extoll the benefits of high levels of gun ownership as an actual deterrent to crime.
Relax. I generally leave the discussion of gun rights to those who have more passion for firearms, and actually know how to use one. I’m going in quite a different direction with this. Let us imagine that Wayne LaPierre is elected President. With a sympathetic Congress, some bribery, earmarks, and arm-twisting he manages to expand the Kennesaw ordinance into a national mandate. All heads of households in the USA will now be required to maintain a firearm and ammunition within their homes. Because good firearms can be expensive, the mandate further orders that all employers will provide the firearms for their employees. For those not employed, tax dollars will be used to provide state issued firearms. The President deems personal safety to be a basic right, and believes there is ample evidence that this mandate will help provide it.
Employers across the country object to this new government mandate, most notably Church operated employers who contend that they have moral objections to providing their employees with something that could, and undoubtedly will be used for violence and murder. The Kennesaw ordinance did have waiver provisions for those with religious objections, but the President refuses to grant waivers in this national mandate. He contends that the Churches are apparently against personal safety, and arrives at a compromise where the Churches will purchase the guns from the gun dealers, but the dealers will be mandated to provide the ammunition for “free”. After all, it’s the bullet that kills people, not the gun. As a bonus he exempts pastors, nuns, and altar boys… what possible objection could the Churches have now?
By now you probably see where I am headed! There is no national gun ownership mandate, nor is there ever likely to be one. The Churches can rest easy… or can they? The analogy I am of course making is to the contraception mandate in the new national health care law. If we could pause for a moment from the hysteria surrounding the issue, let’s distill what exactly the controversy is about. Agree or not, the Catholic Church has historically viewed artificial contraception as a sin. Of course, they are even more vehemently opposed to anything that terminates a pregnancy. This mandate will require them, therefore, to provide something for their employees that they perceive to be damaging to their employees’ spiritual well-being. There are many things the Church considers sinful and would be opposed to providing, though they do not seek to criminalize them, or restrict people’s access to them. Somehow this becomes emotionally charged by peoples’ disagreement with the Church’s doctrine, hatred for the Church, or advocacy for reproductive rights. Suddenly the argument moves from “Should a church be required to violate its historical principles?” to “Should the church be allowed to hold those principles?” and then to the non-sequitur of “Why is the Catholic Church against all women and trying to keep them from having birth control?” I am not a Catholic, nor do I agree with their doctrine on birth control; nevertheless, the principle of religious freedom interests me, and removing the principle from the present argument by introducing it to another unrelated situation might be helpful to clarify. That is what I was trying to do with my Kennesaw scenario.
Freedom of religion is not unlimited. We do not allow bigamy in this country regardless of your religious convictions. If your religion includes human sacrifice, mutilations, or honor killings, you will be required to modify it. In extreme cases, parents can be tried for neglect even if their actions were the result of their “faith”. That being said we have always bent over backwards to accommodate all religions by not forcing people to participate in activities abhorrent to their faith. The conscientious objector status in the military, as well as kosher/muslim MRE’s (meals ready to eat), even the elimination of prayer in school, all demonstrate the government’s predisposition to not force citizens to do things against their belief system. Occasionally there is a conflict between religion and policy. Generally we have held that religion trumps policy unless to do so would violate the constitutional rights of other citizens. As is true with the entire Bill of Rights, the first amendment is intended to restrict the government from interfering with the freedom of its citizens to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; in this case, the free exercise of religion. And so when the government seeks to impose a policy that comes in opposition with religion, it faces an uphill fight, by design. The argument has been made that the policy does not apply to the Church itself, its worship facilities, but only to the businesses it operates. The problem is that those charitable organizations; hospitals, orphanages, schools… are an expression of the Church’s religious mission of serving. If the Church were operating factories and warehouses the argument might hold more water.
IMHO: The crisis with the national health care mandate and the Catholic Church is directly the result of instituting a mandate for something for which there is not anything resembling a national consensus. If a constitutional argument can be made for the existence of this mandate, accommodations need to be made to protect the first amendment. While the provision of adequate birth control to all citizens may be a laudable goal, we cannot violate the first amendment rights of the largest Church in the country to pursue it. It is uncomfortable and even polarizing when policy and religion clash. It brings out the worst in us. Totalitarian countries have solved this problem by virtually eliminating religion; no religion, no conflict. In a free society, we value religion, and honor people’s beliefs. If there is conflict between religion and policy, it is not because we have too much religion, it’s because we have too much policy.
I think what the contraceptive issue comes down to is whether or not the businesses run by the church have a right to prohibit their employees from receiving the same health care as the rest of the country. Basically, the church is asking for the rights of the corporation to be favored over the rights of the individual, something which (I believe) our government should regard with extreme caution.
Well put.
I’m sorry Amanda. I must have overlooked our right to Health Care in the US Constitution. I do however see our right to freedom of Religion!
Tj – This has nothing to do with freedom of religion. No one is stopping you from believing what you want, or from assembling peacefully to share your beliefs. This is a labor issue. This is about BUSINESSES run by the church (which is not to be mistaken for a church itself) who EMPLOY people (and not just people who strictly share the same beliefs) and their duties to their employees.
BTW, I’m pretty sure our founding fathers stated that we’re due unalienable rights to life and liberty. I’m also pretty sure that they wouldn’t be in favor of someone else’s religion infringing upon my right to enjoy my own beliefs and freedoms. (For example, that sex is a natural, healthy, biological thing between consenting adults and that contraception is a necessity in order to be responsible).
FYI- “Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.” as defined by Thomas Jefferson in the “Declaration of The Rights of Man and The Citizen”
Well put, Amanda. The rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness are rights that are “endowed by our Creator” and so are not to be infringed upon by any mere man, or human government. By the same token however, if they are “endowed by the Creator”, which is the central principle, then they are also arbitrated by Him; and while it is perhaps the responsibility of the state to provide a society that does not unduly infringe upon those rights, it can hardly be seen as the responsibility of the state to guarantee life , liberty, or happiness; nor is it reasonable to assume that the state could possibly ultimately provide these things for all it’s citizens. The state can insure that other people do not kill you, kidnap you, or harass you; but if we see the state as the ultimate provider of our life, liberty (and that’s a big area), and even our happiness; we expect more than the government can possibly provide. The libertarian position you espouse with your quote from Jefferson would cover many areas… legalization of drugs, prostitution, unfettered gun ownership (though shooting people with them would still be illegal), same sex marriage, (or for that matter, consensual bigamy and incest), gambling, some building codes, and countless other rules in our highly regulated society. When your “liberty” needs to be paid for from my wallet, particularly if to do so violates my conscience, then I’m pretty sure I’ve been injured. You can make a constitutional case to legalize prostitution… but I’m not paying for your hooker!