Catholic Charities, the Obama Administration and Bigotry

During the ABC presidential debate in New Hampshire the moderators asked the candidates questions on social moral issues and ended up getting an earful.  Newt Gingrich pointed out the Obama administration's anti-Christian bias.  He blasted the Obama administration with the charge of bigotry for the admin's discrimination against Catholic Charities on key delivery of services. 


First, Josh McElveen posed this question to Rick Santorum: 

From MercatorNet: “Your position on same-sex adoption, obviously, you are in favor of traditional families, but are you going to tell someone they belong in — as a ward of the state or in foster care, rather than have two parents who want them?”

Mr Santorum answered, “My — my feeling is that this is an issue that should be — I believe the issue of marriage itself is a federal issue, that we can’t have different laws with respect to marriage. We have to have one law. Marriage is, as Newt said, a foundation institution of our country, and we have to have a singular law with respect to that. We can’t have somebody married in one state and not married in another.”

“Once we — if we were successful in establishing that, then this issue becomes moot…

Newt Gingrich went on the attack charging media bias again, along with outlining an example of the MSM's bias - anti-Christian bias. He is right to point this out. There is bookoo media bias in the MSM. Newt went onto answer the question differently. 

“I just want to raise — since we’ve spent this much time on these issues — I just want to raise a point about the news media bias. You don’t hear the opposite question asked. Should the Catholic Church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won’t accept gay couples, which is exactly what the state has done? Should the Catholic Church be driven out of providing charitable services in the District of Columbia because it won’t give in to secular bigotry?”

He went further:

“Should the Catholic Church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration on key delivery of services because of the bias and the bigotry of the administration?

“The bigotry question goes both ways. And there’s a lot more anti-Christian bigotry today than there is concerning the other side. And none of it gets covered by the news media.”

"Mitt Romney noted that Massachusetts Catholic Charities was out of the adoption business because of the Church’s fundamental beliefs."

This anti-Christian bigotry which leads to religious persecution needs to be stopped.  This is the antithesis of what America is all about, and runs contrary to our constitutional principles and rights.  So much for tolerance.... or respect for people who hold different beliefs. 

Could The Obama Administration Be More Hostile to Religious Freedom than the ACLU?

The Obama administration has been more hostile towards religious freedom than any other administration in my lifetime.  The case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC focuses on the Ministerial Exception. Obama has targeted the Ministerial Exception which is applicable to religious organizations. 


From The National Catholic Register Patrick Archbold points out that the "Ministerial Exception allows for religious organizations 'to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine.' "

Based on this right, twelve federal circuits have recognized the “ministerial exception.” (The Federal Circuit has no jurisdiction over cases that could present the issue.) The ministerial exception bars lawsuits that interfere in the relationship between a religious organization and employees who perform religious functions — most obviously, lawsuits seeking to compel a religious organization to reinstate such an employee or seeking to impose monetary liability for the selection of such employees. As the first court adopting the ministerial exception explained: “The relationship between an organized church and its ministers is its lifeblood”; allowing the state to interfere in that relationship — effectively allowing judges and juries to pick ministers — would produce “the very opposite of that separation of church and State contemplated by the First Amendment.” McClure v. Salvation Army, 460 F.2d 553, 558, 560 (5th Cir. 1972).

The question which was raised in the Hosanna case was whether protections from discrimination lawsuits would extend to employees and whether or not they could be fired for religious reasons under the exception or not.  Apparently the Obama administration's DOJ has raised the stakes. The DOJ goes so far to say that there should not be a Ministerial Objection, at all.

The Obama administration is so far off the rails that even the militant secularists at Americans United For Separation of Church and State and the ACLU didn't agree the DOJ's argument. Ed Whelan writes:

DOJ’s position — which is even more hostile to the ministerial exemption than the amicus brief filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the ACLU — thus threatens to expose churches and other religious institutions to a broad array of employment-discrimination claims that the ministerial-exception has long shielded them from. 

Obama certainly is "fundamentally transforming" America into something like Communist China. We need to stop Obama and his minions from harming America any more than they already have. He needs to be booted out of office in 2012. I think the Obama administration is more of a threat to our religious freedom than any other entity in America.