You do realize that a provision law that says “pay a fine or pay for abortifacients” is highly immoral, but NOT persecution, right? Persecution is when a group is singled out and targeted. Christians are not the only people who are pro-life, and thus we are not being persecuted. If you want to see persecution, see the vandalism of churches that goes on in South America or violence against Christians for their faith in the Middle East.
Persecution means something highly specific, e.g. someone being targeted in any way specifically because they belong to a group. Immoral laws are not persecution unless they meet this standard. The HHS mandate does not meet this standard at all, as highly immoral as it is.
Also, needless to say, when the pretend “War on Christmas” is the biggest call of persecution by Christians every year in the US, the rest of the world rolls their eyes and laughs behind our backs. Let’s not get all wound up about persecution that doesn’t exist, when we could instead be much more effective merely discussing the immorality of the laws themselves.
I am not one who argues about a “War on Christmas”. I do not demand that it be a public event, though I am at least a bit uneasy about any movement that seeks to chip away at western culture in any way. But it’s not Christmas specific.
But I think you are mistaken in saying one simply pays a fine or pays for abortifacients, as if they were somehow equivalent. They aren’t, by a long, long way. The potential fines for failing to comply with Obamacare are, with organizations having more than 50 employees are potentially ruinous even to large organizations. They can be very severe, running into millions of dollars for some.
But in determining whether something is or is not “religious persecution”, one has to look at who it affects and why that effect is important to the government to enforce it with what can be truly draconian measures. When it comes to being complicit in supplying abortifacients, and to a lesser degree contraceptives, one has to look at who it affects negatively, and the evident intent of the enforcer.
One may ask why, for example, it’s important for the government to force organizations like Little Sisters of the Poor to do something the government knew all along would be contrary to their religious principles, and which benefits their workers so little? Possibly a better example would be the Sisters of Life, whose workers are almost exclusively themselves. Yet, there are more than 50 of them, so they are forced to provide abortifacient coverage for THEMSELVES or do without healthcare coverage entirely and pay huge fines besides; fines they can’t possibly pay. And for what? So some sexually active person they hire is saved $8.00/month?
This administration knew going in that they would have effects like that. Efforts were made to amliorate the effect; to create exceptions. And yet, knowing all along that they would have the effect they have, they defined religious organization exceptions so narrowly that almost none can qualify for the exception.
People who have harmful intent rarely announce that they do. Rather, they tailor what they do to affect whom they wish, without ever admitting that’s what they intend. And when they act with almost surgical precision to affect a particular group almost exclusively, one is not excessively suspicious to conclude that affecting that group all along was, indeed, the intent. Lawsuits (particularly civil rights suits) and criminal prosecutions requiring intent are won on far less basis than the acts of this administration in tailoring the abortifacient and contraceptive mandates that “just happen” to affect particular groups with so little “scatter” among others, and then so adamantly refusing to widen them beyond a near total mandate.
I think I heard someone say that the Supreme Court has previously applied a test in religious freedom cases that goes something like this: That the state has to prove a compelling state interest to justify forcing a violation of religious freedom. If so, then it does not seem to me that there can really be said to be a compelling state interest in providing free, though inexpensive, birth control and abortifacients to the employees of a limited group when it is totally clear that it forces a violation of religious conviction and particularly when the government has other ways of ensuring that rather limited societal “benefit”.
No telling what the Court will do with Hobby Lobby, but I think the Little Sisters of the Poor case is a much clearer example of something the government should never force religious organizations to do.
ersecuted".