Becket Fund on Stossel discussing HHS mandate

Belmont Abbey College is a small Catholic college founded by Benedictine monks, and is being forced by the government to provide contraception in their student and employee health care plans. Montse Alvarado of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty appears on the Stossel Show to explain why this mandate is not only outrageous, but unconstitutional.

This video is property of the Stossel Show with John Stossel on Fox Business Network. The Becket Fund does not take credit for the content of this video.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Becket Fund
• Religious Liberty
• HHS

[jfsfrnd]

Belmont Abbey College receives federal money for financial aid. It is not a totally private college.

[37tezza]

Yeah, kind of like forcing a Jewish organization to serve pork because not all the employees are Jewish. Sure, not a religious mandate, though.

[jdbohdan]

"one hundred thousand complaints,..that's millions of Americans" ? Someone should teach her math.

No one is being forced to use the contraception. It is a health mandate, not a religious one.

[thereisaseason]

@tcorris Now you're just being silly. I'm done. Final advice: Google "Implied Rights" to learn about how the constitution meets challenges of new generations. Of course the word "condom" (who said anything about condoms?) is not in the constitution! Neither is "God", "Jesus", "Air Force", "AK-47", "Internet" or many other phrases that may be relevant. A secular government can't carve out unique rights for everyone's individual beliefs, as Cath's want here, even if they have old books.

[tcorris]

@thereisaseason So you have a constitutional right to free condoms? I guess I will have to search for that clause again. It must be somewhere near the Constitutional right to freedom FROM religion.

I refer to those documents because this is a free exercise of religion issue that is being interfered with. Nobody is trying to take your precious condoms. They are cheap and plentiful. There are places were they can be had for free. This isn't about free condoms, but who pays for them.

[donnawanna100]

Repeal the entire law and there would be no problem.His violations of the constitution will continue unabated until he is removed.He compromise substitutes violation of the First Amendment with violating the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment

[thereisaseason]

@tcorris Yet, in spite of that (largely ignored) constituional provision, your faith has been given special, extended rights. That's the unconstituional part. I understood why you referred to the Didache; my response was that it does'nt matter how many books you have, how revered they are to you, how old your tradition is, it is all irrelevant in a secular society. You stated a raking of evils, and based it on this book, and offered it as justification for your special priviledge. Not goodl.

[tcorris]

@thereisaseason I use the 1900 year old doc to show that what the Church is resisting is based on an unchanged teaching of the Church. You don't have to believe and frankly it is unimportant for you to believe what the Church teaches. That is because the Constitution bars the Federal government from acting in a way that prohibits the free exercise.

[thereisaseason]

@tcorris What an odd response. Apparently YOUare the arbiter of how bad an "evil" has to be for it to be relevant. War is much worse: therefore, pre your logic, the Gov't MUST exempt me. Doesn't matter what you belive. It's what I believe. What's not to understand about that? Further, you speak of this 1900 y-o doc (actually 96 ce) as if it's some sort of fact-based rule book. Enjoy it, but it has nothing to do with me or my rights. BTW, #2 also says: do not corrupt boys - now THAT's funny!

[tcorris]

@thereisaseason War is bad, but it is not intrinsically evil as abortion is. The Church has taught this since the didache (the teachings of the Apostles) around the year 70. This has been the constant teaching since then. By the way the didache discussed the evils of the procuring of potions that would cause abortion - the very thing required by this law with the week after pill.