Religious Freedom of the Times
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
“A welcome antidote to the official insensitivity to religion” is how the New York Times described the Religious Freedom Restoration Act when it was passed by Congress in 1993. That, by the way, was the 103rd Congress. Both of its houses were controlled by the Democrats. The bill was inked by President Clinton, who is a Democrat. It turns out, however, that neither the Times nor the Democrats meant any of it. They don’t give a fig about religious freedom.
Nope. When the Supreme Court decided, as it did this morning, that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act covered not only, say, American Indians wanting to smoke peyote in their rituals but Christian fundamentalists refusing to pay for insurance to cover certain kinds of birth control, they headed for the hills. What the Times turns out to favor is religious freedom in respect of anyone save for religious people, such as fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews.
Not that we mean to single out the Times. It is just such a perfervid pontificator. The court had barely handed down its opinion in Hobby Lobby than it rushed out a piece by one of its editorial board members, David Firestone, transponding that he was shocked, shocked that the court had just made a “political decision” and announcing that it would be “absolutely proper for Democrats to use it as a weapon in the midterm election campaign.”
Mr. Firestone quotes Deborah Wasserman Schultz, chairman of the Democrats’ national committee, as saying that the Republicans “have sided against women.” What Mr. Firestone takes from that is: “The Supreme Court, in other words, could become a high-profile stand-in for the offensive remarks of Tea Party candidates (remember “legitimate rape”?) that helped elect several Democrats in 2012, but have largely been quieted this year.”
See if you can diagram that leap of logic. Mr. Firestone quoted Senator Murray, a Democrat of Washington, as saying that “since the Supreme Court decided it will not protect women’s access to health care, I will.” The Times editorial writer ends his diatribe with a reminder that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act could be overturned “if the right lawmakers are in place.” Maybe the Times could start by retracting the endorsement of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act it made so pointedly 21 years ago.
