![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/85\/2012\/09\/Letter_by_Franklin_Roosevelt_Armed_Forces_-Bible_.jpeg\" "\\"Letter_by_Franklin_Roosevelt_Armed_Forces_")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhoa, Frank. That letter was penned pre-World War Two, brother. Everyone with a brain knows that things are vastly different nowadays. Deacon Greg was just posting something about God and the Democrats<\/a>, as did Catholic Vote<\/a><\/em>. So what does any of this have to do with the Clintons and the HHS Mandate?<\/p>\n Only this. Not only is it not your father\u2019s Democratic party, but it\u2019s not even your<\/em> Democratic Party. Paul Kengor, of Hillsdale College (yes, that bastion of un-good-thinking Conservatism) gives us a little history lesson on the Clinton Years and how far their party of choice has come in 12 short years.<\/p>\n As Clinton stated in his memoirs My Life: \u201cI always felt that protecting religious liberty and making the White House accessible to all religious faiths was an important part of my job.\u201d As president, Clinton practiced what he preached. He championed (among others) the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (passed 97-3 by the Senate) and the 1997 \u201cGuidelines on Religious Exercise and Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace.\u201d As to the former, Clinton signed it in order \u201cto protect a reasonable range of religious expression in public areas like schools and workplaces.\u201d<\/p>\n Pointing to these actions and more, my colleague, Gary Smith, has rightly described Bill Clinton as a \u201cstrong advocate [of] religious freedom at home and abroad.\u201d That\u2019s fair to say. It is likewise true for Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n Mrs. Clinton long supported her husband\u2019s 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, especially its promotion of religious freedom in public schools. In her book It Takes a Village<\/em>, Mrs. Clinton sounded like a social conservative when emphasizing the importance of religion in schools.<\/p>\n Quoting her husband, she noted that \u201cnothing in the First Amendment converts our public schools into religion-free zones, or requires all religious expression to be left behind at the schoolhouse door.\u201d She cited these words from her husband: \u201c[R]eligion is too important in our history and our heritage for us to keep it out of our schools.\u201d<\/p>\n Once capable of making law herself, as an elected senator from New York, Mrs. Clinton championed an initiative promoting religious freedom in the workplace. Specifically, in April 2005, Sen. Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, joining forces (remarkably) with no less than Sen. Rick Santorum, her polar opposite on many issues. The law guaranteed the right to religious expression on the job without fear of recrimination.<\/p>\n This meant, for example, that an Orthodox Jew who honors the Sabbath cannot be forced to work on the Sabbath against his or her will, or that a Christian can wear a crucifix, or that a Sikh can don a turban. Backers of the bill included a broad coalition of 40 clerics representing nearly every denomination.<\/p>\n The bill, which any reasonable person would support, had opponents among Sen. Clinton\u2019s staunchest allies. For instance, Planned Parenthood and the National Women\u2019s Law Center foresaw intolerable instances of \u201canti-choice\u201d injustice, such as a situation where a pro-life nurse might request to not provide the \u201cmorning-after\u201d pill to a rape victim, or a Catholic pharmacist might as a matter of conscience refuse to dispense birth control.<\/p>\n For these \u201cpro-choice\u201d feminists, religious freedom could not be permitted to trump their preeminent freedom: their sacred right to an abortion.<\/p>\n It was this narrow opposition from radical feminists that might have explained why, as the Village Voice put it, \u201c[Mrs.] Clinton\u2019s office has been notably quiet about her involvement\u201d in the bill. The bill placed Senator Clinton in a conundrum, forcing her to commit heresy in the church of abortion feminism.<\/p>\n That was then. Today, Mrs. Clinton serves in the Obama administration \u2014 though at the State Department, not the Department of Health and Human Services.
\nAnd today, Mrs. Clinton is silent on the Obama HHS mandate.<\/p>\n