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Looking Back: A Snapshot of Religious Liberty in 2016

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It’s been a difficult year for religious freedom in America, but the future holds “huge windows of opportunity,” says Kelly Shackelford, constitutional attorney and president of the non-profit religious liberty law firm First Liberty Institute.

Shackelford spoke with The Stream regarding the state of religious freedom in 2016, and what Americans need to watch out for in the future.

“The biggest danger area is religious liberty in the workplace,” Shackelford said, citing people like lay-minister Eric Walsh, bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein, and Marine Monifa Sterling (whose case has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court) as examples of people who have lost their jobs because of their religious beliefs.

“It is very dangerous if religious freedom is banned from the place people spend most of their waking hours,” Shackelford said. “If people are forced to choose between feeding their family and religious freedom, religious freedom could disappear.”

Crack Down on Religious Expression

2016 saw an “increase in attacks on religious liberty,” Shackelford said. He said that one incident that “stands out” is the case of Oscar Rodriguez, an Air Force veteran who was physically removed from a colleague’s retirement ceremony because he was giving a flag-folding speech that included the word “God.”

“It was a first, with uniformed military laying hands on a citizen because he mentioned God,” Shackelford said.

While the assault on Rodriguez’s free religious expression was physical and blatant, others were more subtle.

In September, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report that called religious freedom a code word for intolerance. Martin Castro, author of the 307-page report entitled Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties, wrote:

The phrases “religious liberty” and “religious freedom” will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.

As Stream senior editor Tom Gilson wrote in a response:

He’s [Castro’s] pronouncing conservative Christian doctrine wrong. That’s not his job. Apparently he doesn’t know that the First Amendment was written to prevent governmental officials from giving one religious doctrine preference over another.

Some states implemented policies aligning with Castro’s logic, passing so-called anti-discrimination regulations that mandating how businesses, including churches, can use their facilities or talk about gender. In effect, laws like these could result in punishment for religious groups and churches who adhere to a biblical understanding of gender and sexuality.

Churches in Iowa and Michigan pushed back.

Both First Liberty Institute and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), another non-profit legal group, represented churches in Iowa that challenged a policy published by the state’s Civil Rights Commission, which defined churches as places of public accommodation, making them subject to the Commission’s rules regarding the use of bathroom facilities and speech regarding gender.

ADF also helped a church in Michigan challenge a law that would have potentially jailed pastors who spoke against same-sex marriage.

Both the Iowa Commission and Michigan backed off of or altered the regulations after legal action from First liberty and ADF.

Several religious groups and faith-based non-profits also faced a dilemma under Obamacare’s Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate, which requires employers to cover contraceptives for their employees.

While the Supreme Court case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby settled the issue in favor of faith-based for-profit businesses in 2014, religious non-profit groups fought the mandate in 2016.

A group of nuns called the Little Sisters of the Poor became the face of the battle, leading the non-profit fight against the HHS mandate in the Supreme Court case Zubik v. Burwell.

While the Supreme Court didn’t explicitly rule in the nuns’ favor, it also declined to rule against them, instead sending the case back to lower courts to be worked out between the opposing parties.

Election 2016

Religious liberty became a hot issue for both sides during the election season. President-elect Donald Trump frequently advocated the repeal of the Johnson Amendment of 1954 that prevents pastors from endorsing political candidates.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton repeatedly criticized Trump for his 2015 statement proposing a ban on all Muslim immigrants, which at the time also drew heavy criticism from Republicans, including now-Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

Trump’s team has since clarified his official position and denied that Trump would support an immigration ban based solely on someone’s religious beliefs; rather advocating for “extreme vetting” and a potential ban on immigration from certain countries where terrorist activity is high.

The Republican and Democratic platforms differed starkly when it came to religious liberty, as Stream contributor Maggie Gallagher reported in August, writing that “the Republican platform promises a strong, deep, philosophically grounded promise to protect and defend religious liberty.”

“This is about as strong (on religious liberty) as the Democrats promise to be,” Gallagher wrote of the Democratic platform, quoting from it: “We support a progressive vision of religious freedom that respects pluralism and rejects the misuse of religion to discriminate.”

Stream contributor and professor George Yancey suggested in November after the election that Progressives’ hostility to the religious liberty of Christians is one reason so many conservatives voted for Trump, despite other misgivings about his candidacy.

Michael Wear, a Christian and former Obama White House staffer, suggested something similar in an interview with The Atlantic published Thursday entitled “Democrats Have a Religion Problem.” Wear said of Democrats, “It doesn’t help you win elections if you’re openly disdainful toward the driving force in many Americans’ lives.”

The election results leave Shackelford optimistic about the future of religious freedom. “I see huge windows of opportunity to advance religious freedom under the new administration,” he said. “There should be a big change in the hundreds of judges appointed being more favorable to religious freedom and the Constitution.” (For more from the author of “Looking Back: A Snapshot of Religious Liberty in 2016” please click HERE)

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Religious Liberty Win: Mass. Backs off Gender Identity Law That Could Have Jailed Pastors

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The state of Massachusetts has backed off a regulation that could have landed pastors in jail for operating church functions according to their faith.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the non-profit legal organization representing four churches who sued the state over the controversial regulations announced the victory Monday, after the churches agreed to drop the lawsuit.

“No church should fear government punishment simply for serving its community consistently with its faith,” ADF Legal Counsel Christiana Holcomb said in a press release.

As The Stream previously reported, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination released in September an updated Gender Identity Guidance that declared, “places of public accommodation may not discriminate against, or restrict a person from services because of that person’s gender identity.”

That meant during certain church events and activities, church leaders would have been forced to allow a biological man to use women’s restrooms or other facilities if he claimed to identify as a woman, regardless of the church’s religious beliefs regarding gender.

Specifically, the Gender Identity Guidance originally stated that “Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the public.”

As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh wrote in the Washington Post at the time,

[E]ven church “secular events,” which I take it means events that don’t involve overt worship, are generally viewed by the church as part of its ministry, and certainly as a means of the church modeling what it believes to be religiously sound behavior.

Punishment for violating these regulations included the possibility of a year in jail and/or a $2,500 fine. Pastors could have even been jailed for refusing to use a transgender person’s preferred pronouns.

But the state backtracked after ADF initiated the legal case Horizon Christian Fellowship v. Williamson by filing a lawsuit on behalf of four churches in early October.

Almost exactly one month later, the Massachusetts Civil Rights Division responded with a letter to ADF, saying that “your lawsuit caused us to focus on these issues and to make this revision.”

The Gender Identity Guidance has now been updated to say that the “law does not apply to a religious organization if subjecting the organization to the law would violate the organization’s First Amendment rights.” “Houses of worship” was also removed from the list of places of public accommodation from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s website.

ADF attorneys filed a notice of voluntary dismissal Monday.

“The government can’t encroach on the internal, religious practices of a church. The language revisions that our lawsuit prompted should ensure that doesn’t happen,” ADF Senior Counsel Steve O’Ban said in Monday’s press release. “The comments of commonwealth officials gave these churches reason for great concern, and so we are pleased wording changes have been made to respect the constitutionally protected freedoms these congregations and pastors have.”

ADF will be holding a press conference to discuss the state of the lawsuit on Wednesday, December 14 in Boston. (For more from the author of “Religious Liberty Win: Mass. Backs off Gender Identity Law That Could Have Jailed Pastors” please click HERE)

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The Left’s Religious Liberty Fig Leaf Is Slowly Falling Off

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A recent report from the United States Commission on Civil Rights shows how the political fig leaf covering up the LGBT lobby’s assault on religious freedom is slowly starting to rot away.

According to a story published Thursday at the Washington Times, the USCCR — an independent, bipartisan commission — released a report in which Chairman Martin R. Castro referred to Americans’ first freedom as “code words” for simply opposing the agenda of the sexual identity movement:

The phrases “religious liberty” and “religious freedom” will stand for nothing except hypocrisy

so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia,

Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.

Religious liberty was never intended to give one religion dominion over other religions, or a veto

power over the civil rights and civil liberties of others. However, today, as in the past, religion is

being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality.

“Progress toward social justice depends upon the enactment of, and vigorous enforcement of, status-based nondiscrimination laws,” wrote commissioners Castro, Achtenberg, Kldaney and Yaki — every Democrat on the commission — later in the report. “Limited claims for religious liberty are allowed only when religious liberty comes into direct conflict with nondiscrimination precepts.”

And make the following recommendations:

RFRA [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] protects only religious practitioners’ First Amendment free exercise rights, and it does not limit others’ freedom from government-imposed religious limitations under the Establishment Clause.

Federal legislation should be considered to clarify that RFRA creates First Amendment Free Exercise Clause rights only for individuals and religious institutions and only to the extent that they do not unduly burden civil liberties and civil rights protections against status based discrimination.

States with RFRA-style laws should amend those statutes to clarify that RFRA creates First Amendment Free Exercise Clause rights only for individuals and religious institutions. States with laws modeled after RFRA must guarantee that those statutes do not unduly burden civil liberties and civil rights with status-based discrimination.

Clearly the targets here are corporations and institutions that don’t necessarily fall under the government’s narrow view of a “religious institution.” These would be entities like the bakery owned by Aaron and Melissa Klein, which is still going through a legal battle after the state of Oregon shut it after the owners declined bake a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding. Or the Little Sisters of the Poor, who despite being an order of consecrated religious sisters in the Catholic Church, were being forced to go against their conscience with the Obamacare contraception mandate.

Of course – as Castro states – the sort of provisions for which the report calls should only get narrower and narrower and the enumerated right to free expression outlined in the First Amendment will be legally redefined to freedom of worship. This would, of course, be akin to telling a protestor that they’re still free to carry a picket sign in their backyard, so long as they have the proper government permits to demonstrate in said backyard.

Furthermore, the fact that report comes from an independent, nonpartisan commission ought to help us realize that this assault won’t magically go away once Barack Obama is out of office, and it won’t simply be staved off by preventing a Hillary Clinton administration. The idea that millennia-old faiths should lose out when their tenets clash with the whims of a decades-old political agenda, that thought has permeated nearly every sector of our government.

But it does show that the argument that conservative Christians and the LGBT movement’s political agenda could somehow balance out the enumerated constitutional rights of the former with the judicially-manufactured ones of the latter was nothing more than a fig leaf. The real end goal of policies like these — or, at least, their natural logical end — is to enforce an over-sexualized brand secularism as a de facto state religion.

Finally, the title of the USCCR report — “Peaceful Cooexistence” — is nothing short of ironic, because what its authors demand is anything but peaceful. A truly peaceful coexistence is where people engage in free association, and don’t resort to using government force when they get their feelings hurt. A truly peaceful coexistence between people of different views looks like a story from earlier this week in which a baker refused to make a Trump cake for a girl’s 18th birthday party. Rather than seek out ways to harness the government’s coercive power for her own ends, the woman simply found another bakery to do the job. Just like with the Klein’s, it clearly wasn’t a matter of discrimination; it was a matter of the specific services rendered.

Free to believe, free to express, free to associate, free to find another vendor — that’s how it works.

This isn’t just a matter of acceptance, or even peaceful coexistence; this is a matter of coercion. This is a matter of making sure that people who have adhered to the same set of values and beliefs for thousands of years don’t get in the way of creating the Left’s brave new world. (For more from the author of “The Left’s Religious Liberty Fig Leaf Is Slowly Falling Off” please click HERE)

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Alaska’s Religious Liberties Bill Frozen in Committee, Not Moving Forward

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In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last summer that legalized gay marriage across the nation, including Alaska, the Alaska Legislature has been moving a bill through various committees to protect clergy and others authorized to marry a couple in Alaska. Specifically, House Bill 236 clarifies that no one can be coerced into marrying a couple or facilitating a marriage or marriage celebration.

House Bill 236 is at a critical stage. Now in the House Rules Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Craig Johnson, the next step would be for Rep. Johnson to schedule the bill for consideration by the full membership of the House. As of April 4, the bill had not been scheduled for such consideration. If the measure passes the House it would then go to the Senate. The legislative session ends April 17.

The measure specifically states that there is no compulsion to “solemnize a marriage or provide services, accommodations, facilities, goods or privileges” for the purpose of celebrating a marriage. Any person who refused to marry a couple would not be subject to criminal or civil liabilities for their decision nor could they be penalized by having their tax exempt status, or state or local contracts and licenses revoked.

Juneau Bishop Edward Burns testified in favor of the bill last week. According to a report from the Alaska Dispatch, Bishop Burns said that following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage in all 50 states, his diocese ended its 75-year-old policy of allowing couples from other faiths to get married in its churches and chapels.

Bishop Burns said Alaska needs a bill to exempt clergy from civil or criminal liability for refusing to perform marriages for same-sex couples, the Dispatch reported.

Several states have made moves to legally protect clergy and others following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. It was a ruling that religious liberty advocates say could impact the freedom of churches and clergy to refuse to perform or facilitate same-sex weddings and receptions. (For more from the author of “Alaska’s Religious Liberties Bill Frozen in Committee, Not Moving Forward” please click HERE)

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The Raging Fire Against Religious Liberty

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There are times in history when American patriots need to call a time out and bring all hands on deck to deal with a raging fire. We are now living through one of those times.

Imagine if a prophet were to approach Sam Adams before the revolution and warn that in less than 250 years state governors would ban official travel to states that don’t allow men into women’s bathrooms?

Imagine if someone told James Madison, the man who referred to religious conscience as the “most sacred of property,” that individuals would be forced to use their own property and livelihood to service something that violates their consciousness and is condemned by every major religion?

Our founders could never have imagined a person’s private property becoming the national property of a pagan inquisition, and federal and state governments, which were intended to encourage religious virtue (although not coerce it), serve as a conduit for compulsory servitude to the idols of hedonism. Yet, that is exactly what is happening. And frankly, there has not been enough discussion about this existential threat among conservatives even in the presidential race.

Here are just three examples of the raging fire from the past week:

1. Last week, during oral arguments in Zubik v. Burwell, in which the Little Sisters of the Poor are suing the federal government for coercing them into covering abortifacients in employee health insurance plans, Justice Sonia Sotomayor demonstrated the following illiteracy of fundamental rights:

Because every believer that’s ever come before us, including the people in the military, are saying that my soul will be damned in some way. I’m not naysaying that that is a very substantial perceived personal burden by them. But if that’s always going to be substantial, how will we ever have a government that functions? How will we ever have anything that the government can demand people do in objecting…that won’t be a problem?

Gee, how will our government ever function if they can’t coerce private businesses to cover abortions or sex change operations with their own private health insurance compensation plan? The real question is how can the government and society function if they can coerce such activity? As John Witherspoon warned, “There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.”

Perhaps Sotomayor should go back and study the impetus for our founding and read the Pennsylvania Charter of Liberty:

That all persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and eternal God, to be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the world; and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall, in no ways, be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion, or practice, in manners of faith and worship, nor shall they be compelled, at any time, to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry whatever.

Or perhaps she would do herself a favor by studying Madison:

The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right… It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.

Or maybe she should read the speech of Sam Adams in Philadelphia just weeks before the start of the revolution when he framed the fight for independence as a “contest” over whether “there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.”

After studying our founding, hopefully this wayward justice will not treat the issues of religious liberty so callously.

2. In one of the few acts of sanity by a Republican controlled state government, the GOP legislature in North Carolina passed a law preventing cities like Charlotte from enacting ordinances allowing men who say they are women to use female bathrooms. But now the entire homo-fascist mafia is coming after the state. The governor of New York has banned state officials from travelling to North Carolina on official business. The ACLU is suing the state in federal court, believing it is the role of the courts to overturn the democratically elected legislature and redefine the definition of gender from the bench. Meanwhile, the state Attorney General is refusing to defend the law in court.

3. Yesterday, Georgia governor Nathan Deal announced his intent to veto a religious liberty bill, which, among other things, would have prevented the state from forcing religious leaders to officiate gay weddings or coerce religious institutions to engage in activity or hire individuals that violate their religious beliefs. It’s now clear that even most Republicans are unwilling to defend the most foundational of unalienable rights.

What is clear from all of these events is that the status quo is not working. We cannot rely upon the states to defend religious liberty. We certainly cannot come crying to the courts who have largely been responsible for creating this nightmare by flipping the concept of fundamental rights on its head. It’s time for federal legislation, in the mold of civil rights legislation, preventing the state or federal governments from coercing an individual to use his private property or business in a way that violates his religious conscience.

While states have wide latitude to regulate activities within their jurisdictions, a state has no right to violate the preamble of the Declaration, rooted in religious liberty and property rights, the same way they had no right to usurp the liberties of African-American citizens. Congress must also strip the courts of the power to adjudicate any case overturning religious liberty protections. At its core, this is why our founder created a federal union – to better secure the blessings of liberty from states that would infringe upon them. As George Washington told a group of Quakers in 1789, “[T]he liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreeably to their conscience, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights.”

However, whereas our founders feared individual theocratic states coercing individuals to service a particular religion with their private property, they never fathomed a day when the government itself would be run by secularists and force individuals to worship the pagan inquisition. They always envisioned religion as part and parcel of our national fabric. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that, “The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.” And that “[F]rom the earliest settlement of the emigrants, politics and religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved.” He warned that “[D]espotism can do without faith but liberty cannot.”

Nobody is even asking for government to downright promote the spirit of religion in a voluntary way; we want government to at least refrain from coercing individuals into secularism with their own private businesses. As early as 1988, Reagan explained what we were up against:

To those who cite the first amendment as reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions and everyday life, may I just say: The first amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny.

Long before transgendered bathrooms, the redefining of marriage and gender, Kim Davis being thrown in jail for being a Christian, and involuntary servitude for homosexual weddings, Reagan warned that “the most essential element of our defense of freedom is our insistence on speaking out for the cause of religious liberty.” The time has come for our leaders to treat this issue with the seriousness it deserves. (For more from the author of “The Raging Fire Against Religious Liberty” please click HERE)

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According to Poll, Here’s the Amount of People Who Support Religious Liberty

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protect relgious freedom signWhen the edict to redefine the institution of marriage and the constitution itself came down from the high benches of the Supreme Court, the response from the GOP establishment was as unequivocal as it was silent. They had no intention of ever fighting for marriage or even religious liberty. The issue was settled. McConnell said that the question of religious liberty must be dealt with in the courts. Now time to move onto Obamatrade and corporate welfare and avoid these thorny “social issues” like the plague.

However, a new poll conducted by Pat Caddell reveals that the public overwhelmingly sides with the principles of religious liberty, especially as it relates to the specific challenges with which Americans of faith are now confronted. “When asked which was more important, by a four to one ratio, voters said protecting religious liberty (31 percent) over protecting gay and lesbian rights (8 percent),” wrote Caddell in a separate memo distilling the results of the poll.

page5 religious freedom poll

Most notably, 82% of the 800 voters sampled believe that individuals should not be coerced to service gay weddings in contravention to their religious beliefs.

page34 religious freedom poll

Notice what a difference an issue poll makes when the question accurately reflects the reality at hand. This is a very fair question and is not designed to net a more “conservative” result.

“Suppose a Christian wedding photographer has deeply held religious beliefs opposing same sex marriage. If a same-sex couple wanted to hire that photographer for their wedding ceremony, should the photographer have the right to say no?”

Clearly, were Republicans to simply frame the messaging on this issue in the context of this question, which is incidentally the reality businesses of faith are confronted with, they would win over 82% of the electorate.

But this is not an outlier poll. Even the AP poll from last month, which asked the question of coercion in a way that made the business owners seem more filled with hostility, showed that 59% would uphold their right to deny service.

Another poll from last month reveals that not all is well on the fundamental transformational home front. When surveyed by the Washington Post whether they are comfortable with the direction of the country on social issues, 64% of voters said they were uncomfortable while only 34% felt comfortable with the recent societal changes. The polarization aspect is even more striking because 45% feel “strongly uncomfortable” while only 14% feel “strongly comfortable” with the changes. Sixty-eight percent of Independents and even 43% of Democrats say they are uncomfortable with the societal transformations.

washington post poll

It’s abundantly clear that the GOP establishment’s political barometer is completely broken. Rather than running away from our founding principles on religious liberty, the GOP candidates would be wise to make religious liberty a centerpiece of their campaigns. A sane Republican Party would introduce civil-rights-style legislation blocking states from coercing individuals to service acts that violate their religious beliefs. Sadly, Republicans have shown since the midterm elections that they are incapable of taking “yes” for an answer from the American people. (Re-posted with permission, “According to Poll, Here’s the Amount of People Who Support Religious Liberty”, originally appeared HERE)

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Why Top Catholic Education Organization Says Common Core Could Threaten Religious Liberty

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A leading Catholic education organization is warning that Common Core could pose a threat to religious freedom for Catholic schools that adopt the controversial education standards.

The Cardinal Newman Society’s summer newsletter named among the 10 things Catholics should know about Common Core is that it “could lead to religious liberty violations.” That’s in part because of the Department of Health and Human Services mandate to cover contraception coverage for employees.

“Catholic schools’ protection from threats like the HHS mandate depends on showing consistent Catholic identity, because First Amendment protections often depend on demonstrating a bona fide religious character,” the newsletter warned. “The Common Core may diminish a school’s Catholic identity by ‘crowding out’ important elements of authentic Catholic formation, emphasizing skills and practicality over vocation, and failing to teach reasoning from a foundation of truth.”

Further, as more Catholic schools adopt Common Core-certified textbooks and have to comply with Common Core exams, that could in turn lead to schools’ accepting more federal and state funding, which often has strings attached, said Denise Donohue, deputy director of the K-12 Catholic Education Program for the Cardinal Newman Society.

“Testing requirements affect instruction and that can be tied to funding,” Donohue told TheBlaze. “Any federal funding puts contraints on a program.”

Read more from this story HERE.

It’s Time to Protect Religious Liberty in the Marriage Debate (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

For years, a central argument of those in favor of same-sex marriage has been that all Americans should be free to live and love as they choose; however, does that freedom require the government to coerce those who disagree into celebrating same-sex relationships? A growing number of incidents demonstrates that the redefinition of marriage and state policies on sexual orientation have created a climate of intolerance and intimidation for citizens who believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and that sexual relations are properly reserved for marriage.

Now these citizens are facing a new wave of government coercion and discrimination. State laws that create special privileges based on sexual orientation and gender identity are being used to trump fundamental civil liberties such as freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion.

Consider the case of Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene Flowers, who is being sued by the state of Washington. In March 2013, she met with long-time customers who asked her to arrange the flowers for their same-sex wedding ceremony. Stutzman felt that she had to decline because of her “relationship with Jesus Christ,” and her belief that marriage is between one man and one woman. While she was happy to sell and arrange flowers for any other occasion (the same-sex couple were happy costumers of hers for nine years), she didn’t want to use her artistic skills to help celebrate a same-sex wedding ceremony.

As Stutzman explains:

I think most artistic people—especially painters—put their hearts into their arrangements. It’s part of them, it’s part of who they are. And I think that’s the same thing with a florist.

A month later, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed suit against Stutzman, contending that she had violated the state’s sexual orientation law. The state of Washington is seeking a $2,000 fine and a court order forcing Barronelle to violate her conscience by using her artistic talents to celebrate a same-sex relationship.

Stutzman is not the only small business owner whose religious liberty is at risk. As we note in a new Backgrounder, “Protecting Religious Liberty in the State Marriage Debate,” she is joined by other families across the country who are being hauled into court for their belief that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.

Cake makers, photographers, family bakeries, and adoption agencies, among others, have faced penalties and lawsuits for working in accordance with their faith.

This shouldn’t happen in America. Part of the genius of the American system of government is its commitment to protecting the liberty and First Amendment freedoms of all citizens while respecting their equality before the law. The government protects the freedom of citizens to seek the truth about God, to worship according to their conscience, and to live out their convictions in public life. Likewise, citizens are free to form contracts and other associations according to their own values.

State and federal policy should respect Americans’ ability to live and work in accordance with their beliefs. Even in states where marriage is redefined, government should not coerce individuals and organizations to violate their moral or religious beliefs about marriage. Although Americans are free to live as they choose, no one should demand that government compel others into celebrating their relationship. And Americans should continue to work for laws that reflect the truth about marriage. If marriage is redefined, attempts to marginalize the view of marriage as one man and one woman will only increase.

For citizens like Barronelle Stutzman, the consequences are becoming apparent. Read more about it here.

This article originally appeared at Heritage.com and is re-published in full with the Heritage Foundation’s permission.

Pin Drop! Obama Lawyer Stuns Supreme Justice

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

By Greg Corombos.

In a dramatic moment at the Supreme Court Tuesday, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli told justices that U.S. business owners have no religious freedom to reject government mandates forcing them to cover abortions.

Justices and lawyers also sparred over whether businesses actually have religious freedom and whether striking down the Obamacare mandate makes women second-class citizens.

The notable abortion exchange between Verrilli and Justice Anthony Kennedy came during oral arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius, two cases linked by the companies’ owners objecting to the Department of Health and Human Services requirement that businesses fully cover the contraception costs for their employees. That mandate includes coverage of abortafacient drugs, also known as the “morning-after pill.”

Family Research Council Senior Fellow for Legal Studies Cathy Ruse was in the gallery during oral arguments and said that was the most remarkable moment in the court session Tuesday.

“This was actually the most exciting part of the oral argument this morning, when Justice Kennedy asked the government’s lawyer, ‘So under your argument, corporations could be forced to pay for abortions, that there would be no religious claim against that on the part of the corporation. Is that right?’ And the government’s attorney said yes,” Ruse said.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Company Owners Refuse To ‘Sacrifice Our Obedience To God’

By Alana Cook.

Advocates of religious freedom and family values who had gathered outside the Supreme Court today greeted the Hahn and Green families of Conestoga Wood Specialties and Hobby Lobby as they came to the building’s snow-capped steps to give statements after the court heard oral arguments in their high-profile cases.

“Rather than sacrifice our obedience to God, my family, the Green family, and many others have chosen to take a stand to defend life and freedom against government coercion,” declared Anthony Hahn, CEO of Conestoga Wood Specialties, a Mennonite.

The two cases, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, challenge the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that employers provide a health-care insurance plan that includes no-cost access to all forms of contraception, including emergency abortifacients such as Plan B and ella.

“We didn’t choose this fight,” Hahn said. “Our families would have been happy to just continue providing good jobs and generous health-care benefits. But the government forced our hand.”

Hahn said the “choice that the government has forced on us is out of step with the history of our great nation founded on religious freedom.”

Read more from this story HERE.

An Atheist’s Case For Religious Liberty

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Photo Credit: The Federalist

Photo Credit: The Federalist

I am an atheist, which puts me firmly on the secular right. There aren’t a whole lot of us, but we’re out here, in some surprising places.

Yet I consider the current campaign against religious liberty—the attempt to coerce Christians into providing service to gay weddings or to provide abortifacient drugs to their employees, against the dictates of their faith—to be a deep cultural crisis.

Why? Above all, because the sight of a bully using a club to force someone else to violate his conscience is inherently repugnant. As a humanist, what I regard as “sacred” is the power of the human mind to think and make judgments. To put this in terms borrowed from religion, when someone uses coercion to overrule the judgment of their victim’s mind, they are defiling my temple.

But there is another, more practical reason. History shows that the only way to fight for freedom of thought is to defend it early, when it comes under threat for others—even people you strongly disagree with, even people you despise. So I’m willing to fight for it for people who are much worse, by my standards, than your average Christian.

It’s like the old poem from Pastor Niemoller, except this time it’s: “First they came for the Christians.” I don’t see the threat of coercion as something being done to those backward Christians over there. I see it as something that could just as easily be done to me.

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