One of the Left’s favorite slanders of conservatives is that we only talk about religious liberty as a cover story for Christianism, or something.
religious liberty is code for Christian supremacy.
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This helps provide cover for the intrusions into conscience rights, such as suing to force Catholic hospitals to abort babies, forcing employers to pay for abortifacients, forcing nuns to cover birth control, and forcing anyone tangentially related to weddings to participate in gay weddings.
To be sure, many Republicans who invoke religious liberty can be hypocrites about it, but the conservative writers and activists most vocal about religious liberty tend to be consistent.
For instance, Judge Neil Gorsuch, on the short-short list for the U.S. Supreme Court. Gorsuch wrote the opinion in Yellowbear v. Lampert, ruling in favor of religious liberty.
This wasn’t a Catholic nun or a Mormon baker. This was a Northern Arapaho Indian who had murdered his daughter. The prisoner, Andrew Yellowbear, sought access to the prison’s sweat lodge, but the prison denied it. Gorsuch wrote an opinion in favor of Yellowbear.
Gorsuch’s opinion ought to cheer conservatives who value religious liberty, and ideally correct liberals who claim that the notion is just a cover story for an insidious theocratic plot.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
