Tuesday, November 10, 2009
In recent years, at
academic conferences, in faith-based circles, and on blogs such as this one, the
question frequently has been posed whether political activists and politicians
committed to the sanctity of human life can survive and play any meaningful role
in the Democratic Party, given the national party’s commitments to an unlimited
abortion license and even to government sponsorship and funding of abortions. As some of our readers know, I have been
among the skeptics.
A positive answer was
delivered this past Saturday. Pro-life
Democratic Representative Bar Stupak of Michigan, supported by some 40 other
pro-life Democrats, were willing to stand up against both party leaders in the House
and President Obama and refuse to lend their support to the party’s
highest priority legislation, the health care reform bill, without an amendment
to prevent any use of government funding to promote elective abortions. In sum, pro-life Democrats insisted upon a
health care reform proposal that did not contradict the very premise of health by
dealing death to unborn children.
Sadly, the battle is not yet over for a health care reform bill that does not destroy the health of the unborn. Democratic leaders in the Senate are expected to block full protection for the unborn in the Senate bill (link and link). The House Democratic leadership that permitted a vote on the Stupak Amendment already is cynically planning to strip it out of the legislation in the eventual and secretive conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate versions of health care reform (assuming the Senate is able to pass any bill) (link).
Not
surprisingly by this point, President Obama too has expressed his opposition to the Stupak
Amendment, offering the disingenuous argument that government subsidies for
private insurance that provide for elective abortions are not the equivalent of
government funding of abortions (link). Adding one more item to the
growing list of pro-abortion actions by this Administration, the overtures of
the Obama campaign last year to Catholics and pro-life Americans have long since been exposed as convenient and empty rhetoric.
As a sad reminder of where most Democrats stand on this matter, Democratic Representative Lynn Woolsey of California responded to the success of the Stupak Amendment by calling for the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the support of the Catholic bishops for this legislative protection of human rights for the unborn. On behalf of the bishops’ conference, Kathy Saile responded: “We are very grateful for the courage of the Pro-Life Dems who helped lead this effort. The most important thing is that the House passed a health care bill and that it included the Stupak amendment. This was a true grassroots effort. There were too many people involved to try to list them all. The USCCB met with whomever would meet with us and listen to our concerns.”
For now, we can congratulate Pro-Life Democrats in the House, thank God for their witness, and pray for their perseverance as the legislative battle continues.
Greg Sisk
... and Trinity College Dublin law prof Gerry Whyte:
I was intrigued by
the apparent suggestion from Archbishop Burke that Ted Kennedy should have been
denied a Catholic funeral. Throughout the years of the Troubles in N. Ireland,
the Church never once denied a funeral to any republican paramilitary, even
though republican violence was manifestly at odds with the Church's teaching.
Nor was it ever suggested that, in permitting such funerals, the Church was
backsliding from its persistent condemnation of republican violence.
But was Archbishop
Burke objecting to the fact that Ted Kennedy received a Catholic funeral or to
the fact that Cardinal O'Malley presided?
Interesting story, here.
How would *you* have voted in Brown, and on what basis?
At least, I think we can: namely, that John Allen's book will almost certainly be quite good!
Same-Sex Family Equality and Religious Freedom
Abstract:
In the spring of 2009, the
legislatures of Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont became the first
in the U.S. to enact laws recognizing the legality of same-sex civil marriage.
The legislation in all four states included provisions designed to protect the
freedom of clergy and religious communities that do not want to recognize
same-sex marriage. The legislation in several of the states also included
provisions designed to insulate religious organizations from obligations that
might arise from the legalization of same-sex marriage – for example, with
respect to adoption or the provision of housing to married couples. Despite
academic and political prodding, however, none of the states included provisions
designed to exempt public employees, or private vendors in the wedding industry,
from pre-existing legal obligations to serve without regard to the same-sex
character of a marriage or family.
This paper develops a typology of
conflict between same-sex marriage and religious freedom, and builds on that
typology to analyze the issues raised by this new legislation. In particular,
the paper defends constitutionally distinctive freedoms for clergy and houses of
worship with respect to the celebration of marriages; analyzes and critiques
proposals that would allow public employees and private vendors to assert
conscientious objections to serving same-sex couples; and assesses the
circumstances in which religious entities, including religious charities and
educational institutions, should be obligated to serve same-sex families on
equal terms.
[Downloadable here.]
Hello All,
Many thanks to Rick and Michael for their thoughts on the Pakistan post. I'll respond to these helpful thoughts in full a bit later today. For the moment, let me do three quick things:
First, to reassure Rick and all other MOJ readers that I do not wish to analogize social conservatives to acid-throwers and so forth. My concern, rather, is with paranoid radicals: the folk who continue to propagate birth certificate, Obama-is-a-vampire, his-wife-is-a-shemale, etc. etc. nonsense with abandon; who seek simply to stop their opponents even from speaking, rather than to refute them; and who seriously threaten, I think, to oust sane Burkean conservatives (whom they lumb together with more "liberal" Republicans as "RINO"s) from a once venerable political party. But more on this soon.
Second, to crow about having posted my remarks two days before Krugman's column!
And third, to commend to you, with expressions of humility, this recent piece on the health care reform debate -- http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1484768 -- which is soon to come out in the economic policy journal Challenge.
Thanks again and more soon,
Bob
I expect to hear crazy calls for the IRS to investigate the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for making their views known regarding the Stupak amendment. I don't really expect to hear them from sitting members of Congress. Representative Lynn Woolsey, displaying both political intolerance and ignorance of the law, laments:
When I visit churches in my district, we are very careful to keep everything “non-political” to protect their tax-exempt status.
The IRS is less restrictive about church involvement in efforts to influence legislation than it is about involvement in campaigns and elections.
Given the political behavior of USCCB in this case, maybe it shouldn’t be.
This weekend (Thurs.-Sat.) is the annual Fall Conference of Notre Dame's Center for Ethics & Culture. "The Summons of Freedom: Virtue, Sacrifice, and the Common Good" is the theme. (The full schedule is here.) This conference, for me, is always one of the highlights of the year.
Many MOJ-ers and MOJ-friends will be on hand (including not just Michael Scaperlanda, but an additional complement of Scaperlandas!). If you are around and awake on Saturday morning, my own lecture on "Religious Freedom in America today" starts at 10:45 a.m. (Of course, those of you interested in hearing from a great scholar, instead of from me, will go hear Russ Hittinger at the same time.)
Come join the fun! (Registration, etc., here.)
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