Conscience, coercion, and chicken

Are conservatives under-reacting to the war on Chick-fil-A? Rush thinks so:

I read about it on conservative blogs, and I can't believe what I'm reading! I'm reading intellectual treatises on, "Well, you know, they have the right to say these things, and the solution here is let Chick-Fil-A open a store in Chicago and let's see if the people will visit it." That's not the reaction to have! The reaction to have is, "Who the hell do you think you are, Rahm Emanuel? Who the hell do you think you are? What country do you think you're in?"

Now, we want to have an intellectual debate here over the First Amendment? "Well, the solution to this is to let Chick-Fil-A open a store"? Yeah, let Chick-Fil-A open a store with the mayor of Chicago threatening anybody who walks into one? Meanwhile, this company hires gays. They serve gays. They don't discriminate! It's just that the owner happens to be a publicly professed, witnessing Christian. My God, you would think that he's the worst enemy Chicago ever had and the worst enemy Boston ever had!

Thirty years ago, if this woulda happened in this country, there would have been an uprising against Menino and Rahm Emanuel -- or Daley, or whoever would have done it. Today we get intellectual debates on who's got the right to do what and say what and say this and do that and do what where. The sense of proportion is all out of whack, and there's no outrage. So, yeah, I fully understand losing institutions. We're sitting by, and we are watching, every day, the institutions and traditions that have made this country great come under assault.

Day in and day out.

And I've been making that comment for 24 years. Too much of all of this has become nothing more than an opportunity for people to show how smart they are, how open-minded they are when they debate these things. Rather than having an actual, human, real-life reaction to this, which is, "This is outrageous!" The mayor of San Francisco. What is his name? I think his last name is Lee. The mayor of San Francisco got in on this, and he warned Chick-Fil-A, "You better not come here! You had better keep out!"

I am in stunned disbelief.

Read the rest. Of course it's outrageous, but in these times it's not always easy to rise to, or maintain, the proper level of outrage. Some of us have become accustomed to Obama's lawless power-grabbing and to all the little would-be dictators across the country who've been inspired by his example. Which brings us to Mark Steyn's weekend column, The Tolerance Enforcers:

Meanwhile, fellow mayor Tom Menino announced that Chick-fil-A would not be opening in his burg anytime soon. "If they need licenses in the city, it will be very difficult," said His Honor. If you've just wandered in in the middle of the column, this guy Menino isn't the mayor of Soviet Novosibirsk or Kampong Cham under the Khmer Rouge, but of Boston, Mass. Nevertheless, he shares the commissars' view that in order to operate even a modest and politically inconsequential business it is necessary to demonstrate that one is in full ideological compliance with party orthodoxy. "There is no place for discrimination on Boston's Freedom Trail," Mayor Menino thundered in his letter to Mr. Cathy, "and no place for your company alongside it." No, sir. On Boston's Freedom Trail, you're free to march in ideological lockstep with the city authorities – or else. Hard as it is to believe, there was a time when Massachusetts was a beacon of liberty: the shot heard round the world, and all that. Now it fires Bureau of Compliance permit-rejection letters round the world.

Mayor Menino subsequently backed down and claimed the severed rooster's head left in Mr. Cathy's bed was all just a misunderstanding. Yet, when it comes to fighting homophobia on Boston's Freedom Trail, His Honor is highly selective. As the Boston Herald's Michael Graham pointed out, Menino is happy to hand out municipal licenses to groups whose most prominent figures call for gays to be put to death. The mayor couldn't have been more accommodating (including giving them $1.8 million of municipal land) of the new mosque of the Islamic Society of Boston, whose IRS returns listed as one of their seven trustees Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Like President Obama, Imam Qaradawi's position on gays is in a state of "evolution": He can't decide whether to burn them or toss 'em off a cliff. "Some say we should throw them from a high place," he told Al-Jazeera. "Some say we should burn them, and so on. There is disagreement ... . The important thing is to treat this act as a crime." Unlike the deplorable Mr. Cathy, Imam Qaradawi is admirably open-minded: There are so many ways to kill homosexuals, why restrict yourself to just one? In Mayor Menino's Boston, if you take the same view of marriage as President Obama did from 2009 to 2012, he'll run your homophobic ass out of town. But, if you want to toss those godless sodomites off the John Hancock Tower, he'll officiate at your ribbon-cutting ceremony.

It's about power. Read the rest.

In case you missed it, one family business has won a narrow victory against tyranny in the form of an injunction against Obama's HHS contraceptives mandate. Kathryn Lopez on the Newland Family Win:

Breaking: The family business that went to court in Denver asking for an injunction so they do not have to choose between their conscience and obeying the HHS contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drug mandate has been granted one.

The judge, who was appointed by President Carter and was once a deputy Peace Corps director, makes clear in his ruling that the injunction only applies to the Newlands, who, as you may recall, have a health-insurance plan year that begins in November — so the August 1 implementation date would effect their business immediately (unlike some other businesses, whose plan years begin in January or another after-the-election date).

More from Matt Bowman, who argued the case, here:

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: What does the injunction mean for the Newland family?

MATTHEW BOWMAN: It means that for their 2012–13 health plan, they can continue to omit abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization consistent with their faith, and that they won’t be forced by the federal government to choose between their faith and maintaining their family business.

LOPEZ: What was most significant and instructive from the judge’s ruling?

BOWMAN: The judge observed that the government’s alleged public interests pale in comparison to the ruin the government is threatening this family business with if they want to abide by their Catholic beliefs.

LOPEZ: Should other businesses be encouraged by this? Should other entities suing HHS over the mandate?

BOWMAN: Yes. The injunction only applies to the Newlands and their business, but the principle applies to all the lawsuits: Washington bureaucrats cannot use Obamacare to force people of faith to violate their faith in order to earn a living or engage in other activities in society.

LOPEZ: Do you expect more suits?

BOWMAN: Yes, and more wins.

LOPEZ: Who else has a problem come August 1?

BOWMAN: This injunction specifically only protects the Newland family. Every religious believer is in the crosshairs of Obamacare mandates, this one beginning to impose itself starting next week.

More at the links above. Nothing Obama has done is more outrageous than his gross violation of conscience protections and religious liberty. August 1st is just a few days away. Matthew Archbold speculates on what lies ahead:

Catholic institutions and colleges will have a decision to make. Do they comply or do they refuse. I'm certain that many will simply comply. They'll throw up their hands and say, "We tried." But some will resist. Let's say a Catholic institution resists. And they just will not comply. Then the fines begin to mount. Big fines. Huge ones. But the college refuses to pay.

Then what? We'll have essentially a standoff of the bureaucratic variety. Legal complaints will fly back and forth, followed by threats from the administration, and then what? They'll probably remove any federal funding. But at some point the government will have to collect on these fines. They'll seize bank accounts. But the government at some point will have to come to the campus of the Catholic college or institution to collect assets. And one would have to believe that some Catholics will not be happy about federal authorities storming onto a campus to collect assets and essentially shut the college down. So you might just get Catholics standing in doorways or chaining themselves to entrances. And then what? You have yourself a standoff of the potentially dangerous variety.

The bishops have talked tough -- "We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law” -- but how those words will translate into actions, and what the effects of those actions will be, are unknowns. Some institutions may be destroyed, and others will probably complete their conversions from Catholic to secular. As for the hospitals, Rep. Chris Smith commented back in January on the Obama administration's intentions:

Smith said that the order is in line with the Obama administration’s attack on conscience rights to pave way for a future where “abortion will be construed as preventive health care,” and “religious hospitals will be squeezed out.”

“We will have a situation where our faith-based hospitals will be on fire sale because they cannot participate,” said Smith. “They know that the Catholic Church and other churches are not going to capitulate. So they expect them to say, ‘Well, we’re out. We’re going to have to sell the hospitals.’ The threat is very, very real.”

“There’s a coerciveness about this administration unlike any I’ve seen before,” he added.

Stay tuned.

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Update: Don Perry, VP of public relations for Chick-fil-A, has died of a heart attack. Steyn:

The forces of tolerance respond accordingly.

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One more: See Rick Santorum on the absolute intolerance of the Left.

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Many thanks to Mark Steyn for linking here: Who the Hell Do You Think You Are?

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