Written by Don Byrd
At the center of his candidacy for presidency these days, Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) is a condemnation of what he claims is the Obama Administration’s “war on religion.” If you’re like me, you’ve had trouble finding lots of evidence of this war. So, what’s Perry talking about? NPR’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty tries to figure it out.
The case for:
If you’re looking for evidence that the Obama administration is hostile to faith, conservatives say, the new health care law is Exhibit A. The law requires employers to offer health care plans that cover contraceptives. Churches don’t have to, but religiously affiliated charities, hospitals and colleges do. That doesn’t sit well with the Catholic monks at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina.
“When the government said to them, you’re going to have to fund contraception, sterilization, in violation of your deeply held religious convictions, the monks at Belmont Abbey College knew that they just couldn’t do that,” says attorney Hannah Smith at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
The case against:
Douglas Laycock, a conservative constitutional lawyer who argues cases on behalf of religious groups, said he doesn’t think the administration is hostile to religion. He says the administration takes the issues case by case.
“I think they’ve aggressively protected religious liberty in some issues and failed to protect it in other issues,” Laycock says. “But they’re not hostile. The hostility is in parts of the political culture — particularly in the gay rights movement and the pro-choice movement.”
Read/listen to the whole thing. Who’s right?
