Does freedom of religion include forcing your religious beliefs on others?

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interestedman said:
If you don’t provide birth control to your employees because of your religious beliefs, and 100% of your employees don’t have the same religious beliefs as yourself, you are forcing your religious beliefs on them. So does freedom of religion extend to forcing your religious morals on others? If a bunch of people work for me is it right for me to make them conform to my religious beliefs?
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Rejecting the HHS mandate does not force my religion on others – they are still perfectly free to go and purchase contraceptives and abortifacients, like they’ve been doing for years.

*We’re not forcing our religious beliefs on you, we just object to funding yours! * Especially when it violates our beliefs.
 
Rence said:
No, I’m sorry, I do not see the difference between obeying the mandate and paying taxes. The two are the same to me, and result in citizens paying for the cost of ABCs, and both are government mandated. In the one case, taxes get put into a pool, out of which ABCs are funded. And in the other case, premiums get put into a pool, out of which ABCs are funded.
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It’s not a tax, it’s a penalty, remember???
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Rence:
In addition, the Cardinal (and as far as I can tell, and until I’m corrected with proof, only the cardinal) is holding the employers responsible for the mandate, yet Catholic employees who subscribe to insurance policies that include ABCs services are not. Sorry, I don’t get it…there is no difference.
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If you can find anyone in the Church hierarchy other than Micheal Pfleger, to support your interpretation, your position might have some merit, but the Bishops, and (at lease one) Cardinal have deemed it so.
 
Rence said:
And again, the mandate does not interfere with the free exercise of religion because it took birth control out of the hands of the employers and put it on the shoulders of the insurance companies.
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I guess “insurance companies” are now pawns of the government and can be told to do anything the government wishes, 1st Amendment be darned?

I, for one, have not taken Obama’s bait on this “accomodation.” A Catholic diocese, for example, now offers to pay for a large percentage of a health insurance plan for its employees–a plan that does not include these HHS-mandated items. The employees contribute about 15% of the cost of the plan. By the time next August 1 rolls around, that diocese and those employees are going to be forced to include the HHS-mandated items. So what if the insurance company heroically swallows the additional cost of the coverage. The diocese is still paying for that plan, as are the employees. The government has mandated that the diocese and employees purchase a particular product that contradicts their free exercise of religion.
 
Nita said:
Rejecting the HHS mandate does not force my religion on others – they are still perfectly free to go and purchase contraceptives and abortifacients, like they’ve been doing for years.

We’re not forcing our religious beliefs on you, we just object to funding yours! Especially when it violates our beliefs.
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Strange, isn’t it?

It’s a “right” that Americans have had since December of 2011. Somehow, we survided as a country for the previous 235 years without the right to “free” contraceptives that someone else pays for.

As the great Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote:
The chief tenet of postmodernism is that truth and facts are arbitrary constructs, set up by the privileged to manipulate others less fortunate. In the case of our first postmodernist president, Barack Obama, there cannot be facts, past or present, only a set of shifting assertions that gain credence to the degree that they prove transitorily useful for progressive causes…
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nationalreview.com/articles/313242/obama-never-never-land-victor-davis-hanson
 
scipio337 said:
As the great Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote:
The chief tenet of postmodernism is that truth and facts are arbitrary constructs, set up by the privileged to manipulate others less fortunate. In the case of our first postmodernist president, Barack Obama, there cannot be facts, past or present, only a set of shifting assertions that gain credence to the degree that they prove transitorily useful for progressive causes…

nationalreview.com/articles/313242/obama-never-never-land-victor-davis-hanson
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That quote can apply to many liberals who post here.
 
interestedman said:
If you don’t provide birth control to your employees because of your religious beliefs, and 100% of your employees don’t have the same religious beliefs as yourself, you are forcing your religious beliefs on them.
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I think you are answering the wrong question. Anyone who owns or manages a business is constantly defining what is moral and ethical for his/her organization and expecting employees to abide by his/her decisions.
  • If a business owner doesn’t want to be open on Sunday or Saturday, that is “forcing” the employees to adapt to the owner’s beliefs in terms of their employment.
  • If the business owner has a policy that there will be no profanity used in the workplace because he believes it is sinful, the employees will either adapt or find other employment.
  • If a business owner insitutes an ethics policy based on her religious beliefs above and beyond what is required by the law, the employee will comply or face disciplinary measures.
  • If a company sets its calendar to give employees off on Christmas Day and Good Friday but not Yom Kippur or Eid al-Fitr, that’s the schedule the employees abide by.
No one has a problem with business owners making these decisions based on their religious beliefs. But when it comes to birth control, abortion, sterilization, etc. somehow it’s a matter of forcing others to live by the owners religious standards. The question that you should ask is “Why are these examples different than the ones being debated now?”

answer: people have made sex their new god
So does freedom of religion extend to forcing your religious morals on others? If a bunch of people work for me is it right for me to make them conform to my religious beliefs?
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Freedom of religion (as a First Ammendment concept) isn’t about the relationship between you and your employees. It’s about the relationship between you and the government. In the US, at least, almost every employee is considered an employee at will. That means that the employee is free to leave whenever they don’t like something on the job or even “just because”. If a company has a rule or policy based on the owner’s religion and the employee doesn’t like it, the employee can just quit. The business owner can’t force anything on an employee because he can’t force the employee to stay employed. But if the employee chooses to stay employed, he is also choosing to abide by the owners policies, even those that are based on the owners religious beliefs.
 
edwest2 said:
The Federal government, under no law, does not have the right to force the general public to buy a product or service.

Lawsuits have been filed.

washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/hhs-mandate-shouldnt-require-leaving-faith-values-at-home/2012/08/02/gJQART9tSX_blog.html

blog.heritage.org/2012/07/18/evangelical-wheaton-college-joins-hhs-mandate-lawsuit/

becketfund.org/hhsinformationcentral/

It’s not just a Catholic thing.

Peace,
Ed
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This is what angers me most of all about this whole thing. I would like to hear someone try to explain why the government being given the power to compel people to purchase products is anything but a recipe for disaster.
 
interestedman said:
If you don’t provide birth control to your employees because of your religious beliefs, and 100% of your employees don’t have the same religious beliefs as yourself, you are forcing your religious beliefs on them. So does freedom of religion extend to forcing your religious morals on others? If a bunch of people work for me is it right for me to make them conform to my religious beliefs?
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When the time comes that an individual is actually *forced *to work for a religious organization, your question will merit deeper consideration.
 
interestedman said:
If you don’t provide birth control to your employees because of your religious beliefs, and 100% of your employees don’t have the same religious beliefs as yourself, you are forcing your religious beliefs on them. So does freedom of religion extend to forcing your religious morals on others? If a bunch of people work for me is it right for me to make them conform to my religious beliefs?
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You have it backward. Others are forcing their beliefs (the accommodation thereof) upon Catholics.
 
Employees pay a portion of the premiums in most cases. Also, if the government mandates that the insurance companies themselves include certain benefits into all plans (such as mandating that the insurance companies include ABCs coverage in their women’s health benefits package), then the employer has nothing to do with it.
 
interestedman said:
If you don’t provide birth control to your employees because of your religious beliefs, and 100% of your employees don’t have the same religious beliefs as yourself, you are forcing your religious beliefs on them. So does freedom of religion extend to forcing your religious morals on others? If a bunch of people work for me is it right for me to make them conform to my religious beliefs?
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I am Woman hear me roar
Now somebody buy all my stuff for me.
 
Rence said:
And again, the mandate does not interfere with the free exercise of religion because it took birth control out of the hands of the employers and put it on the shoulders of the insurance companies.
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Judge John Kane ruled that it does interfere with free exercise of religion. Your point makes no sense, the insurance company is not paying for the drugs, the employer pays
 
_Abyssinia said:
Judge John Kane ruled that it does interfere with free exercise of religion. Your point makes no sense, the insurance company is not paying for the drugs, the employer pays
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The employee payes too…

And, If the Judge ruled that it interfered with free exercise of religion then more employers will get that exemption. So if it bothers you that much keep making noise so it will be heard. That’s the only way it will change.
 
Self insured businesses still have to purchase a plan from an insurance company. The mandate made it so that across the board for all insurance companies, all insurance companies have to include ABCs in their women’s healthcare package. That’s a standard that was set by the mandate, which makes the inclusion of ABCs in the women’s healthcare package a responsibility of the insurance company, not the employer.
 
Rence said:
The employee payes too…

And, If the Judge ruled that it interfered with free exercise of religion then more employers will get that exemption. So if it bothers you that much keep making noise so it will be heard. That’s the only way it will change.
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How does the employee pay? Sacrificing religious freedom is not worth $6 for a month’s worth of birth control
 
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