Destroying Religious Freedom

Just as the Equality Act (HR 2282), that passed the House in March of this year, was about pushing a leftist agenda, so too is the Do No Harm Act (HR 1450) introduced by Rep. Joseph Kennedy of Massachusetts in February of this year.  Since its introduction, HR 1450 has gained 124 Democratic cosponsors that include Bobby Scott, Donald McEachin, Donald Beyer, Jennifer Wexton and Gerald Connolly of Virginia.

According to Kennedy his bill would safeguard the civil rights, religious freedom and dignity of every American by affirming that one person’s rights count no more or less than another.  Supporters claim that the Do No Harm Act would simply amend the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA)  to its original intent and, while assuring that religious freedom was protected, it would disallow people of faith from using it to bypass federal laws they disagree with.

As usual with the left using a seemingly harmless title and vague language is but a ruse to fool the peasants.   For example Kennedy’s bill would prevent people of faith from “imposing meaningful harm, including dignitary harm, on a third party; and discrimination against other persons, including persons who do not belong to the religion or adhere to the beliefs of those to whom the exemption is given.”

In other words, objections to providing abortion-causing drugs or refusing to take the life of an unborn child or assisting someone who wants to commit suicide would be” imposing” your religion on a third party.  Causing “dignitary harm” is the left’s way of saying you have offended someone; and “discriminating against persons of another religion” is a catch-all phrase that could include anything the left doesn’t like about people of faith believing or exercising their faith in public.

And if you still don’t believe the bill is about destruction of religious freedom, look at the organization who support its passage; organizations that include numerous LGBTQ groups, the ACLU, AIDS United, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the Center for American Progress, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Lambda Legal, NAACP, NARAL, National Abortion Federation, the Center for Transgender Equality, Planned Parenthood, and the National Partnership for Women and Families to name but a few.

It is easy to see why the Religious Freedom Restoration Act has come under attack from dark forces.  Enacted to restore the right to obey the rules of the religion of one’s conviction, to affirm that religious freedom is part of the natural rights of mankind, and that good citizenship is open to every American whether they are religious or not, RFRA goes against the current left-wing agenda of forcing same-sex marriage, abortion, assisted suicide, the legalization of pedophilia, the unscientific belief in transgenderism, etc. on all Americans.

What the left doesn’t want you to see is that the Do No Harm Act is a direct attack on religious belief, that by holding conscientious refusal to perform an act believed sinful or evil in one’s faith to be an imposition on others, it is in fact the person of faith who is being discriminated against.

By removing one of the strongest safeguards people of faith have against federal encroachments on their free exercise of religion,  the Do No Harm bill would leave believes open to any number of future violations, as long as those violations are framed in terms of a class or cause somehow hurt by their religious beliefs.

Our Constitution doesn’t confine religion to houses of worship.   Religious free exercise is not limited to speech alone, and it’s not geographically confined to the four walls of a church, synagogue, mosque or meeting house. It’s the freedom to live out one’s beliefs in your  daily life, including in how one conducts business, even when those beliefs come into conflict with the Left’s ever-evolving dogmas.

This bill claims to “do no harm” but it certainly would do a great deal to the conscience rights of believers all across this country. It would dilute the substance of religious freedom to nothing more than speech or private worship and reduce its significance to nothing more, and often less, than other political priorities.

We are in a war people and it is a war we will lose if you don’t pull your head out of the sand!

“Progressives regularly argue that the state should be empowered to take the role of church, instructing believers when they should set aside their faith. This is why editors and writers adorn the words religious freedom with quotation marks. “Religious liberty” becomes a scam, a phony ideal used by fake Christians to mask their true contempt for gays. This is the tone that’s embedded in most of the coverage.” David Harsanyi, How the Media Attack Religious Liberty, the Federalist

Source:   ‘Do No Harm Act’ Would Forbid Religious Objection to ‘Any Healthcare’ Service, By Lauretta Brown, CNS News;  Diluting the Substance of Religious Freedom, by Thomas Jipping, Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, Heritage Foundation

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