Today we are heartened by the legal challenges being brought against the HHS Mandate and resolved to fight even harder alongside them to protect religious liberty.
It’s one week till the Rally and we’re still adding Rally cities! Let’s keep fighting together—both in our Rallies, and on our knees.
Here’s day 3 of the Novea: [Continue reading …]
Going into last night’s debate, everyone knew there was a rather stark difference between the two presidential tickets on the issue of religious freedom.
Following the debate, that difference is now even starker. On the one hand, Rep. Paul Ryan spoke clearly about the assault on religious freedom that is the HHS Mandate, and, on the other hand, Vice President Joe Biden flat out lied about it.
On the heels of last night’s debate, we’ve beefed up our Voting and Elections Resources page by adding several Election Day voter guides from some great organizations: [Continue reading …]
At last night’s vice presidential debate, Rep. Paul Ryan deftly raised the issue of the HHS Mandate after he was asked to explain his position on abortion.
Ryan said:
What troubles me more is how this administration has handled all of these issues. Look at what they’re doing through Obamacare with respect to assaulting the religious liberties of this country. They’re infringing on our first freedom, the freedom of religion, by infringing on Catholic charities, Catholic churches, Catholic hospitals. Our churches should not have to sue the federal government to maintain their religious liberties.
A few minutes later, Vice President Joe Biden said something truly astonishing:
With regard to the assault on the Catholic Church, let me make it absolutely clear: no religious institution, Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic Social Services, Georgetown Hospital, Mercy Hospital, any hospital, none has to either refer contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact.
No, it’s not a fact. It’s a lie. [Continue reading …]
Prayer is the foundation of all our efforts to fight President Obama’s HHS Mandate, which forces all employer health plans to provide free contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, without regard to objections of conscience.
And so I invite all to join in praying a “Novena to Reverse the HHS Mandate” in the days leading up to the big Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom. Here is the Novena for Day 2: [Continue reading …]
Of the many tools at our disposal for fighting against the HHS Mandate, one of the most important is prayer.
Today began the Novena to Stop the HHS Mandate, which will be prayed by tens of thousands over the next nine days leading up to the Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom on Saturday, October 20th.
Incidentally, October 20th is also the start of the International Prayer and Fasting Campaign, which runs through November 6th—Election Day. [Continue reading …]
We fight for justice in government with many weapons. We use Rallies like we’ll hold on October 20, we use our power to vote, we use our voices and pens so our representatives in government know our concerns. But we must never forget that the strongest weapon we have is prayer.
Temporal rulers will come and go, but God is the great king over all, so recourse to Him is where our confidence must ultimately last. It is well within His power to stop the Obama Administration’s pernicious HHS Mandate.
With that in mind, we are asking all people of faith to join in a united prayer effort to Stop the HHS Mandate. In preparation for the October 20 Rally, we are calling on everyone to join in the “Novena for a Reversal of the HHS Mandate” that was such a blessing in the lead up to the Rallies in March and June, which begins today.
A novena is a nine day prayer sequence [Continue reading …]
As the date for the third Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally approaches, the number of lawsuits being filed against the HHS Mandate continues to rise. The most recent was filed yesterday: East Texas Baptist University & Houston Baptist University v. Sebelius.
And it’s not just explicitly religious institutions like these Baptist universities or the Catholic Charities that are fighting the HHS Mandate in court. Several private businesses are doing so, too, including the craft goods chain Hobby Lobby.
According to the Becket Fund, which is tracking these cases—and litigating some of them—there are now 33 lawsuits against the HHS Mandate. [Continue reading …]
This great new video from our friends at Catholic Vote and Spirit Juice Studios lays out how one business owner is being affected by the HHS Mandate. Not only is the mandate forcing him to violate his most deeply held beliefs if he obeys it, it’s also causing him to scale back the benefits he can offer his workers so he can comply without violating his conscience.
The HHS Mandate is bad for our freedom, and it’s bad for workers. Help spread the word by sharing this video!
One of the great things about the media coverage of the March 23 and June 8 Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally was seeing the same signs held by rally participants nationwide.
For the March rally, we shipped 4,000 signs to rally captains in well over 100 cities. For the June rally, we upped the ante considerably — instead of thousands of signs, we shipped tens of thousands.
These signs are essential to keeping our message simple and conveying it in an unmistakably clear way: We are for religious freedom, and we are against the HHS Mandate.
This time around, we placed an order for 24,000 signs, and we’ve added a third sign to the line-up that reads, “Vote for Life and Liberty.” [Continue reading …]
It’s been said frequently — and quite rightly — that not even Jesus and His Apostles would qualify as being “religious enough” under the HHS Mandate’s so-called “religious exemption.”
The vast majority of faith-based organizations don’t qualify either, nor do Bible publishers.
The Washington Times reports:
The Obama administration is claiming that a dedicated Christian publisher of Bibles and ministry material is insufficiently religious to qualify for an exemption to the contraception mandate in the president’s health-care overhaul.
According to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in the District of Columbia by Tyndale House Publishers, the company has been refused a “religious employer” exemption because the Health and Human Services Department categorically maintains that any for-profit publisher is not a “religious employer.” [Continue reading …]
