Does the First Amendment Apply Only to Christians?

Last week I opined that the Catholic Church is quite correct with their complaint that president Obama’s contraception insurance healthcare mandate as applied to religious oriented institutions violates their right to religious expression under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

I stand by that opinion now even after the president’s most recent compromise offer which does absolutely nothing to cure the violation. This is because, under the proposed compromise, religious institutions will still be at least indirectly responsible for furnishing contraceptive products and services insurance coverage to employees contrary to their deeply held religious convictions.

That being said, I still have to laugh and shake my head at the ignorance of the Church, and its selfish understanding of what the First Amendment means. They simply don’t have a clue. It’s as though the First Amendment applies to them and no one else.

Now they’re taking the position that they won’t be satisfied until the mandate is lifted from any person of faith who objects to facilitating contraception coverage for employees. They’re in no mood to compromise.

You see, it’s all about their faith, their religion, and to hell with everyone else. They just don’t understand how the First Amendment was conceived to protect the freedom of expression and conscience of everyone, not just people of faith. So it’s perfectly alright for Obamacare to force the insurance mandate on everyone else as far as they are concerned just as long as they don’t have to furnish coverage for contraception.

If Obamacare mandated that government provide money to the Catholic Church, or otherwise promoted religion in direct violation of the First Amendment Establishment Clause, that would be just hunky dory. If president Obama mandated Catholic prayers to be led by teachers to students in public school classrooms, that’s perfectly fine with them. They wouldn’t see any constitutional violation at all.

The bishops characterize the Obama mandate as government coercion of religious people to do something to which they have a moral or religious objection, and that is quite true, but when the shoe is on the other foot they could hardly care less. Both the government and the church have been guilty of plenty of coercion upon humanity in their time, but any complaints about that from the secular side usually falls upon deaf ears.

Right-wing social conservative politicians and religious zealots love to describe their First Amendment constitutional complaints in military terms, e.g. the government insurance mandate is “an attack; an unprecedented attack on religious liberty.” President Obama is waging a “war; a War on Religion.”

It conjures up images in my mind of President Obama and his minions of executive branch thugs brandishing machine guns and tanks in a pitched battle with poor little huddled and oppressed Christian victims holed up in their churches.

Nonsense! It’s just government being government. Not a day passes without the United States government doing something unconstitutional somewhere.

The Church is going to file suit in federal court over this egregious constitutional violation.  If the court vindicates their rights it will be seen as a victory against government religious oppression, i.e. against the state interfering with religion. That is as it should be.

But when atheists, for example, win a court case upholding their First Amendment Establishment Clause constitutional rights requiring separation between church and state and government neutrality in matters of religion, they see it as the work of activist judges who ought to be yanked from the bench.

Religious zealots in America want a government God.  They don’t want separation between church and state until the state starts messing with them in ways they don’t appreciate.

As far as the Church is concerned: The United States Constitution and the First Amendment apply only to Christians.