What’s Behind the War against Religion

Even before Obamacare passed and was signed into law, there were fears that the sweeping powers given to the Secretary of Health and Human Services would lead to abuses. The mandate issued by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that all women must be covered – without a co-pay—for contraceptive services, sterilization, and the morning after pill confirmed these fears. The refusal of the Catholic Bishops to go along with a mandate which would force religious employers to violate their convictions by funding insurance coverage for services deemed immoral has precipitated a battle over freedom of religion. The accommodation offered by the administration did nothing to satisfy those who see the entire mandate as an unconstitutional assault on first amendment guarantees.

In the discussion of the mandate, there has been little or no focus on why the administration would risk so much to push mandatory ‘free’ (that is fully covered by insurance, without a co-pay) ‘preventive services,’ which it knows are unacceptable to Catholic institutions. This mandate is not an isolated incident. The war on religion has been going on for years. It is waged by a loose coalition of sexual right advocates, radical feminists, environmentalists for population control, and GLBTQ (gay lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and queer) activists — the Sexual Left. The coalition includes the Sex Information and Education Council of the US (SIECUS), Planned Parenthood, ACLU, GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network,) Human Rights Campaign, NOW, Population Council, Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) and numerous other NGOs

While each group has its own particular agenda, they are united in their ultimate goal: absolute sexual freedom – more sex and fewer babies. They want to encourage everyone to seek sexual pleasure any way they desire, alone or with others, regardless of the sex, number, age, relationship, or favored behaviors, including prostitution, along with absolute freedom for  sexually oriented businesses, so long as consent of the participants is obtained, and all this without fear, shame, or public disapproval. Since absolute sexual freedom spreads sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and leads to the conception of unplanned pregnancies and out-of-wedlock births, condoms, contraception, abortion, and effective treatment for STDs are necessities and should be universally available for free or at little cost. The mandate furthers this agenda.

In order to effect the changes in attitude necessary to secure their objectives and hide the negative consequences of their agenda, the Sexual Left insists that all children, starting from their first year in school, receive Comprehensive Sexuality Education, which promotes sexual experimentation, masturbation, and the GLBTQ agenda. Comprehensive Sexuality Education teaches children how to avail themselves of condoms, contraceptives, the morning after pill, and abortion. They want parents prohibited from removing their children from these programs, or even from receiving prior notification about the content of the materials or presentations. The full scope of what the Sexual Left has in mind for children, can be found in the SIECUS Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education.[1] Explicit examples of this type of education can be found on a video produce by the American Life League, entitled “Hooking Kids on Sex.”[2]

It should be pointed out that Comprehensive Sexuality Education is, not comprehensive since it misrepresents or ignores the benefits of chastity before marriage and fidelity in marriage, the evidence that same-sex attraction and gender identity disorder are preventable and treatable and change of sexual orientation is possible, the real risks of disease and sterility, and the psychological, emotional, and social consequences of promiscuity and abortion.

The Sexual Left knows that religious institutions object to this agenda and therefore they are committed to doing everything possible to thwart religious influences and turn people of faith into second class citizens..

The Sexual Left demands that all laws which impede absolute sexual freedom be repealed or declared a violation of newly invented ‘sexual and reproductive rights.’ To achieve these ends, the Sexual Revolutionaries they have recruited the media, professional organizations, the United Nations bureaucracy, and various political leaders, who may or may not be aware of their ultimate objectives.

Philosophical Roots

It is important to understand that the hardcore Sexual Leftists are not Liberals; they reject the traditional liberal commitment to tolerance. Their ideological roots are firmly planted in the works of Karl Marx. In order to understand their tactics it helps to go back to the original assertion by Marx that all history is the history of class struggle, an eternal conflict between the oppressed and the oppressor. The goal of the Marxist revolution is overthrow the oppressors and assumption of absolute power by the oppressed. On the way to this goal, the oppressed must first identify themselves as victims of oppression. According to the Marxist world view, oppressors no rights; all rights belong to the oppressed.  There is no tolerance for those labeled oppressors and that includes all people of faith who reject the agenda of the Sexual Left. Marxist radicals talk about diversity and multiculturalism, but this is a ploy. The only diversity they respect is variety within their own coalition. To hide their own intolerance, they engage in incessant name calling, labeling their opposition as bigots, racist, sexists, homophobes, and the latest insult — transphobes.

Radical feminism should not be confused with regular non-radical feminism which pushed for removal of restrictions on women rights and professional aspirations. Radical feminism applies a Marxist view of class struggle to the relationship between men and women. According to Radical Feminist theory, the first class struggle was between men and women. Men used the fact that only women could become pregnant to oppress women. Therefore, only when men and women can engage in sex without fear of pregnancy, will women be liberated. Motherhood is the enemy of liberation and contraception and abortion essential for the revolution.[3] Since men are the class enemy, lesbianism is a statement of political solidarity.[4]

Marxists have never been deterred by the pain their revolutions cause to the ‘victims’ they claim to be liberating. Radical feminists know the suffering their revolution has caused — the psychological damage done by abortion and promiscuity, the plague of STDs and infertility, the burden of single motherhood — they just use that pain to claim victimhood and further their agenda.

The GLBTQ activists also use Marxist theory to claim the status of sexual minorities (and therefore victims) and demand special protection. To understand the extent of the GLBTQ demands, one has only to reference the Yogyakarta Principles.[5] In 2006 representatives from NGOs, self-styled experts in sexual rights, met inYogyakarta,Indonesia in 2006 to call for elimination of all restrictions based on ‘sexual orientation or gender identity.’ Gender identity is defined as:

“… each persons deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance of function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech and mannerisms…”

According to these ‘principles,’ governments and individuals would have to pretend that a man dressed up like a woman (whether or not he was surgically altered) was a woman.

Those pushing this agenda talk about the problem of violence, but their real goal is to stigmatize anyone who says anything negative about GLBTQ persons or behavior, to redefine marriage, to fund so-called sex change operations, to marginalize people of faith, and to win over the next generation. They demand that governments at every level to:

“Ensure that education methods, curricula and resources serve to enhance understanding of and respect for, inter alia, diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.”[6]

In other words, all schools would be forced to promote the GLBTQ agenda at all levels. The Yogyakarta Principles also call on states to:

“Ensure that the exercise of freedom of opinion and expression does not violate the rights and freedoms of persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.”^[7]

One of the rights of GLBTQ persons are claiming is the right not to have their feelings hurt, thus any speech (particularly the statement of religious doctrines) which makes them feel bad would be outlawed as hate speech.

To understand the commitment of the Obama administration to the Sexual Left’s agenda, consider the appointment of Chai Feldblum, an openly lesbian woman, as a Commissioner Of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In a 2006 article entitled “Moral Conflict andLiberty: Gay Rights and Religion,” she wrote:

”Protecting one groups’ identity liberty may at times, require that we burden others’ belief liberty…But in dealing with this conflict, I believe it is essential that we not privilege moral beliefs that are religiously based over other sincerely held core, moral beliefs. Laws passed pursuant to public policies may burden the belief liberty of those who adhere to either religious or secular beliefs.”^[8]

In the article she acknowledges that the demands of GLBTQ persons will necessarily impinge on freedom of religion, but it is clear from the examples she presents that, except in very narrow areas, she believes that in a conflict between gay rights and freedom of religion, freedom of religion should lose. This kind of thinking clearly undergirds the Obama administration’s “accommodation” on the health care mandate. Freedom of religion is to be restricted in order to promote a woman’s supposed right to free sterilization, abortifacients, and contraception. Such a right is not found in the Constitution nor was it explicitly stated in the Obamacare legislation. There is no right to free health care, let alone free contraceptive services.

Furthermore, the first amendment makes it clear that religious beliefs shall be privileged. The First Amendment does not call for balance, and the preamble to the Bill of Rights makes it clear that the founders feared the kind of abuse of power we see from the current administration:

“The conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting of the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added… Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech…”

The agenda of the Sexual Left is sweeping and comprehensive. For too long the defenders of freedom have been fighting a brush fire here and an incursion there and have not organized together to go after the entire agenda. The Obama mandate has brought the issue to the fore. It is long past time that the agenda of Sexual Left be exposed and targeted directly. Freedom of religion is not something to be “balanced” or accommodated; we need a comprehensive legislative initiative which will make this clear.

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[1] Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwche/Sex%20ed%20class/guidelines.pdf.

[2] American Life League, “Hooking Kids on Sex.’ http://www.youtube.com/v/nZix2Nm0fKw.

[3] Nancy Julia Chodorow, The Reproduction of Motherhood:  Univerity of CA Press, Los Angles CA, 1978); Shulamith Firestone The Dialectic of Sex, (Farrar Straus Giroux, NY, 1970.

[4] Charlotte Bunch, “Lesbians in revolt.” The Furies: Lesbian/Feminist Monthly, (1972, January). Retrieved July 9, 2009 from http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/furies/.

[5] Yogyakarta Principles:  Principles on the application of  international human rights law

in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity: (2006) http://www.yogyakartaprinciples.org/principles_en.pdf.

[6]Yogyakarta Principle, 16 d.

[7]Yogyakarta Principle, 19 e.

[8] Chai R. Feldblum, “Moral Conflict andLiberty: Gay Rights and Religion,”GeorgetownUniversityLawCenter, (2006) http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/80