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Special Report
Rallying Hope for Change
Protesting the HHS Obamacare Mandate ecumenically.
MIAMI BEACH — Friday, June 8, was a day of spectacular nationwide rallies organized to protest the Obamacare HHS Mandate that requires religious employers to provide abortion, sterilization, and contraception coverage as part of their employees’ health insurance. An exemption is granted for entities engaged entirely in the practice or teaching of religion such as a church or synagogue. Christian or Jewish schools, universities or hospitals, cannot qualify for the exemption because they teach secular studies or provide medical care, activities the government does not deem as religion-qua-religion.
As of late Sunday, June 10, most of the tallies had come in to the organizers from the various locales, for a total of at least 64,000 confirmed participants. Here in South Florida, there were three venues within a 50-mile range: Miami, Fort Lauderale, and West Palm Beach. They were scheduled back-to-back, because Archbishop Wenski was a featured speaker at each event. Miami was first at 10:30 a.m.
They approached me to be the “Jewish speaker” at the Miami location after being turned down by several pro-Obama rabbis. This is a classic example of the short-sightedness that leads to being blindsided. Right now, these not-very-religious Jews have fallen behind the Democrat party and the liberal elites in accepting their views on sterilization, abortion, and contraception ahead of the Torah for which their ancestors lived and died.
In brief, Jewish law forbids sterilization not only for humans but also for animals. A traditional Jew cannot have his dog or cat spayed and he certainly may not have a vasectomy. The procreative organs are sacred as God’s instruments of maintaining Creation and humanity may not interfere in the process. Abortion is permitted to save the life of the mother, even to save her from losing one organ or from going insane. Contraception is permitted after a couple have produced at least one son and one daughter, or where the mother’s physical or mental health is endangered.
However, only Orthodox Jews take the trouble to keep these laws, which is a shocking story in its own right. It is one thing to say that I reject traditional dietary requirements but it is astonishing that people have the audacity to endorse behavior their tradition defined as murderous.
But putting all that aside, even if those Conservative and Reform rabbis did not feel their ox was being gored by this mandate, their role as religious leaders demanded a more visionary response. Surely they would want the Catholics marching alongside them if some Jewish practice they treasured — circumcision perhaps — were being outlawed. They did not rise to the occasion and so it fell to me as a public intellectual to represent the Jewish view.
I was the third scheduled speaker after Archbishop Wenski and Doctor Grazie Christie. The Archbishop addressed the issue of the First Amendment right to follow one’s religion and one’s conscience. He pointed out that the mandate took two egregious steps in attacking that freedom. First of all, it forced religious institutions to act in violation of their ethical beliefs. Second, it took the outrageous step of defining what constitutes a religious institution.
He mentioned during his talk that the Obama administration had misled Cardinal Dolan during the runup to the Obamacare vote. It was all I could do to keep from sighing out loud. These pages were full of columns at that time begging Cardinal Dolan not to be snookered. Unfortunately, clerics too often project their own gentleness and integrity onto the creeps who face them across the negotiating table.
Doctor Christie delivered a beautiful refutation of the Democrat propaganda claiming that the mandate is pro-woman and pro-science. As a woman and a scientist, she objected to those characterizations. She was blistering in her point-by-point presentation, particularly when she said: “A child is not a disease, it’s a blessing. I know that to be true because I have five blessings at home.”
Then my turn came and my readers surely know already what I have to say. But if you want to hear me saying it, there is always YouTube.
About the Author
Jay D. Homnick, commentator and humorist, is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator. He also writes for Human Events. Here he speaks at the Rally for Religious Freedom in Miami on June 8, 2012.
Appleby| 6.11.12 @ 7:25AM
Very well said. I'd like to hear more men from Generation Y speak up in favour of two parent families and the respect for women their fathers (or probably their grandfathers, at this point) once showed. In Ontario they sanction abortion at taxpayer's expense until the baby is fully delivered and breathing on his or her own. And that's not all.
There is a cynical t-shirt beginning to surface here in town, that says "So you're pregnant -- are you having a boy or an abortion?"
Brooksifier | 6.11.12 @ 12:32PM
You're all fickle:
if they have abortions, they are wrong;
if they have children, they aren't fit to take care of them;
if they are gay, they are wrong because even though no abortions result from gay relationships/marriages, you don't like it.
Your slogan:
"I'm Against It"
Skippy| 6.11.12 @ 4:02PM
Not mine, the Master's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtMV44yoXZ0
Mimi | 6.11.12 @ 7:45AM
The Redistibution of GUILT....Those were powerful words Jay. Not even 20 years passed from the holocaust when in 1973 the Supreme Court gave the right to kill your own child in the womb. let us pray this Obamacare , ALL of it disappears and begin to come to our collective senses. Thank you for speaking at this rally we are one, in defense of FREEDOM .
TLP| 6.11.12 @ 8:19AM
If it is a CATHOLIC SCHOOL, and it teaches Secular things like Mathematics and Medicine? Is it not STILL a Catholic School? Is a Reastaurant still a Restaurant, even though it provides Toilets and Urinals? Or does it's Official Orwellian Designation change, to become A Place for Relieving one's Bowels, and Bladders, that also sells food?
A Church or a Synagogue remains a Church and a Synagogue, even when there's BINGO going on. And a Mosque is still a Mosque, even while they're packing nails and ball bearings in to their Bomb Belts.
It's always Semantics, with these people.
The word TAXES - has been ripped away from the lexicon, to be replaced by INVESTMENTS, by the last Democrat - The RAPIST - Bill Clinton, and now by REVENUE ENHANCEMENTS by the POS that's in there now.
I'll go back to: 2+2.
To the Bitter Clinger 2+2 always = 4.
The LEFTIST Cockroach, as with all Cockroaches, cannot withstand the Light. So, unless he has a GUN, he needs to Blur the light and do his work out of focus.
2+2 can = ANYTHING that the Left needs it to =. All one need do, is Muddy the Waters.
Has either 2 ever been Molested? Is either 2 a Racist? If 4 is the answer? Does 4 create a Disparate Impact in the Community. What was 4 doing, in 1965, and were Scissors involved?
So, as you can see. As in all Leftist Dictatorships, words are fungible and can mean many things, depending on the need of Dear Leader. Like when we were told that The Berlin Wall was there, to keep the West Germans OUT.
Von Mises Jr| 6.11.12 @ 8:37AM
We have been fools to accept the socialist mantra of diversity and multiculturalism, and the concept of moral relativism. They reject right versus wrong.
Dialectical materialism (Marxism) teaches that everything consists of matter and energy. It is what the redistribution of wealth is about: things. They abhor private property rights, but think of nothing other than property in the collective.
Marxism rejects G0d, Heaven and Hell. So if man is the Marxist god; then abortion, euthanasia and Holocaust are just another material choice.
Liberals will not admit to this, but if you really understand them, they just think about material things. How sad and how dangerous.
Kwan| 6.11.12 @ 8:57AM
Didn't the Catholic Church get the memo? As of January 2oth 2009 we were no longer living in a Constitutional Republic but in an Orwellian People's Republic. Master-Ruler Obama and his henchmen decide what we can and cannot do. The knuckleheads that voted for Obama turned the leadership of our country over to a group of people that believe in order to achieve "fairness" and "social justice" freedom must be eradicated. You say that the ethics of your religion are being violated. Tough the Revolution cannot let religious laws stand in the way of its quest to install an authoritarian regime.
THKrupp| 6.11.12 @ 9:20AM
This whole arguement is an example of why businesses should not be providing health care benefits at all. Health care is very personal and should not be the responsibility of business's or organizations. This is a personal matter and should be the responsibility of individuals and families.
TrueBlue | 6.12.12 @ 12:35PM
Sadly that's not longer a choice for businesses anymore either thanks to Obamacare. That's the whole control creep thing. First they force businesses to provide healthcare to their employees, then they get to decide what that healthcare has to include, then it's what determines whether an organization is religious or secular.
RAM| 6.11.12 @ 11:19AM
This is an issue that defines what a person's religion is---it's either whatever religion he claims it to be, or it's liberalism itself.
MK48| 6.11.12 @ 11:47AM
What are we talking about here ? Religion or FAITH.
Occam's Tool| 6.11.12 @ 2:01PM
I have 2 adopted children from Guatemala. They are the biggest blessings of my life, and my wife's life. We love each other, but the kids are something else.
Nightwinger| 6.11.12 @ 11:23PM
So....a group of celibate old men with pointy hats are going to dictate national policy? I bet they don't have any problem with VIAGRA coverage tho, huh?
If the universities and hospitals are accepting public funds they should obey secular laws.
Why should taxpayers have to support their religious codes ?
Public funding of religion is Un-Constitutional as stated in the Establishment clause.
TrueBlue | 6.12.12 @ 12:46PM
National policy is dictated by THE CONSTITUTION you incorrectly sited at the end of your statement. Giving funding to a religious organization that applies for it just like everyone else is NOT establishment of a national religion. If the government wants to attach requirements to the grant money for what it is spent on, etc. that's fine, however that is not currently the case. By the same measure, why are taxpayers forced to support Planned Parenthood? Regardless of what the government says, funding going to PP is used for abortions because that is additional funding the organization needs to cover all of its available services.
As for public funds to those universities and hospitals, where? Do you mean the money they get from students who have federal loans? Or do you mean the Medicare/Medicaid funds they accept as payment from people who go to their facilities for care because they don't have private insurance? Or are you referring to federal grant money available to ALL facilities and universities across the country REGARDLESS of religious affiliation (or lack thereof).
Of course, the only reason they need that grant money is because of massive government taxes on citizens and companies preventing more donations (which go down as taxes go up btw), but then since nearly every university and hospital receives that grant fund it would be silly for them not to apply.
taibeh| 6.14.12 @ 12:18AM
Nauseating diatribe. That's all.