After spending the last 25 years defending efforts to purge longstanding Christian symbols sentiments and prayers from our society by saying that religion is stronger when church and state are separate Reverend" Barry Lynn executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State now believes that forcing religious employers to provide contraception coverage is just peachy keen no doubt because secularism has become stronger.
While Barack Obama has often been compared to leaders of the past its unlikely anyone has yet associated him with Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Ruler of the Seleucid Empire between 175 and 164 B.C. King Antiochus is best known for the persecution of Jews and one story from the second book of Maccabees is particularly relevant here. As the passage tells us the king was bent on forcing a Jewish woman and her seven sons to of all things eat pork. The boys resisted and were tortured and killed one by one as their mother who ultimately was also murdered looked on. Whats interesting though is that while the victims were being faithful to what they believed was divine dietary injunction there was no Seleucid commandment stating Thou shalt compel others to dine on swine." The act of eating such meat was but a trivial matter to Antiochus yet he nonetheless insisted on imposing his will.
Why would a person do this? It would be for one or more likely a combination of the following reasons:
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He hates the people in question and simply wants to torment them. Or perhaps more precisely he hates what they are and wants to destroy what makes them what they are.
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His ego cannot tolerate being defied.
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He views the beliefs at issue as stupid and takes pleasure in punishing those who dare be so wrong." This is a common human motivation.
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He wants to break the cohesiveness and therefore the resistance of the target people by forcing them to relinquish the beliefs binding them together.
Of course while a different factor may be dominant in different situations and while there is tremendous overlap among them whats obvious is that an Antiochan desire is one of hostility.
This brings us to a similar situation in our time: King Obamas contraception mandate. The issue was ginned up during the 2012 campaign to rally Democrat support but that battle has been won and is water under the bridge. Nonetheless and quite bizarrely Obama insists on trying to force religious employers to fund contraception for their employees despite the fact that offering such individuals an exemption would cost him nothing politically and would accord with the American tradition of respecting deeply held religious convictions.
And Im going to relate a story illustrating just how deeply held they can be. I know of a man who through some fairly unique connections could make a healthy and relatively labor-free five-figure income selling contraception. He could really really use the money too. Yet he has declined the offer in obedience to his religious beliefs. Now if a person wouldnt even violate such a principle to win himself a treasure how would he feel about violating it save someone else a trifle?
Yet as with King Antiochus there is no corresponding principle on the other side. Sure most everyone likes free stuff but there is no divine injunction stating that anyone must compel others to pay for his contraception. So who should bend here and where does the onus belong?
Ill answer that with one more story. A while back a neighbor approached me and requested I modify one of my activities in deference to a desire of his. Now I considered his concerns trivial and frankly somewhat silly. And I certainly didnt have to worry about fracturing any relationship he was a liberal and devout atheist and no dinner invitations would be in the offing regardless. Yet I accommodated him. After all the concession Id have to make would be a minor sacrifice and the issue in question was important to him. It was just a matter of being neighborly.
This brings us to a comment made by Reverend" Barry Lynn executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. After spending the last 25 years defending efforts to purge longstanding Christian symbols sentiments and prayers from our society by saying that religion is stronger when church and state are separate Lynn now believes that forcing religious employers to provide contraception coverage is just peachy keen no doubt because secularism has become stronger. And when supporting his newfound state-over-church principles he said that the contraception issue should not be a justification for exemption from the laws that apply to the rest of us" as it was trivial."
Ah trivial.
Just as eating pork was to Antiochus or my neighbors concerns were to me.
And this raises an obvious question: since Lynn considers the matter so trivial but knows the other side does not why does he react less as I did and more as did Antiochus?
(Mind you this isnt to say the matter actually is trivial only that if the left considers it a molehill why do they make a mountain out of it?)
Of course Lynn certainly seems to believe in religious freedom as long as he defines its boundaries. And they wouldnt encompass what he considers bull****" which was how he excrementitiously described the contraception religious-liberty claim"; moreover many on his side point out that religious freedom isnt absolute as certain religious practices are illegal. But this attitude and Obamas mandate represent a complete departure from our American understanding of religious freedom. Some churches engage in snake-handling and there are Amish who will only drive tractors with metal wheels (and who are allowed to do so even though they damage roads). Additionally the pacifistic Amish (and others) arent required to fight for the country even though defending ones civilization is among the most important civic duties. The point is that as long as youre not engaging in Aztec-like human sacrifice or crippling female genital mutilation your deeply held beliefs will be respected as a government that doesnt even know what marriage should be is hardly capable of separating silly superstitious trivialities from sublime insights into subtle truths. At least thats how it always had been in America.
And Lynns comments betray his heart. This is because you see you dont go to the mat over trivial matters. But you might use a trivial matter as a convenient vehicle through which you can take a hated group to the mat. And with respect to Christians the Lynn-heads obviously think they can get a pin.
The truth here is that no one is asking the left to make concessions; concessions arent at issue. If a situation existed wherein you could force a neighbor to donate $10 a month to your cause but you knew he objected deeply and it would create bad blood youd no doubt pay the relative pittance yourself. Its not only the neighborly thing to do but also simply a matter of not engaging in salt-the-the-wound stealing. But the left is beneath even this. They have served notice that not only wont they try to get along with Christians theyll do everything they can to not get along with them. Obama and his minions have become King Antiochus.
And we have to wonder what the future holds when they gain more power. If these purveyors of porcine government will feed on American freedom over something so trivial" what will they do over something they think really matters?