The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is sponsoring another Fortnight for Freedom this year from June 21 to July 4, in response to the still looming threats to our religious freedom like the HHS Mandate.

From Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine and all points in between, dioceses across the country will be encouraging prayer and action to bring awareness to this crucial issue.

The bishops have asked for the assistance of the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Coalition and we are very excited to offer our resources to assist with the planning and execution of any rallies that may be held during the Fortnight.

Our national team can help with plans for a rally your diocese is hosting, or help connect you with the right people in your diocese to get one going if none is yet planned.

You can find a full list of diocesan events around the country right here, and if you’d like the Stand Up Coalition’s assistance with an event near you, send us a message on our contact form.

You can do that right here.

You’ve got till midnight tonight to let the administration know that you believe forcing business owners to provide contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs as part of their health plans is a gross violation of our First Amendment rights.

This issue has elicited more feedback than any other item, don’t leave your voice out of the conversation! Planned Parenthood and their cronies are pushing their forces to speak up in favor of the Mandate, so get a move on! And be sure to tell all your friends to do the same via e-mail and your social networks.

Don’t let this last chance to speak up pass you by! Make your voice heard right here and stand up for religious freedom today!

The pushback against the HHS Mandate was most visibly seen in the hundreds of Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rallies held throughout the year.

And in unprecedented numbers, Americans registered their objections directly with the federal government.

The Sunlight Foundation recently reported:

Three years after Congress approved President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), contraceptive care remains its most controversial provision, drawing not only more comments than any other regulatory proposal on any subject government-wide, according to an analysis of federal regulations on Sunlight’s Docket Wrench.

More than 147,000 people and organizations have made their voices heard over the debate, most of them opposing the provision that requires that federal agencies have interpreted to mean that women have access to preventive services—including contraception—at no cost. The Catholic Church has led the charge, urging parishioners to write with messages such as “Pregnancy is not a disease, and drugs and surgeries to prevent it are not basic health care that the government should require all Americans to purchase.”

Putting that number in context, consider that the second-most commented upon regulation received fewer than 5,000 comments. Among federal regulations that elicit at least some comments, the vast majority—some 89%—receive fewer than 100. Many others don’t receive any comments at all.

This illustrates what we have been saying all along: The pro-life, pro-religious freedom movement owns the grassroots.

Opposition to the HHS Mandate is real, it is strong, and it is widespread. We will not stand idly by while the federal government forces private employers to violate their consciences.

At the June 8 Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally in Dayton, Ohio, Sinclair Community College campus police told participants that they had to put down their “Stand Up for Religious Freedom” and “Stop Obama’s HHS Mandate” signs because of the school’s speech code which outrageously banned all signs because they could potentially be used as weapons.

I remember clearly when Eric Scheidler received a phone call from Bryan Kemper of Stand True Ministries, one of the speakers at the rally, during our own Rally in Chicago. Bryan and Rally Captain Ruth Deddens were shocked that police were asking them to put down signage during a First Amendment Rally!

At the time, Eric told them the best course of action was to obey the police’s orders, document the situation, and seek legal recourse later, which is exactly what they did.

Ruth and Bryan enlisted the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) to file a lawsuit for the violation of their First Amendment right to free speech, and today we’re happy to report that they settled that lawsuit with the provision that Sinclair Community College is dropping its unconstitutional speech code!

FIRE Senior Vice President Robert Shibley had this to say:

It’s hard to believe that for 20 years, Sinclair Community College had been enforcing an absurd ban on holding signs at protests. We’re glad that Sinclair Community College and the State of Ohio realized that continuing to defend a ban on signs would not just fly in the face of the First Amendment, but would also be a profound waste of taxpayer money.

Thanks to Ruth and Bryan for sticking through this difficult legal process, thanks to the Thomas More Society and FIRE for providing counsel, and thanks to all who stood up in over 400 cities nationwide last year for religious freedom!

We may not have won the immediate battle over the HHS Mandate, which still wages on, but we did make some important strides in protecting our most cherished liberties!

Get the full story on FIRE’s website, see a gallery of pictures from the June 8 Stand Up Rally in Dayton here and see video of Sinclair campus police treating Stand True’s Bryan Kemper with utter contempt below:

Dolan listed three key areas of concern: the narrow understanding of a religious ministry; compelling church ministries to fund and facilitate services such as contraceptives, including abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization that violate Catholic teaching; and disregard of the conscience rights of for-profit business owners. These are the same concerns articulated by the USCCB Administrative Committee in its March 2012 statement, United for Religious Freedom.

From his statement:

The Administration’s proposal maintains its inaccurate distinction among religious ministries. It appears to offer second-class status to our first-class institutions in Catholic health care, Catholic education, and Catholic charities. HHS offers what it calls an “accommodation,” rather than accepting the fact that these ministries are integral to our Church and worthy of the same exemption as our Catholic churches.

Despite the fact the accommodation amounts to nothing more than the same shell game the administration has been playing since the Mandate was first announced, the bishops have remained steadfast in their commitment to work with the administration until a compromise that truly respects religious liberty can be reached.

Read Dolan’s full statement right here and check back to this blog for more as the situation develops.

Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally co-directors Eric Scheidler and Monica Miller, who coordinated over 250 individual rallies coast-to-coast last year in opposition to the HHS Mandate, issued the following statement in response:

Nearly a year after promising to provide an “accommodation” for religious employers who object to the HHS Mandate, the Obama administration has finally issued proposed new rules. While we await a full analysis of these proposed rule changes from legal experts, a first look at what the Obama administration is offering makes it clear that the objections of religious employers have not been taken seriously.

The Obama administration is now offering a complicated scheme whereby employers can “self-certify” to the insurance provider they’ve contracted with that they are “exempt” from the contraceptive mandate, and leave it to the insurer to arrange free contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs for employees, or students, in the case of educational institutions.

At the end of the day, religious institutions like Catholic hospitals and Christian universities are still being forced by the federal government to participate in a scheme whereby their employees are provided free contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.

It’s unconscionable that employees and students at an institution like Ave Maria University, which upholds the unchanging Catholic doctrine that contraception assaults human dignity, would receive free contraceptives thanks to their employment or enrollment there.

More disturbingly still, businesses like Hobby Lobby, which are not dedicated to specifically religious purpose but which nevertheless operate upon a basis of faith, are offered no protection whatsoever for their religious and moral objections to providing these services. The Obama administration is still claiming the right to decide who gets to exercise freedom of religion in the public square.

We encourage all who have been opposing the HHS Mandate to object to these unacceptable proposed rule changes during the public comment period before final rules are issued in April. Meanwhile, our public protest and education efforts will continue unabated.

This Friday, January 25, hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers will descend on Washington, DC for the 40th annual March for Life.

If you’re one of them, you’re invited to march along with Stand Up Rally co-directors Monica Miller of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society and Eric Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League—along with a host of other Rally captains from across the country—under a huge “Stand Up for Religious Freedom” banner.

Meet at 1:00 p.m. at the southeast corner of Madison Drive NW and 7th Street NW [map].

See you there!

Hobby Lobby’s owners, David and Barbara Green, filed a federal lawsuit over the HHS Mandate last year, but their request for emergency injunctive relief was denied by federal district Judge Joe Heaton, meaning that the Greens could face $1.3 million in fines per day for their refusal to comply with the Mandate, which went into effect January 1.

A fascinating article appeared in The Public Discourse this week that points out the rather frightening implications of Judge Heaton’s ruling, as well as another ruling by Judge Carol Jackson, who had previously dismissed another challenge to the HHS Mandate brought by St. Louis businessman Frank O’Brien. (Jackson’s ruling was subsequently overturned by the Eighth Circuit federal appeals court, but Heaton’s ruling was upheld by Tenth Circuit.)

The article is provocatively titled “The HHS Mandate and Judicial Theocracy.” In it, Dr. Melissa Moschella draws attention to the core of the argument put forth by Judges Jackson and Heaton and their respective decisions:

“The burden of which plaintiffs complain is that funds, which plaintiffs will contribute to a group health plan, might, after a series of independent decisions by health care providers and patients …, subsidize someone else’s participation in an activity that is condemned by plaintiffs’ religion.” Jackson goes on to claim that subsidizing these objectionable services is no different from paying an employee’s salary, which the employee may then use to purchase contraception or procure an abortion. Judge Heaton agrees.

The problem, however, is that paying an employee’s salary and providing that same employee with health insurance coverage for specific services are vastly different things, akin to “the difference between giving cash to someone, and giving, say, a gift certificate to a steakhouse.”

Dr. Moschella writes:

[I]t becomes clear that while paying a salary has no intelligible link to any particular use of that salary, giving insurance—a voucher for a specific range of products and services—does have an intelligible link to precisely those products and services for which it may be used.

She goes on to warn, chillingly:

If, on the other hand, Jackson and Heaton are right that there is no difference between paying a salary and offering insurance coverage, then employers would also have no reason to object to a mandate requiring that all health plans cover surgical abortions.

Surely, were the HHS Mandate to hold up in court, mandatory insurance coverage for surgical abortions will soon follow. We delude ourselves if we think otherwise.

Moschella then gets to the heart of the matter:

Jackson and Heaton’s logic is therefore inherently flawed: giving money, a perfectly fungible good, differs significantly from giving insurance, which has an intelligible link to a limited range of products and services.

But even if the reasoning were sound, it is nonetheless problematic because its subject matter—moral theology—does not belong in a court decision at all. By using this argument to deny that the mandate constitutes a substantial burden on religious practice, these judges are stepping well outside their proper area of competence. They are making a decision not based on legal reasoning, but on philosophical and theological judgment.

In her ruling, Judge Jackson actually wrote that, notwithstanding the plaintiffs’ claims that complying with the HHS Mandate would violate their bona fide religious beliefs, “the challenged regulations do not … prevent plaintiffs from acting in accordance with their religious beliefs.”

So much for the separation of church and state!

As Moschella rightly observes:

In effect, Judges Jackson and Heaton are telling the Greens and Frank O’Brien—and by extension the 108 other plaintiffs challenging the mandate as well—that they, and the religious authorities who support them, simply have their theology wrong.

It’s more than a little troubling when judges take upon themselves the prerogative of making determinations about moral theology.

God save our honorable courts.

Hobby Lobby has been denied an injunction while their lawsuit against the Mandate is being tried and could face $1.3 million in fines per day for their refusal to comply. Standing with Hobby Lobby day encourages everyone who supports that stand to shop at Hobby Lobby tomorrow. Here’s the description from the Facebook event page:

On Saturday, January 5th, all Americans who value freedom of religion and oppose the HHS Mandate’s unfair impositions upon religious individuals and corporate entities are called upon to show their support for Hobby Lobby by shopping either at their local retail Hobby Lobby store or online.

Over 32,000 have already joined the event online. You can join the event on Facebook here and find your closest Hobby Lobby store here.

Courageous businesses like Hobby Lobby need our support. Their lawsuits could be our last chance to undo President Obama’s pernicious HHS Mandate. Stand up for religious freedom and stand with Hobby Lobby tomorrow!

The company, run by devout Catholic couple Chris and Mary Anne Yep (pictured), was rated the best workplace in Chicago for women by Crain’s Chicago Business—an astounding irony given that, in the eyes of President Obama and his cohorts, the Yeps are part of the supposed “war on women” that was such an issue in last November’s elections.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The religious convictions that moved the Yeps to take good care of their employees are the very same convictions that prohibit them from funding the contraception, sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs the HHS Mandate would require for them.

Chris and Mary Anne delivered stirring testimony at the October 20 Stand Up Rally in Chicago and have been working hard to educate people about the threats to our religious freedom since the became aware of the problem last year.

Please continue to keep Triune’s case in your prayers along with the other 41 lawsuits against the mandate currently winding their way through the courts.

Hobby Lobby Stands Its Ground

Unfortunately, not all the news is good. Hobby Lobby was denied a temporary injunction in their case against the Mandate but has made it clear that they will not comply. This means that, as of January 1, they could be held liable for over $1 million per day in fines from the federal government.

Hobby Lobby CEO David Green had this to say:

The government is forcing us to choose between following our faith and following the law. I say that’s a choice no American and no American business should have to make.

We heartily agree and our hats are off to Green and everyone at Hobby Lobby for being the first to take this courageous stand.

Keep an eye on the Stand Up for Religious Freedom blog for more updates on these and other cases.