Forcing Your Beliefs on Others is Not Religious Freedom

[SecularMotion]

First it was doctors who wouldn’t perform abortions and pharmacists who wouldn’t fill prescriptions for contraceptives.

Several years back a Chicago police officer sought an exemption from an assignment to guard an abortion clinic. And most recently, a town clerk in New York state refused to sign the marriage license of a lesbian couple who had every right to marry under the recently passed state law.

In these cases public servants claimed religious exemptions from doing a part of their job under the guise of so-called "conscience clauses". In each case, “religious freedoms” of public servants have trampled over the rights of the people they took an oath to serve.

Many of the country’s conscience clauses were established after abortion was legalized to allow the religious to abstain from administering the procedure. But the slope has gotten more and more slippery as other public servants have attempted to expand laws that were once confined to health care issues, to all spheres of public life. And the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is one of the biggest proponents of expanding the coverage of “conscience clauses."

http://www.secular.org/blogs/lauren-anderson-youngblood/forcing-your-beliefs-others-not-religious-freedom

[CrispyQ]

1. Outstanding commentary!

snip...

New York Governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, had it right in his response to the town clerk who refused to issue the marriage license to the lesbian couple. He said, “When you enforce the laws of the state, you don’t get to pick and choose.”

:applause:

k&r

[MineralMan]

2. These are all steps designed to increase the power of

fundamentalist Christianity and to marginalize those who to not follow that denomination/sect. It's an insidious, and well-planned thing.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. The author mixes legitimate and illegitmate examples

Public officials such as cops and town clerks can not refuse to do their duty. However, private businesses do not have to offer services they disagree with.

They also forget the recent claim by union bus drivers that they should not have to bus arrested protestors.

[saras]

4. All the example given were public servants.

If a doctor wants to pick and choose medical procedures, they need to go into private practice, and not work for an employer with more normal standards.

If not for the support for OWS, pretty much EVERYONE would regard the bus drivers claim as not legitimate. It's certainly not part of their union contract. It's civil disobedience, which of course there are penalties for.

The penalty for someone dying because you, as the responsible doctor, refuse to do something appropriate, ought to be the penalty for murder.

[BR_Parkway]

5. So a privately owned hotel or apartment building doesn't have to

serve a gay couple? Or a restaurant could put back up one of those "No Blacks" signs?

There are plenty of ways that private business has to follow the rules for all if they want to provide service for some.