As always, Bill Moyers is eminently sane in what he writes about the made-up holy war for "religious freedom" that the Republican party (and a large number of white evangelical men) now want to wage alongside the Catholic bishops vis-a-vis contraceptive coverage.
So here we are once again, arguing over how to honor religious liberty without it becoming the liberty to impose on others moral beliefs they don’t share. Our practical solution is the one Barack Obama embraced the other day: protect freedom of religion — and freedom from religion. Can’t get more American than that.
Protect freedom of religion and freedom from religious simultaneously. That's the American ideal, and it's precisely what Jefferson and Madison had in mind with the concept of separation of church and state and its concomitant doctrine of religious freedom.
It's also what I remember very clearly being taught as a young person growing up in a Southern Baptist household like the one in which Moyers grew up--in the days before Southern Baptists hopped onto the right-wing bandwagon and became what the U.S. Catholic bishops seem intent on turning the Catholic church into: a blindly partisan Republican voting machine.
We were taught to fight for the separation of church and state and for religious freedom to keep government out of church business. The bishops and their Republican and evangelical white male allies have turned the concept of religious freedom on its head by trying to argue for their freedom to impose church-specific doctrine on secular society.
And for your lack of freedom to resist the theocratic imposition.
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