In an election-year decision certain to disappoint religious conservatives, the Obama administration announced Friday that church-affiliated institutions will get only one additional year to meet a new rule to cover birth control free of charge.
Friday’s announcement by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius doesn’t apply to houses of worship. Churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship were already exempt from the birth-control-coverage rule.
But in many cases, other religious-affiliated employers such as hospitals and universities traditionally haven’t provided any birth-control coverage for their employees.
So the ‘state’ can tell a religious group that it must change its ways, ways that break no laws, and do something that ‘runs against’ that religious group’s beliefs and practices.
This just put off compliance until after the election. Just a cynical ploy on the part of the administration.
Note that “separation of Church and State” only works one with the liberal/progressives and Obama. And as the state become evermore entwined in private matters look for evermore Christian persecution.
This is only a problem for socially conservative Christians. Most, if not all, mainline Protestant churches (TEC, UMC, PCUSA, ELCA, etc.) will be just fine with this health care pronouncement. They will say it advances the cause of Social Justice, although I am beginning to fear it’s becoming more like National Socialist Justice. Since Obama has already written off the “gun toting, Bible clinging” part of the electorate, I think this is designed more to solidify his base than to mollify his critics.
The term in German is gleichschaltung, coordination. The use of state power to compel a society to move in the direction the central government wants it to go. The best example of this is Germany after 1932.
Br. Michael – You are so right. I shudder to think that we may be heading down the Ein Volk, Ein Reich, … path, or as it is currently being called “We Can’t Wait.” Another eerie historical parallel I see is how closely the current POTUS rhetoric mirrors the “Share our Wealth” plan of Huey Long.
#3 and #4,
Spot on ! Can you say Gleichschaltungvernügung ?