Standing up and cheering here over Ross Douthat’s column about “the free exercise of religion” and the anti-religious bigotry of the leadership class. Excerpt:
It may seem strange that anyone could look around the pornography-saturated, fertility-challenged, family-breakdown-plagued West and see a society menaced by a repressive puritanism. But it’s clear that this perspective is widely and sincerely held.
It would be refreshing, though, if it were expressed honestly, without the “of course we respect religious freedom” facade.
If you want to fine Catholic hospitals for following Catholic teaching, or prevent Jewish parents from circumcising their sons, or ban Chick-fil-A in Boston, then don’t tell religious people that you respect our freedoms. Say what you really think: that the exercise of our religion threatens all that’s good and decent, and that you’re going to use the levers of power to bend us to your will.
There, didn’t that feel better? Now we can get on with the fight.
Read the whole thing. Damn, that is greatness. It must kill the editors at The New York Times to publish stuff like this. But I’m glad they did.
And while I have never complained that Rod never gives examples of how religious freedom will be curtailed — I just don’t find the examples he offers likely or credible
You might ask yourself what has happened to 14th Amendment jurisprudence in the last 60 years, and whether anyone in 1952 would have imagined what was to come. You give our appellate judiciary the ammunition, they use it on you. They employ lots of ingenious products of Ivy League law schools to dream up the excuses to do so.