"Just" Your Conscience
Posted by Rebecca Teti in News on Monday, November 16, 2009 2:00 PM
My hometown’s City Council is poised to shut down many Catholic charities within the District of Columbia’s borders.
It’s doing so through a measure with the Orwellian title the “Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009.”
The proposed law does preserve the right of religious groups not to provide goods, services or facilities in violation of their religious beliefs.
Unless they provide those goods to the general public.
The instant any charity accepting government grants opens its doors to an unbeliever, in other words, it loses its right to act in accord with its beliefs.
The Archdiocese of Washington has forthrightly explained that it won’t be able to operate the numerous hospitals, homeless shelters, adoption services and other charities it partners with the city to run under those conditions.
Passage will mean that where city contracts for social services are concerned, people of faith need not apply.
The Church has petitioned for an exemption which the City Council appears disinclined to grant.
The Washington Post is reporting this as a threat—as if the Church were attacking the city and not vice versa.
The paper is also running a non-scientific poll on the question. The anti-Church side was winning (73%) last time I checked.
(I think you’ll find the comments at the poll both sad and enlightening.)
Meanwhile, this is a clear-cut illustration of the truth of Hadley Arkes’ premise highlighted last week.
If same-sex marriage is a “right,” it becomes “wrong”—and illegal—to oppose it.
This is why perhaps a majority of members of the DC City Council, having once embraced same-sex marriage, does not notice or does not care that in so doing it will abrogate the First Amendment rights to religious liberty, freedom of assembly and free speech of not only the Catholic church but numerous historically black churches operating charities within the city’s limits.
Championing same-sex marriage takes precedence in the Council’s mind over all those things—and over the health care and nutrition of the numerous sick, poor and addicted DC residents the Church—and churches—care for.
Lest I be accused of being hysterical, I should point out that the ACLU testified in hearings on the subject on behalf of the Church, arguing that the proposed law represents a narrowing of religious liberty.
There’s an excellent “chat” on the subject, with good Q & A by government professor Patrick Deneen here.
For simply pointing out the conflict and asking that its rights be respected, one council-member referred to the Church as “childish.”
Are they really going to harm people because they have a philosophical disagreement with us on one issue?
“Just” a philosophical disagreement? That one question gives us a window into the council-woman’s view of conscience, doesn’t it?
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