I’m a Protestant, but here is how I see it.
First, the resistance to the HHS Mandate through the courts is in accordance with the law. They are challenging them through the perfectly legal avenues of the courts. Ditto on peaceful protests against the law. Protesting is within the overall law and allowed by the first Amendment and in fact is a civil duty in American life to object to laws you find bad or unjust.
Second, there is civil disobedience, which is where you openly flout a law but, and this is a big BUT, accept the punishments laid down by the law because you still respect the legal authority as legitimate but are protesting an unjust law.
In the 60s blacks sat at whites-only counters and were arrested and accepted the arrest as the legal punishment. Sitting at white-only counters was illegal and the law was passed by the legitimate, legal authority.
And in the late-70s many Americans carried out a form of civil disobedience in response to the lowering of the speed limit on Interstates.
Civil Disobedience has the effect of first, forcing the people and authority to confront the fact that they have an immoral law by making them witness the punishments they put on you or, as in the second case, rendering them unenforceable.
The third is Revolution. It is the use of violence against the government. This is when you no longer acknowledge the government as the legitimate authority and believe that the only way to change it is through violent overthrow. It is not something to be taken lightly.
Here is Thomas Jefferson on the subject.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
The HHS Mandate is, for now, a sufferable evil -and one that, under the present system, can be challenged. Not something worth revolting about. Thankfully, I hear none supporting this act in response to the Mandate.
