Abortion rights activists aren't the only ones in an uproar over the passage of the Stupak Amendment as part of the House's healthcare reform bill. All those folks who scream about separation of Church and state whenever it suits their needs are making their voices heard, charging that the bishops are strong-arming the nation. (Even writing that sentence makes me chuckle.) Anyway, John J. Pitney Jr. over at NRO's The Corner has an excellent blog post on the sadly mistaken notion that people of faith are not allowed to voice their opinions in the public square.
He writes:
"Prof. Marci Hamilton of the Cardozo School of Law writes that the Stupak amendment 'violates the Constitution’s separation of church and state. The anti-abortion movement is plainly religious in motivation, and its lobbyists and spokespersons represent religious groups, as is illustrated by the fact that the most visible lobbyists in the Stupak Amendment’s favor have been the Catholic Bishops.'
"By this standard, Professor Hamilton would have to conclude that the 1964 Civil Rights Act is also unconstitutional. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, along with other religious leaders and groups, led the fight for its enactment. 'We needed the help of the clergy, and this was assiduously encouraged,' said Senator Hubert Humphrey. 'I have said a number of times, and I repeat it now, that without the clergy, we couldn’t have possibly passed this bill.'"
The Prof. Hamilton to whom he refers has been a leader in the national movement to open civil statute of limitations in sex abuse cases nationwide and has been single-minded in her focus on the Catholic Church alone. Of course, all of that becomes more clear when you read her latest anti-Catholic comments regarding the Stupak Amendment.
To bolster his point, Pitney includes this stunning statement by none other than Barack Obama:
"[S]ecularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King — indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history — were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their 'personal morality' into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."
Read the full post HERE.
