Americans United got out the first reply to the Manhattan Declaration (it came out so quickly afterward that I suspect they just cobbled together random expressions from their Viewing With Alarm Phrase Generator), but other Viewers With Alarm no doubt have or will also jump with their warnings about the coming Theocratic Apocalypse. One such VWA is Robert Parham, editor of EthicsDaily.com and director of the Baptist Center for Ethics:

Before reading the latest moral declaration from the Christian Right about their troubled souls and moral priorities, I e-mailed early Friday morning a national religion reporter about the statement. I wrote that if these leaders’ “hierarchy of issues” were abortion, homosexuality and religious freedom, then they “are neither reading from the Bible, nor listening to Jesus.”

Yeah. Everybody knows that Jesus was most concerned about climate change and government-financed health insurance, which He discussed, per what follows, in His “Ethics for the 21st Century” discourse that has been inserted when nobody was looking at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, at least in the Green Version.

I suggested, “These issues are secondary to what Jesus said in his Nazareth Manifesto in Luke 4, the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, the Great Commandment in Matthew 22, and the Great Judgment passage in Matthew 25. And let’s not forget the 10 Commandments and the prophets.”

None of which had anything to do with either issues of life and death, or marriage. For instance, love of neighbor couldn’t have anything to do with abortion, since the unborn aren’t yet my neighbor, right? And Jesus’ condemnation of divorce and adultery couldn’t have any bearing on how we conceive of Christian marriage or sexuality. Jesus had no concern for any of this modern stuff at all. I mean, Jesus never even heard of embryonic stem cell research, so how could He be against it?

When the “Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience” was released on the DeMossNews.com Web site, after an event at the National Press Club, I found nothing really new. The document centered on abortion, gay marriage and anxiety about Christians being persecuted, having their consciences coerced.

While the declaration does have to do with the three items he mentions, it is by no means about those alone. I suspect Parham didn’t read it carefully, but simply put mental check marks whenever he saw something he expected to see, and skipped the rest.

Yet again, the Christian Right bypassed the Nazareth Manifesto, Sermon on the Mount, the Great Commandment and the Great Judgment passage. While they did cite Jesus from John 10:10 and Matthew 22:21, they made Jesus a secondary moral guide to their political agenda of criticizing President Obama and shrinking the Bible’s moral vision.

On the other hand, maybe he didn’t read it at all. The president is only mentioned in it twice, Congress only twice, and the “present administration” only once. The concern expressed is much more of a cultural one than a narrowly political one, and isn’t even concerned exclusively with the United States. For instance, the section on life concludes:

Our concern is not confined to our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and
“ethnic cleansing,” the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research. And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.

But none of that has anything to do with that love-your-neighbor, caring-for-the-least-of-these stuff, so why pay it any mind?

Some 18 of the 149 listed signatories are members of the fundamentalist-controlled Southern Baptist Convention. Two of the drafters are Southern Baptists, including Chuck Colson, the perennial right-wing spokesman. Other signatories are James Dobson, Gary Bauer and Tony Perkins. Among the mostly white, elderly evangelical males are a few Catholics–William Donohue and a couple of archbishops, as well as conservative Presbyterians and Anglicans.

This screed wouldn’t be complete without an ad homimem attack on the usual boogeymen. The mention of the Southern Baptists is simply a bigoted stereotype. One of the Southern Baptist drafters, Dr. Timothy George, is a widely respected church historian who is anything but a fundamentalist (if, that is, we use a definition of “fundamentalist” that means something other than, “anyone to the right of Robert Parham”). There are at least 21 Catholics (including eight, not “a couple,” of archbishops) among the signers, maybe more–not all were identified in such a way as to make their denominational affiliation clear–and at least half a dozen Orthodox, including the head of the Orthodox Church in America. Yeah, I know, details, details.

The document, albeit predictable, does offer a surprising note, one of utter theological and historical misdirection. The signatories seem to align themselves with the Christians who opposed slavery, supported women’s rights, led the civil rights movement and spoke up for those with AIDS.

Talk about mendacity. Many of these signatories are the spiritual heirs of the Christian slaveholders. They are the ones who opposed the civil rights movement, abandoned public schools for private Christian schools, demonized government funding for the poor and disadvantaged. They are the ones who said AIDS was a gay disease and refused to address the issue for 20 years. As for the rights and equality of women, for heaven’s sake, the Southern Baptist signatories believe women should be homemakers, helpmates to their husbands who are the breadwinners. Southern Baptist fundamentalists believe women are unworthy of ordination.

And at this point Parham simply descends into name-calling. He makes no effort to distinguish between individuals, no effort to acknowledge what any of them may have done in the past, or what they have believed or taught, and simply tars them all with the most odious brushes he can come up with. Makes you wonder if Parham isn’t actually the director of the Baptist Center for Lack of Ethics.

That’s the title of a new statement that was released today bearing the signatures over 125 Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant evangelical leaders. It focuses on life issues such as abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and assisted suicide; marriage; and religious liberty, especially in terms of the encroachments of government mandates that would override the beliefs and teaching of religious groups. The whole thing is absolutely worth your time, and if you agree with what you read you have the opportunity to sign it by going here.

It’s too long to look at in detail, but I have to say that my favorite passage, and the one that is making heads explode at places such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State, is the very last paragraph:

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

This seems to me to be a pretty straight-forward statement of what even the Rev. Barry Lynn of AU supposedly professes, which is that there are laws that Christians are bound to disobey is they conflict with what God requires of His people. But to AU, this is all about the theocracy:

At a press conference today, Religious Right leaders and Roman Catholic bishops unveiled a joint statement criticizing laws that allow reproductive choice and same-sex marriage. The “Manhattan Declaration” indicates that participating religious leaders will defy such laws if they conflict with church doctrines.

Americans United charges that the real agenda is not protecting the religious freedom of churches, but rather attempting to impose those doctrines on all Americans by government decree.

Said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, “This declaration is certain to be deeply divisive. These religious leaders want to see their doctrines imposed by force of law, and that goes against everything America stands for.

Because as we all know, the only people who are allowed to impose their religious doctrine are the religious left, whose positions on issues are those of the staff of AU, and whose lobbying efforts on behalf of those positions are, therefore, hunky dory with the so-called First Amendment watchdog.

Among the signers are Leith Anderson of the National Association of Evangelicals, Joseph Bottum of First Things, Bryan Chapell of Covenant Theological Seminary, Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship, Archbishop Robert Duncan of the Anglican Church in North America, Maggie Gallagher of the Institute for Marriage, Dr. Robert George of Princeton, Father Johannes Jacobse of OrthodoxyToday.org, Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, Dr. Peter Kreeft of Boston College, Bishop Martyn Minns of the Convocation of Anglicans of North America, Dr. Albert Mohler of Southern Baptist Seminary, David Neff of Christianity Today, Dr. Thomas Oden of Drew University, Dr. Cornelius Plantinga of Calvin Seminary, Dr. Ron Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias, and the Catholic archbishops of Denver, Kansas City, Louisville, Minneapolis, Newark, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. In other words, a high-powered cross section of both leaders and thinkers among conservative Christians in America. Check it out.

So have you seen this nifty little Christian item:

Sounds like it’s based on the call to pray for those in authority (1 Timothy 2:1-2), right? Not exactly: here’s Psalm 109:8 with some context:

May his days be few;
may another take his office!
May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow!
May his children wander about and beg,
seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit!
May the creditor seize all that he has;
may strangers plunder the fruits of his toil!
Let there be none to extend kindness to him,
nor any to pity his fatherless children!

(Psalm 109:8-12)

It seems former Southern Baptist Convention vice president Wiley Drake has started a trend with his practice of “imprecatory prayer” directed at those he considers his enemies. Drake has prayed for bad stuff to happen not only to the president, but to abortionist George Tiller, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and others, in the latter instance at least based on what look solely like political differences. Drake isn’t alone in his vengefulness towards those whom he thinks are God’s enemies, though this is hardly a widespread thing among conservative Christians. The real point is this: if Paul could tell his readers to pray for those in authority in the Roman Empire–a pagan state that persecuted Christians with some frequency, and obviously didn’t operate according to Christian principles–without suggesting they pray for bad stuff to happen to their rulers, nether should we. We can disagree as fiercely as we can with anyone in authority, without wishing personal ill to come to them because of our disagreements. Millions of Christians throughout the world, living in far worse conditions than Rev. Drake has ever had to endure, refrain from doing so, instead praying as Paul directed, “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” Rev. Drake and his allies should try that instead, and keep their death fantasies to themselves.

(Hat tip: Alan.)

The United States Roman Catholic Bishops always have a hidden agenda, which is to impose their faith and value systems on the rest of the nation.

–Bishop John Shelby Spong, apostle of tolerance and future presidential candidate of the Know Nothing Party

The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (lobbying arm of the god of child sacrifice) has put together what it is calling a “Stop Stupak Toolkit for Clergy and Congregations.” It’s full of abortiony goodness–a sample bulletin insert, guide to the “Interfaith Weekend of Action for Women’s Health” (a lobbying effort, but not the kind the Catholic bishops engaged in, we swear), etc. What I liked best was the suggested prayer to the god of dead children:

A SAMPLE PRAYER FOR CHOICE
As People of God We Seek Justice, by Reverend Roselyn Smith Withers

Leader: Today, we pray together in the presence of one another and the people of God. We remember the words of the prophets and the great teachers. We call upon the spirits of our ancestors and ask for the blessings of the Creator of us all.

All: As people of God, we seek justice.

Leader: We pray together, not because we must but because we may. We pray together because our commonalities are greater than our differences and because in our togetherness, our differences are honored and God’s vastness is praised.

All: As people of God, we seek justice.

Leader: We stand together, recognizing the risks of solidarity, affirming the power of our presence and celebrating the pro-choice legacy of courage and commitment, justice and peace.

All: As people of God, we seek justice.

Leader: We stand together, remembering the doctors, health care workers and the other innocent people who have given their lives in the struggle for our right to choose.

All: As people of God, we seek justice. We are praying people who are pro-choice. We accept the responsibility, claim the tradition and we embrace the right to choose prayerfully with the knowledge that God is with us in all things. AMEN. [Emphasis added.]

Three observations: 1) Considering there are no Confucianists or American Indian groups involved with RCRC, who exactly is supposed to invoke “the spirits of our ancestors”? Do even Unitarians do this? 2) There is no mention of abortion–it’s as if these people are upholding the right to choose chocolate or vanilla ice cream. Maybe it makes them feel better to not mention what it is they want the choice to do. 3) Notice what’s missing in this “prayer”? Any words at all addressed to the Almighty! Any congregation reciting this is just a bunch of people talking to themselves.

In the comments on this post, “David” offers a URL and says, “If you want a clear example of churches violating IRS rules it doesn’t get much clearer than this.” The URL in question is from the Houston Chronicle, concerns the upcoming mayoral election, and yes, it doesn’t get much clearer than the opposition to a candidate by churches:

A cluster of socially conservative Houstonians is planning a campaign to discourage voters from choosing City Controller Annise Parker in the December mayoral runoff because she is a lesbian, according to multiple ministers and conservatives involved in the effort.

The group is motivated by concerns about a “gay takeover” of City Hall, given that two other candidates in the five remaining City Council races are also openly gay, as well as national interest driven by the possibility that Houston could become the first major U.S. city to elect an openly gay woman.

Another primary concern is that Parker or other elected officials would seek to overturn a 2001 city charter amendment that prohibits the city from providing benefits to the domestic partners of gay and lesbian employees.

“The bottom line is that we didn’t pick the battle, she did, when she made her agenda and sexual preference a central part of her campaign,” said Dave Welch, executive director of the Houston Area Pastor Council, numbering more than 200 senior pastors in the Greater Houston area. “National gay and lesbian activists see this as a historic opportunity. The reality is that’s because they’re promoting an agenda which we believe to be contrary to the concerns of the community and destructive to the family.”

Welch said he had “no doubt” there would be numerous independent advocacy efforts urging voters not to choose Parker, most of which would involve mail.

Yeah, there are issues involved, but the open opposition to a specific candidate (partially as a result of her sexual orientation, no less) strikes me as being in blatant defiance of the IRS standard. It isn’t just endorsements of candidates that is prohibited, but specific opposition to one (especially when there are only two, at which point the opposition becomes de facto endorsement of the other candidate). Houston’s pastors are free to speak out about issues connected to homosexuality all they want, but they should keep out of the business of trumpeting what they think of specific candidates.

UPDATE: The question has been raised whether the Houston Area Pastors Council is, in fact, a tax exempt organization. It is.

This one isn’t just your average sore loser, however, but a member of Congress–Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) who ought to know better than to write threatening stuff like this at Politico:

I expect political hardball on any legislation as important as the health care bill.

I just didn’t expect it from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Who elected them to Congress?

Gee, did the bishops vote on the bill? I must have missed that.

The role the bishops played in the pushing the Stupak amendment, which unfairly restricts access for low-income women to insurance coverage for abortions, was more than mere advocacy.

They seemed to dictate the finer points of the amendment, and managed to bully members of Congress to vote for added restrictions on a perfectly legal surgical procedure.

Actually, as Rep. Woolsey fully well knows, there are no “added restrictions on a perfectly legal surgical procedure.” There are only restrictions on who pays for it. As for their “dictating” on the amendment, that’s nothing more than what corporate and labor lobbyists do every single day on Capitol Hill, as Rep. Woolsey also know. As for “bullying,” you’ve got to wonder what they did. They can’t give money, so they couldn’t turn off the spigot. They can’t guarantee votes, so that can’t be it. They have no power at all over non-Catholics, can’t even threaten them with excommunication. Maybe they used harsh language.

And this political effort was subsidized by taxpayers, since the Council enjoys tax-exempt status.

Here’s where things start to get ugly. Churches are not “subsidized” by the taxpayers, as I’m sure Rep. Woolsey also knows. The Supreme Court specifically addressed this subject in 1970 when it ruled in Walz v. Tax Commission:

Obviously a direct money subsidy would be a relationship pregnant with involvement and, as with most governmental grant programs, could encompass sustained and detailed administrative relationships for enforcement of statutory or administrative standards, but that is not this case. . . . The government does not transfer part of its revenue to churches but simply abstains from demanding that the church support the state. No one has ever suggested that tax exemption has converted libraries, art galleries or hospitals into arms of the state or employees “on the public payroll.”

Mentioning the tax exemption is a veiled threat that she makes explicit a little later down:

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.

What the IRS actually says about efforts to influence legislation by tax exempt non-profits is this:

In general, no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation (commonly known as lobbying).  A 501(c)(3) organization may engage in some lobbying, but too much lobbying activity risks loss of tax-exempt status.

Does anyone really think that most of what the USCCB does is legislative lobbying? Anyone who knows anything about the organization would have to say no, unless of course they have a political reason for refusing to acknowledge reality.

Lynn Woolsey is, of course, no common crank. She’s a legislator of some experience, and some clout. It’s a rather shocking spectacle to see one of the people’s representatives threatening a religious denomination because she lost a debate in Congress.

In the vein of the previous post, we have another set of sore losers who are trying to intimidate those who disagree with them. In this case, it has to do with Maine’s referendum to ban gay marriage, which passed last week 53% to 47%. For Maine Marriage Equality, there’s no question of accepting defeat gracefully, or simply rolling up their sleeves and getting back to work to change the voters’ minds. No, they want to sic the IRS on their opponents in Maine’s churches:

You are probably already aware of churches that supported and actively promoted a “YES” vote on Question 1. Please take the time to file an IRS complaint against them. Examples of supporting documentation to include with your complaint are pamphlets or other material created and/or distributed by the church or religious organization, photographs that show attempts to influence legislation (see below), witness statements or recordings of individuals who were aware of the campaign activities, and any other evidence that may prove a church or religious organization attempted to influence the public to vote “YES” on Question 1. With your help, we can reaffirm our Constitutional Separation of Church and State and ensure that in the future, nobody’s civil rights are stripped away by religious fanatics attempting to force their religion on all of us.

The reference at the end to church-state separation is one of the most blatantly dishonest things I’ve ever seen spewed forth by a political organization. There is no mention at all on MME’s web site of the hundreds of churches and religious leaders who agreed with them MME in opposing the referendum. Apparently, whether one violates the First Amendment is dependent upon what political position you take when you engage in a campaign for or against a public policy referendum.

The larger point, however, is this. What the MME is trying to do is criminalize dissent from their preferred political and moral position. In seeking to bring the wrath of the IRS down on those who disagree with them (a process which, because of the expense that is potentially involved, is designed to scare opponents of gay marriage into staying out of any future debate on the issue), MME is exhibiting one of the prime characteristics of authoritarians everywhere–using the law, and law enforcement agencies, to silence opposition. It’s a repulsive practice that the IRS will hopefully refuse to be party to.

(Via Alliance Alert.)

If one reads the First Amendment carefully, one notices that there are no caveats in the rights enshrined there. There’s nothing that says Americans have freedom of speech unless they are Democrats. There’s nothing that says Americans have freedom of assembly, unless they are Mormons. There’s nothing that says Americans have the freedom to petition their government, unless they are members of the clergy. Of course, I’m only reading the words, rather than the signs of the political times. Bill Press, former Catholic seminarian turned radio talk show host, fills us in the on the effects of the latter on the former:

A carefully-crafted piece of legislation – the result of months of debate and consideration by three different House committees – was before the House for a final vote. But, at the eleventh hour, lobbyists for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops descended on the Capitol, declared they could not accept provisions in the bill restricting federal funding of abortion, demanded that the language be changed – and dutiful Democrats did just what the bishops ordered.

In so doing, they might as well have tossed the First Amendment, and its separation of church and state, right out the window.

Because the bishops, by virtue of being Christians who hold positions of the authority in their church, apparently forfeit the rights of free speech and government petition when the don the collar. Heaven and the Constitution forbid that elected representatives should actually listen to, and even–yikes!–take the views of their constituents into account before casting their votes. Amazingly, there are no reports of any middle age or older men standing on the floor of the House as the vote was being taken, croziers poised to knock unconscious anyone who defied the decree of their Popish master, but maybe Press has secret information beamed directly from the Capitol to him through his tinfoil hat.

Pro-choice organizations are furious at Democrats for approving the tightest restrictions on women’s reproductive rights since Roe v. Wade. And rightfully so….

But civil liberty advocates should be equally angry over such a blatant violation of the Constitution. In effect, members of Congress gave Catholic bishops a veto over federal legislation: power that no group of religious leaders should hold over a secular, popularly-elected Congress.

WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!! Those mean old celibates, they went in there, or they sent their minions up the Hill, and they, they…they TALKED AND STUFF! They said what they thought, and it wasn’t what I think! And those stupid old poopy-headed congresspeople LISTENED TO THEM! It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair! It’s against the rules! The rules say poopy-headed congresspeople are only supposed to listen to ME and nice people in suits from the National Council of Churches!

Of course, Press isn’t along in stamping his feet and holding his breath until he turns blue. As noted in the previous post, Barry Lynn of Americans United, Carlton Veazey and allies in the pro-abortion religious left, and others are sounding like the 19th century Know Nothing Party. Here’s a great example, from James Ridgeway writing in Mother Jones:

So American public policy on health care and reproductive rights is being shaped not by a majority of voters or even a majority of Catholic voters, but by a bunch of celibate men in robes, answering to a reactionary 82-year-old German in the Vatican.

Or how about this, from Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards:

“It is extremely unfortunate that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and anti-choice opponents were able to hijack the health care reform bill in their dedicated attempt to ban all legal abortion in the United States.

Or former CNN, now MSNBC  journalist Bob Franken:

Those who believe the First Amendment should prohibit ANY ties between our government and religious organizations have gotten strong support for their arguments in recent days.

It seems that these deals with the angels have strings attached that fly right into the First Amendment’s prohibition against government’s ”… establishment of religion…”

You get the idea. For some on the left, the First Amendment’s guarantees apply to all Americans…except those who wear Roman collars and happen to be on the winning side now and then.

UPDATE: Two things, actually. One is a line from a statement made on the RCRC web site by pro-abortion magnate Carlton Veazey:

This action by the House is an unacceptable denial of our constitutional right to live according to our own moral beliefs.

This is a mistranslation of what Veazey meant to say. What he meant to say was this:

This action by the House is an unacceptable denial of our constitutional right to have the taxpayers pony up for our moral beliefs.

The other has to do with that quote from Barry Lynn that I mentioned yesterday. Here it is again:

Americans United Executive Director Barry W. Lynn told NPR he is “horrified” by what happened.

“What we saw over the weekend was an act of unparalleled arrogance on the part of church officials,” Lynn said. “Basically, they were claiming they would kill health care for the sick and the poor if the Democrats didn’t give them the votes to impose religious doctrine into law. It’s scandalous that this religious group has such extraordinary control over the fate of women’s lives in this country.”

The more I’ve thought about this, the more revealing it is about what Americans United is really about. AU has always claimed that churches, and more specifically leaders such as bishops and pastors, were free to seek to influence public policy debates. They may not endorse candidates, AU says, but they are free to engage the issues of the day. Now here we have Lynn saying, in essence, that the Catholic bishops, in exercising their rights to free speech and government petition, somehow “controlled” the debate, and that they had the power to “kill” the health care bill by opposing it. Not only does this reduce the representatives to automatons doing the bishops’ bidding; not only does this sound like good old-fashioned anti-Catholic nativism; but this is essentially saying that certain religious individuals and organizations don’t in fact have the right to try to influence debates on public policy, at least not if there’s any chance that their efforts might bear fruit. For years, the National Council of Churches, Lynn’s own United Church of Christ, and other mainline denominations and interest groups have lobbied Congress on all manner of issues. They don’t hesitate to say that the positions they take are founded in their particular religious vision and beliefs. Their actions have never, ever drawn so much as a “tsk, tsk” from Barry Lynn or the organization he leads. And yet now he has the unmitigated gall to be “horrified” at the Catholic bishops, and to denounce their efforts to “impose religious doctrine” on Americans.

Pathetic.

The usual suspects (the Rev. Carlton Veazey, the Rev. Deborah Haffner, Jon O’Brien of the Potemkin organization Catholics for Choice, and the high priest of Moloch “national chaplain” of Planned Parenthood) have issued a statement decrying the Stupak amendment to the health care reform bill that passed the House of Representatives last weekend. In it, they call for taxpayers to fund any abortion, any time, for any reason:

We come together to condemn the passage of the Stupak amendment, which if passed by the Senate will effectively deny coverage for abortion services to women covered by the new federal health care plan.

In fact, it will prevent the use of federal dollars to pay for abortions, a policy that has been in place since 1978 and has had the annual support of a majority of both houses of Congress, regardless of which party was in power, ever since. It does not prevent women from obtaining private insurance to cover abortion if they choose, which is the present situation. Some people, such as the leaders of NARAL, have tried to claim that the Stupak amendment prohibits insurers who take federal subsidy money from offering abortion coverage, but both the White House and the House leadership have disputed this. If I’m reading the text of the amendment correctly, I think the latter are both right about that.

We are appalled that religious leaders intervened to impose their specific religious doctrine into health care reform, not recognizing that women must have the right to apply or reject the principles of their own faith in making the decision as to whether or not abortion is appropriate in their specific circumstances.

Actually, what they are appalled at is that religious leaders other than themselves got involved in the debate and actually prevailed. These people certainly got involved as well, pushing their own “specific religious doctrine,” which says that abortion is fine and dandy with the Almighty (or, in Rev. Haffner’s case, the All Whatever). The appeal to religious freedom is, of course, a red herring. Nothing in the amendment prohibits anyone from procuring an abortion. It only keeps the taxpayers from paying for it.

Further, we decry those who sought to use abortion as a way to scuttle much needed health care reform.

The reality is that if the Stupak amendment hadn’t passed, it might have sunk the bill. If it hadn’t been voted upon, it would certainly have done so. As it is, more members of the House voted for the amendment than for the bill as a whole. How do you suppose Veazey and Company explain that?

We call on the President and the United States Senate to ensure that the final bill that passes does not include any specific prohibition on the use of federal funds for reproductive health care services. We pray for a renewed commitment to relational and reproductive justice for all.

In other words, they want the Senate to repeal the status quo ante of the last thirty years, and in the process destroy any chances of any form of health care reform (which is already, pardon the pun, on life support because of the factions among Democrats who can’t agree on the public option, abortion, mandates, etc.) reaching the president’s desk. And these people call pro-lifers “extremists.”

UPDATE: American United for Separation of Church and State, in the person of executive director Barry Lynn, demonstrates yet again that it is not a First Amendment watchdog so much as a left-wing advocacy organization:

Americans United Executive Director Barry W. Lynn told NPR he is “horrified” by what happened.

“What we saw over the weekend was an act of unparalleled arrogance on the part of church officials,” Lynn said. “Basically, they were claiming they would kill health care for the sick and the poor if the Democrats didn’t give them the votes to impose religious doctrine into law. It’s scandalous that this religious group has such extraordinary control over the fate of women’s lives in this country.”

It would appear that Rev. Lynn is uninterested in the First Amendment implications of Veazey and Company seeking to impose their religious doctrine into law. Political oxen being gored, and all that.