Apparently, the thing about a "living Constitution" is that it means that....

...the power elites can decide what freedom you can have.

The US Commission on Civil Rights isn't concerned with the First Amendment that protects religious freedom so long as it gets in the way of what really counts, i.e., the freedom men to marry men, which was invented a few years ago.

//The chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said that “religious freedom” and “religious liberty” have become merely “code words” for intolerance, “Christian supremacy” and committing every form of identity-politics sin, and thus they must yield before anti-discrimination laws.
The remarks, released Thursday in a report on “Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties,” is the latest example of an increasingly hostile reception in liberal circles to one of the six specified rights at the core of the First Amendment — the “free exercise” of religion.
“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,” said Martin R. Castro, a Chicago Democrat named USCCR chairman by President Obama in 2011.
“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,” he said in the 307-page document.
At the heart of the “Peaceful Coexistence” report is a USCCR assertion that granting religious exemptions to nondiscrimination laws “significantly infringe” on the civil rights of those claiming civil rights protections on the basis of “race, color, national origin, sex, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”//

This should put Ted Cruz at the top of the leftwing hit list.

Using the term "liberal fascism" is a "speechcrime."

//Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Saturday said Democrats had gone to extremes in their persecution of Christians.

“Today’s Democratic Party has decided there is no room for Christians in today’s Democratic Party,” he said at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition summit in Waukee, Iowa.

“There is a liberal fascism that is going after Christian believers,” the 2016 GOP presidential candidate continued.

“It is heartbreaking,” Cruz argued. “But it is so extreme, it is waking people up.”

Cruz said same-sex marriage had produced rabid zealotry in Democratic ranks. This ideology, he argued, was excluding people of faith.

“Today’s Democratic Party has become so radicalized for legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states that there is no longer any room for religious liberty,” he said.

The Texas lawmaker said this stance was against America’s traditional values. Religious liberty, Cruz claimed, was one of the nation’s founding principles.//

The Constituency for Religious Liberty.

This is disturbing:

I spent a long time on the phone last night with a law professor at one of the country’s elite law schools. This professor is a practicing Christian, deeply closeted in the workplace; he is convinced that if his colleagues in academia knew of his faith, they would make it very hard for him. ... I will call him Prof. Kingsfield, after the law professor in The Paper Chase. 

What prompted his reaching out to me? “I’m very worried,” he said, of events of the last week. “The constituency for religious liberty just isn’t there anymore.” Like me, what unnerved Prof. Kingsfield is not so much the details of the Indiana law, but the way the overculture treated the law. “When a perfectly decent, pro-gay marriage religious liberty scholar like Doug Laycock, who is one of the best in the country — when what he says is distorted, you know how crazy it is.” ...

When I asked Kingsfield what most people outside elite legal and academic circles don’t understand about the way elites think, he said “there’s this radical incomprehension of religion." ...  To elites in his circles, Kingsfield continued, “at best religion is something consenting adult should do behind closed doors. They don’t really understand that there’s a link between Sister Helen Prejean’s faith and the work she does on the death penalty. There’s a lot of looking down on flyover country, one middle America.

Great moments in Leftist Tolerance and Willingness to Listen to Dissenting Voices.

The lawyer was absolutely right in his points.

Also, what is this latest leftist disinformation campaign about federal law protecting the rights of corporations?

Just last term there was a Supreme Court decision holding that legal doctrine, and the left was outraged by it.

Do they think they can make it disappear by pretending it doesn't exist?

America - Now with more hope and change...

...because things that are not in the Constitution - such as abortion and homosexual marriage - seem to trump things that are in the Constitution - such as religious freedom:

The end point of liberalism is a coercive secular state in which the religious have no meaningful rights. American church leaders are kidding themselves if they think the gay-marriage juggernaut is going to stop at civil marriage. It won’t. It will quickly travel past court houses to churches, demanding that all religions bless gay marriages.

Denmark casts a shadow of this future, where the gay-marriage juggernaut has smashed through church doors. Last year the country’s parliament passed a law requiring all Lutheran churches to conduct gay marriage ceremonies. “I think it’s very important to give all members of the church the possibility to get married,” said Manu Sareen, Denmark’s minister for gender equality. Reluctant bishops have to supply ministers to satisfy the right whether they like it or not.

Iceland and Sweden have similar arrangements. Since many of the bishops are in the tank for gay marriage anyways and since these churches are “state” churches, this pressure generates little news. But it is instructive nonetheless. Where gay marriage exists, religious freedom gradually disappears, to the point where ministers have to choose between serving as secularism’s stooges or facing societal oblivion.

In America, this pressure will take the form of “discriminatory” churches losing government grants, permits, and participation in programs. It will be the death of religious freedom by a thousand little cuts here and there: canceled speeches of religious figures at state universities, lost HHS grants, the refusal of city governments to recognize churches that don’t permit gay marriages, “hate crime” legislation that extends to opposition to gay marriage, and so on. All of this will have the effect of pressuring churches into blessing gay marriages. A law forcing priests and ministers to preside at gay marriages won’t need to be passed; the invisible law of indirect governmental pressure will do the trick.

During last year’s campaign, Obama said that religions will remain free to determine their own “sacraments.” Shouldn’t that go without saying? The very fact that Obama made such a declaration should scare people. Whenever a pol says “I won’t do [fill in the blank],” it usually means that very activity is on his mind. While he can’t determine the sacraments for religions, Obama will try and marginalize those religions that don’t determine the sacraments in a manner he considers “nondiscriminatory.”

This is, after all, the same administration that argued to the Supreme Court that the government should be able to trump the Lutheran Church in the selection of its ministers.

Obama Administration Intends to Force Catholics to Engage in Speech that Violates their Conscience.

Wesley Smith writes:

Much has been made of Joe Biden’s false assertion that Catholic institutions aren’t forced to provide employees with free birth control. I noted here that VP Biden lied “through the use of grammar” by using the present tense. The Free Birth Control Rule applies to such institutions beginning in 2013, and hence while they don’t have to provide it today, they soon will.

But forcing religious institutions to violate their faith beliefs isn’t all of it. Little notice has been taken of HHS Secretary Sebelius’s stated intention to compel churches, not otherwise forced to pay for birth control, to inform employees where they can obtain subsidized access. From my NRO article, “Free Birth Control vs. Freedom of Religion:

In fact, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declared that the Obama administration intends not only to force churches to do what the state directs, but even to speak as the state directs. From Sebelius’s official statement about the promulgation of the new rule:

We intend to require employers that do not offer coverage of contraceptive services to provide notice to employees, which will also state that contraceptive services are available at sites such as community health centers, public clinics, and hospitals with income-based support.

Thus, the Obama administration is attacking even freedom of worship by forcing exempt organizations to tell their employees where and how they can violate church teaching.

Not being a subscriber to the National Register, I don’t know whether HHS bureaucrats have started to promulgate a forced speech rule, but I think that threat shows the scant regard Obamacarians have for religious liberty.

What Obama and his leftist claque are doing is different in degree but not in kind to this outrageous behavior by Argintinian feminists and homosexuals in attack Catholics protecting their church.

The New York Times and Religious Freedom.

James Taranto reads the NYT editorials so we don't have to:

But the most revealing Kristof assertion was this one: "The basic principle of American life is that we try to respect religious beliefs, and accommodate them where we can."

That prompted an incandescently furious response from Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:

Nicholas Kristof's statement is light years beyond the President in disrespect for religious liberty.…The language of accommodation is almost as old as the Constitution itself, but it was never framed as Kristof frames it—certainly not by the founders who spoke of "inalienable rights" granted to human beings by the Creator's endowment.…

With this one simplistic and condescending sentence he throws religious liberty under the bus and reveals what makes sense to so many in the secular elite.

They will try their best, they promise, to respect our religious beliefs, and to "accommodate them where we can."

That's it. Don't dare ask for anything more.

Religious liberty—no scare quotes here—is one of America's basic principles, the first freedom in the Bill of Rights. The separation of church and state protects religious minorities, and nonreligious ones, from the coercive imposition of religious law. It is also a bulwark against a secular government's impositions on private conscience. To the Times editorialists, it is at best an inconvenience.

And the paper's reporters aren't much better. Here's what passed for balance in a story by Laurie Goodstein:

The uproar threatens to embroil the Catholic church in a bitter election-year political battle while deepening internal rifts within the church. On the one side are traditionalists who believe in upholding Catholic doctrine to the letter, and on the other, modernists who believe the church must respond to changing times and a pluralistic society.

Albert Mohler is a Baptist. This columnist is an agnostic. But I'm with Mike Huckabee, another Baptist, who said: "We're all Catholics now."

Typical Tactic of Tyranny: If the tyrant doesn't like what the Catholic Church teaches...

...it nominates a new Catholic Church.

Obama administration lectures Catholic bishops on Catholic teaching:

Cardinal Timothy Dolan sent a letter to his brother bishops earlier this week where he revealed a shocking conversation that recently took place at a meeting between White House and USCCB staff:

At a recent meeting between staff of the bishops’ conference and the White House staff, our staff members asked directly whether the broader concerns of religious freedom—that is, revisiting the straight-jacketing mandates, or broadening the maligned exemption—are all off the table. They were informed that they are. So much for “working out the wrinkles.” Instead, they advised the bishops’ conference that we should listen to the “enlightened” voices of accommodation, such as the recent, hardly surprising yet terribly unfortunate editorial in America. The White House seems to think we bishops simply do not know or understand Catholic teaching and so, taking a cue from its own definition of religious freedom, now has nominated its own handpicked official Catholic teachers

Let’s break this down so we don’t miss anything about the context or gravity of the situation:

1. This meeting was prompted because the White House decided to curtail and violate the religious freedom of the Catholic Church and individual Catholics.

2. The White House refused to consult with Catholic bishops while originally formulating and issuing this mandate. President Obama misled Cardinal Dolan when he promised the Cardinal he would be happy with the White House’s final decision.

3. The White House has continually lied about and misrepresented the opinion and position of the U.S. Bishops in this process (claiming, for instance, that they were always against Obamacare and that Catholic Charities USA supported their false accomodation). They have continued to act in bad faith.

4. The White House has also chosen to ally itself with liberal, left-wing Catholic dissenters like Sr. Carol Keehan throughout this process, thereby snubbing the U.S. Bishops and all faithful Catholics.

(Are you still there? Because now it gets really good….)

5. After all of this, when the White House finally gets around to inviting staff authorized by the USCCB to negotiate on behalf of them, the White House says what to them?! First, they issue an ultimatum saying all compromise is off the table. So what on earth are they supposed to talk about if the White House refuses from the outset to compromise in any way, shape, or form? The cynical answer is the White House, once again, simply wanted to establish the appearance of dialogue while offering zero substance.

6. Then, the White House proceeds to lecture the USCCB staff about how to interpret Catholic teaching! Can you imagine anything more offensive? Telling Catholics how to be Catholic? They show them a copy of the America editorial as if a) the staff has not already read it and b) the U.S. Bishops give a fig what the editors of America think.

7. Let’s read Cardinal Dolan’s line again:


The White House seems to think we bishops simply do not know or understand Catholic teaching and so, taking a cue from its own definition of religious freedom, now has nominated its own handpicked official Catholic teachers.

In other words, what we have here is NOT a failure to communicate. What we have here is an Administration and White House officials who believe they know Catholic teaching better than us. And who have the hubris to lecture us about what our faith teaches.

Unanimous Supreme Court Rejects Obama's Argument that Government can Control Appointment of Priests.

From The Anchoress:

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled unanimously in favor of a church’s right to be itself, and its freedom to assign its ministries:

This is an enormous and timely victory for religious freedom:

In a groundbreaking case, the Supreme Court on Wednesday held for the first time that religious employees of a church cannot sue for employment discrimination.

But the court’s unanimous decision in a case from Michigan did not specify the distinction between a secular employee, who can take advantage of the government’s protection from discrimination and retaliation, and a religious employee, who can’t.

It was, nevertheless, the first time the high court has acknowledged the existence of a “ministerial exception” to anti-discrimination laws — a doctrine developed in lower court rulings. This doctrine says the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion shields churches and their operations from the reach of such protective laws when the issue involves employees of these institutions.

At the time the SCOTUS heard the case, it was noted that both Justices Scalia and Kagan had reacted with something like shock at the government’s constitution-shredding argument:

President Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claimed during oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court last week that it can order a church to restore a fired minister to a teaching position.

But that was a claim not even the president’s handpicked appointee, the very liberal Justice Elena Kagan, could accept as she and her colleagues considered Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC. [...] The justices then rejected the argument of Leondra Kruger, Obama’s lawyer for the EEOC, who argued that there’s no ministerial exception in the Constitution, only the same rights that secular organizations possess to choose their own affiliations.

At this, Scalia exploded. “That’s extraordinary! There, black on white in the text of the Constitution, are special protections for religion. And you say it makes no difference?”

Kagan agreed with Scalia’s rejection of the argument that the First Amendment doesn’t protect churches from government ordering who they should hire as pastor or priest.

Given reports following the hearing, it’s not really shocking that the SCOTUS came down unanimously against the government’s case. But it’s reassuring, all the same.

Writing the court’s opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts said, “Allowing anti-discrimination lawsuits against religious organizations could end up forcing churches to take religious leaders they no longer want.”

“Such action interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church of control over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs,” Roberts said. “By imposing an unwanted minister, the state infringes the Free Exercise Clause, which protects a religious group’s right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments.”

But, Roberts said, since this was the first time the high court has ever considered the “ministerial exception,” it would not set hard and fast rules on who can be considered a religious employee of a religious organization.

“We are reluctant … to adopt a rigid formula for deciding when an employee qualifies as a minister,” he said. “It is enough for us to conclude, in this, our first case involving the ministerial exception, that the exception covers (Cheryl) Perich, given all the circumstances of her employment.”