Over 85,000 File Comments on HHS Mandate

April 9, 2013 By 7 Comments

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Americans have the right to petition their government.

Eighty-five thousand of us took advantage of that right by commenting on the latest version of the HHS Mandate. This isn’t the first go-round of this process where the mandate is concerned. Back in August 2011 when the initial rule was issued, 147,000 commenters, most of them again the Mandate, filed comments.

It is mind boggling how much political capital the Obama administration has expended on this outrageous attempt to subvert the First Amendment. One of the many things that amazes me is the President’s willingness to play games with the American people by misrepresenting the issue and deliberately deepening the divides of the culture wars that are damaging us as a society. His allegiance to Planned Parenthood evidently knows no bounds.

If there’s one thing I know about politics, it’s that you don’t quit until the fight is over. This fight won’t be over until we have preserved the right to religious freedom for all Americans.

This article from the National Catholic Register gives a run-down of the history of this fight so far.

WASHINGTON — More than 85,000 parties have filed comments ahead of today’s 11:59pm Eastern time deadline to respond to the federal government about the latest version of its mandate that forces employers to provide contraceptives, abortifacients and sterilization in their employee health-insurance plans.

“There is still a lot of energy behind this in the Catholic community,” said Anthony Picarello Jr., associate general secretary and general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which urged Catholics and people of good will to submit their comments with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

More than 147,000 comments — most critical of the mandate — were previously filed when the government’s initial rule was issued in August 2011 and when the Obama administration proposed its first accommodation in February 2012.

The bishops’ March 20 report said last year’s proposed accommodation was inadequate and that the administration’s latest version of the mandate still violates religious liberty and conscience rights.

The USCCB filed its 26-page comment with HHS on March 20. The report said the mandate was virtually unchanged and that its religious “exemption“ still excludes most religious organizations and does not remove the burden on religious freedom.

EWTN’s Response

The Eternal Word Television Network also filed a comment, asserting that the government’s proposed rule does not permit anyone other than a church to be exempt from the mandate, noting that religious beliefs and conscience objections are held by people and organizations that are not churches.

The government is essentially forcing EWTN — which owns the Register — and other objecting parties to call contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing pills “good” and to pay for them, without deductibles or co-pays by employees, says the filing, which was signed by EWTN President and CEO Michael Warsaw and General Counsel John Manos.

EWTN’s comment says, “At the heart of this dispute is whether EWTN or persons with similar beliefs must use their bodies and money to support this erroneous belief under government force. The Constitution restrains the government from forcing its beliefs on individuals, particularly any religious belief.”

“Yet this mandate persists to force EWTN and others to part with money and their health under threat of government force,” the filing adds. “Thus this fight is not about providing health care; it is about an erroneous belief, which the government accepts as a foregone conclusion, that contraceptives, voluntary sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs are health care. EWTN refuses, by exercising the rights guaranteed to it by the same government, to swallow this error and merely ‘go along.’”

 

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/tens-of-thousands-beat-deadline-to-protest-hhs-mandate?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NCRegisterDailyBlog+National+Catholic+Register#When:2013-04-8%2023:11:01#ixzz2PyzUbEtA

Filed Under: America, Christian Persecution, Culture, Economics, Following Christ, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Politics, Religious Freedom, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

Will Legalizing Gay Marriage in Britain Result in Coercive Attacks on Freedom of Conscience?

January 31, 2013 By 11 Comments


Great Britain’s government will vote soon on gay marriage. Christians have expressed concern that such a change in the law might result in attacks on freedom of conscience.

Supporters of the measure have rushed to assure the public that such fears are groundless.

Now, where have we heard things like this before?

Oh yes. It was President Obama, promising that Obamacare would not infringe on religious freedom and individual rights of conscience.

That was only a few months before a hand-picked committee of the Health and Human Services Department “passed” the HHS Mandate, which the same president who had made these promises signed and then misrepresented to the American people as being about “women’s health care.”

Good luck, British Christians. Judging by what has happened elsewhere, you’re going to need it.

A Christian Post article concerning the upcoming vote on same-sex marriage and freedom of conscience in Great Britain says in part:

UK Government Source: Teachers May Face Firing for Refusing to Teach Gay Marriage
Katherine Weber (“The Christian Post,” January 25, 2013)

As Great Britain’s government prepares to vote on a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, an official from the Secretary of State for Education’s office reportedly has expressed trepidation toward the bill, arguing that primary school teachers in the country could possibly lose their jobs if they do not teach about gay marriage in the classroom.

One unnamed senior source from the office of Michael Gove, who serves as the country’s current Secretary of State for Education, has recently said that ultimately the U.K. government is not in control, should a teacher lose their job for refusing to teach same-sex marriage, and the case would ultimately go to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, where the European Parliament is located.

“We have had legal advice, the problem is that there is this inherent uncertainty about such matters,” the source told The Telegraph in a Jan. 25 report.

“These are all under the control of nine guys in Strasbourg, it is just fundamentally uncertain because Britain isn’t in control of this,” the source added.

Additionally, those critical of the upcoming same-sex marriage bill argue that hospital chaplains and other people in authority may be faced with difficult decisions when their conscience conflicts with their work protocol.

These statements come after human rights specialist Aidan O’Neill of the Queen’s Counsel argued on behalf of the Coalition For Marriage, a group that opposes same-sex marriage legalization, that he believes teachers, hospital or prison chaplains would be negatively affected by the legalization of the bill.

However, in response to these worries, Maria Miller, Secretary of Culture and Great Britain’s equalities minister, recently stated that teachers and the Church of England will not be put in a compromising position due to the same-sex marriage bill.(Read more here.)

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, Catholic, Culture, Family, Following Christ, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Marriage, Politics, Pro Life, Religious Freedom, Same Sex Marriage, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

Christian Persecution: Proposed French Gay Marriage Law Tramples Freedom of Conscience

October 12, 2012 By 3 Comments

Critics fear that a proposed French law that would institute same-sex marriage would also interfere with the rights of conscience of individual citizens.

A LifeSiteNews article says,

There will be no allowances made for conscientious or religious objection in upcoming French legislation instituting “gay marriage,” the French minister of Justice, Christiane Taubira, revealed in an interview today …”
She further acknowledged that ‘the proposed law is described as “a social and political revolution.

Holland is planning to introduce similar legislation in early 2013.

More details from the LifeSiteNew article below :

PARIS, September 12, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – There will be no allowances made for conscientious or religious objection in upcoming French legislation instituting “gay marriage,” the French minister of Justice, Christiane Taubira, revealed in an interview today.

Speaking to the mainstream Catholic daily La Croix, Taubira gave the broad outlines of the same-sex “marriage” bill to be presented by the government by the end of October. That Taubira chose the quasi-official newspaper of the French Catholic bishops conference is being seen as a strategic move to head off Catholic and other religious objections.

She acknowledged in the interview that the change would constitute a “societal and legal revolution.”

The socialist Hollande government, elected in May, is wasting no time fulfilling its promise to bring the legislation forward. Most observers expected that the bill would not be introduced before the beginning of 2013, allowing the defenders of traditional marriage some time to organize their response after the politically sluggish summer months.

Taubira said that the bill will legalize same-sex “marriage” and adoption by homosexual “spouses,” giving them most of the same legal rights and obligations attached to marriage. It does not include, however, access to artificial procreation, including artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization. Neither does it legalize surrogate motherhood.

Also, the legal “presumption of fatherhood” in which the law designates the husband in a marriage as the legal father of any child born to the couple, would not be applied to homosexual partners. In a same-sex “marriage,” one partner would have to adopt the biological child of the other to obtain parental rights.

Click “like” if you want to defend true marriage.

Some believe that the restrictions are intended to lessen opposition to the bill among traditionalists in parliament and the concessions may indicate that support for the scheme is less enthusiastic than expected, even among socialist members. It is thought likely that any restrictions included in the bill will be overturned later by the European Court of Human Rights.

In a decision involving a French lesbian wanting to adopt the child of her partner in a civil union, Gas v. France, the ECHR affirmed in March of this year that France had the right to deny the adoption in the interest of the child as long as homosexual couples had the same rights as heterosexual couples in the same legal situation. Once complete marriage equivalence is established, this situation would no longer apply. In addition, where heterosexual couples have access to artificial procreation and preimplantation genetic diagnosis, it will be argued that homosexuals cannot be excluded.

Christiane Taubira told La Croix that “discussions” have started with proponents and opponents of the bill. Included in these, she said, are several representatives of the association of 36,000 French mayors who officiate at civil marriage ceremonies. But these discussions will not change the government’s stance, Taubira said.

“We are in a state of law; the civil code will be modified, it will be imperative for everyone, including mayors.”

Resistance to the bill will also be hampered by the country’s hate crime laws which have been broadened to include “discrimination” on the grounds of sex and “sexual orientation” and “sexual identity.”

The goal of instituting “same-sex marriage” is rooted in the Left’s ideological notion of “absolute equality” in all matters, a cornerstone of socialist political theory. For this reason, it is believed that the current French government will in reality tolerate no opposition to the bill. (Read more here.)

Filed Under: Christian Persecution, Culture, Politics, Same Sex Marriage, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , 3 Comments