I Thought Separation of Church and State Was a Two-Way Street
by Bill Sardi
Recently by Bill Sardi: How Does Anybody Make a Living These Days?
How much of a charade was the Sandra Fluke "affair?" To refresh a current controversy, a 30-year-old Georgetown University law student became infamous for 15 minutes when radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called her a "slut" for demanding a Catholic university provide free birth control to poor women. But was that the bigger issue?
There were many charades going on when Sandra Fluke came into the public limelight.
First we had a Democratic Party committee meeting that was made up to look like a Congressional hearing.
Then we had a radio talk show host whose popularity is waning who wanted to put himself at the center of a political argument. He was reveling at the height of the imaginary controversy.
Then we had a Georgetown University student who is really a political activist who appears to have been planted at that university to undermine the Catholic church's moral teachings by creating the false argument that poor women attending school there (how can you be poor and pay that tuition?) have to pay as much as $3000 during their college years for contraception (actually $9/month birth control pills are widely available and I think Planned Parenthood offers them at no charge for poor women).
Then we have a President who somehow catches wind of all this, and in between World War III breaking out in Iran, the world economies collapsing, starting with a failed bailout of Greece, and $5 gasoline prices, he has time to call Sandra Fluke and offer his support.
So what was really going on here in this parade of charades?
Only Cardinal Timothy Dolan brought up the bigger issue – that people in government (Democrat Party) conspired to denigrate and undermine Catholic moral teachings. Politicians threw a dart directly at the church. The President of the United States mocked the Catholic Church. The great god of government should predominate over archaic and anti-feminist teachings of the church. Women's freedom to participate in casual sex should predominate. However, that line of thinking is at odds with the Constitutional freedom to practice religion in America.
Ladies and gentlemen, under the guise of separation of church and state, under the confusion that the Constitution dictates freedom from religion rather than freedom of religion, modern America has thrown prayer out of schools, wants to erase "in god we trust" from currency, removed the ten commandments from government buildings, and sanitized school history books to measure recorded history as BCE (before the common era) rather than BC (before Christ). But now the godless are thrusting their agenda inside the doors of the church. That is certainly over the line that was drawn in the sand by the signers of the Constitution.
So if politicians openly promote forced violation of the moral tenets of the Catholic Church via mandated provision of birth control, sterilization, and abortion in health insurance plans provided by church-run schools and institutions, just exactly who will prosecute these violators of the law of the land when they are the very rule-makers who oversee the affairs of government? Just what would the penalty be for such a violation? Recognize the top man in government participated in this Constitutional defilement.
Of course, Americans can't focus on this breach of Constitutional freedoms because the news media are more interested in side shows, particularly reveling in Mr. Limbaugh's humbling apology offered to that Georgetown student over disparaging language he chose to describe her. However, if this isn't an example of violation of the Constitution, what is?
According to some surveys Catholic women are more likely to have an abortion than non-Catholic women. So the White House, which has chosen to pick an open fight with the Catholic Church, is taking advantage of a situation where religiously-aligned women aren't principled in their church's teachings. I'm not sure Catholic women recognize their desire for sexual freedom is about to undo the most closely-held teachings of their church.
The White House knows all this really amounts to is a small bunch of robed Catholic bishops fighting it out with the White House. Mr. Obama loses only a few votes, the number of Catholic bishops in the U.S.
The White House is betting liberated American Catholic women will side with Mr. Obama at the voting booth in November. But regardless of votes gained or lost, politicians have chosen to over-step the Constitutional limitations regarding freedom of religion and separation of state from church.
What we see in modern America is a citizenry that does what is expedient and serves its own interests and Presidents who do the same. Which recent President actually took the Constitution to heart? Aren't all Presidential Executive Orders outside the boundaries of the Constitution? (President Obama wrote 111 EOs; GW Bush 291; Bill Clinton 366; Ronald Reagan 380). Hasn't every recent declared or undeclared war been called outside of Constitutional law? When police in New Orleans confiscated guns in the aftermath of the Katrina hurricane, why didn't the President step in as chief enforcer of Constitution and order the guns be returned to their rightful owners under the Constitutional right to bear arms? When bills are passed in Congress that haven't even be read by Congressional leaders, isn't that an implicit violation of Constitution? If Americans have been schooled in the Constitution, they don't act like it. In practice, America has a pick-and-choose law system.
The current President of the United States essentially says the Constitution is out outmoded document. He runs over Catholic bishops because he can. "Hey, the people are with me, not those fuddy-duddy men in robes" you can hear the President saying in his mind. But the Constitution was supposed to be about what is principled not what is popular. And just who wants to stand in the way of a sexually liberated female law school student? Dare to be ridiculed if you do. Someone once said if a dozen men were in a room with one woman. the men would be outnumbered. I won't go there either. But just remember, under the banner of sexual freedom, freedom of religion has been trampled.
