Is religion your boss?

PEORIA -- In Peoria, where the Catholic Bishop Jenky last November compared President Obama to Hitler and Stalin, then ordered Catholics to vote for "religious liberty,"  a speaker at Bradley University on Feb. 11 set the record straight on the true meaning of religious liberty.

It's freedom to believe what you want to believe, but not to impose your religion  on everyone, said Rob Boston, a policy analyst  from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

Boston gave a well presented and spirited defense of true religious liberty in the USA. The main guideline, he said, is: "You're not the boss of me."

Religious liberty does not mean employers can impose their beliefs on their workers, and deny them contraceptives.  It does not mean that government can try to impose prayer in school, or mandate the teaching of creationism. That's trying to be the boss.

So why must there be a constant battle against those who try to impose their religious beliefs on others through government?

Nobody wants to lose power, Boston said, but modern society is now so diverse that religious leaders feel threatened.  They have lost the power to control people's lives, and they want it back.

"Religions can speak, but they can't order anyone to listen or follow them," he said.  These ideas are based on the U.S. Constitution, whose creators saw first hand the tyranny that can arise from state-sponsored religion.

In Virginia, the spectacle of Baptist ministers jailed because they had defied the state sponsored Anglican religion led Thomas Jefferson to push for the separation of church and state in the Constitution, he said. 

"Religious freedom means we live in a pluralistic democrcy, not a Christian nation," he said. The founders of the nation didn't support that, and religion is mentioned only twice in the Constitution, in the First Amendment, then to ban a religious test for office. 

Boston said that despite these ongoing battles, there is a long term trend toward tolerance, and that liberation movements have freed women, gays, and likely in the future will be focused on non-believers. 

But there are some real threats to religious liberty, when people try to ban mosques, for example.  That's subverting our values to protect them, he said.

There's a tension now between public accomodation and conscience, that occurs when pharmacists refuse to dispense contraceptives or Plan B which can prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex. "The courts should not allow it," he said of so-called conscience actions, since these involve serious health issues for women.

As for employers who don't want to allow workers to have contraceptives as part of their health insurance packages, contraceptives not only save money from unwanted births, thus do not cost the employer anything, but also may have other uses for women's health. "Are we really going to make women bring a note from a doctor" to an employer to get needed medicine, he asked.

"You don't have the right to make these decisions for others," he said.

 -- Elaine Hopkins

Comments

[Vonster]

Your atheistic hate is showing, again.