While polls continue to show Democrats to be the favorites to win the midterm elections, blue states are showing what progressive rule looks like. Religious liberty is being interpreted in blue states as only being a freedom to worship, not a freedom to outwardly, publicly live out your faith.
From Illinois to New York to California, laws are being passed that are forcing people of faith to participate in abortions, euthanasia, and affirm LGBTQ lifestyles. While “affordability” still appears to be the top issue in this election, “government trust” is a rising issue.
Blue States Are Redefining Religious Freedom– thefederalist.com
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EXCERPT:
A dangerous theory is taking hold that religious freedom applies only to the right to worship.
Illinois’ assisted suicide law took effect in September. Cardinal Blase Cupich and Bishop Thomas Paprocki have both sued to keep the state from compelling Catholic hospitals and doctors to take part. A group of Muslim doctors similarly have sought protection from the state mandate. The state has yielded temporarily. In July, a federal judge shielded the Little Sisters of the Poor from New York’s version. The message from the state in each case is the same: you may care for the dying, but you must also be ready to help kill them.
The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on Nov. 3 in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy. Colorado’s universal preschool program requires participating schools to agree to operate at odds with Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality. Parishes in the archdiocese of Denver could not agree to state requirements, so the state shut them out of the preschool program paying $6,000 per eligible child, along with the families who wanted their children taught there. Colorado says it has no problem with the preschools being Catholic, it just doesn’t want them to operate as if they are.
Catholicism is just one example of a religion whose exercise does not end at the sanctuary door. Catholics pray at Mass and live that prayer in the works of mercy: feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick, burying the dead, and instructing the ignorant. Faith asks to be lived coherently, in belief and in service to one another. Jews, Muslims, and Protestants would recognize the pattern in their own traditions. No one is free if he must split himself into a Sunday self and a Monday self, and no community is free that must do the same.
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