Supremes weigh in: Little Sisters of the Poor 1, Obama White House 0

Remember when it was supposed to be Republicans like Rick Santorum who were nuts for bringing contraception into politics? All Santorum did was voice his opinion about whether contraception was a good thing. It was the Obama Administration that adopted public policy forcing people who have a moral objection to contraception to pay for others to use it. So, that makes them extremists, right?

Let's get off this contraception crap and talk about real issues! They would have been wise to think in those terms back in 2009, because the result of not doing so is that they just got smacked down without dissent by the Supreme Court. And Obama's own appointee, Sonia Sotomayer, was in the lead. Picking a fight with the Little Sisters of the Poor isn't turning out to be such a good idea. The Heritage Foundation's Foundry newsletter reports:

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“The injunction means that the Little Sisters will not be forced to sign and deliver the controversial government forms authorizing and instructing their benefits administrator to provide contraceptives, sterilization, and drugs and devices that may cause early abortions,” the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, whose attorneys represent the nuns, said on its website. “The court’s order also provides protection to more than 400 other Catholic organizations that receive health benefits through the same Catholic benefits provider, Christian Brothers.” The mandate by the Department of Health and Human Services is one of the most disputed provisions of Obamacare, as opponents say it tramples religious freedom. The Little Sisters are among dozens of religious and faith-based employers that have challenged the HHS mandate in 91 separate lawsuits, saying it forces them to choose between violating their faith or paying huge per-employee fines. “By the Obama administration’s reasoning, faith is restricted to formal houses of worship,” said Heritage Foundation policy analyst Sarah Torre, who has written extensively on the HHS mandate. “Step outside the four walls of your home or place of worship to serve the needy, teach the next generation or care for the elderly, and protection of your religious freedom end.”

Catholics are unique within the Christian world for their doctrinal objection to contraception, which is not to say others fail to recognize the societal problems brought on by the pill and the resulting sexual revolution. You can easily make the connection between the breakdown of the family and its beginnings in the free-wheeling sexual behavior brought on by the emergence of the pill. But whether you believe contraception is a moral wrong, a reasonable choice that still has a role in societal dysfunction, or no problem at all, the fact remains no one who holds to a moral objection should be forced to buy it for someone else. That's where ObamaCare goes so far off the rails in mandating everyone else's use of their own money. Religious freedom can pose a legitimately difficult balancing act when a religious organization demands the right to exercise some sort of practice that goes against clearly established laws - like, say, drug use or animal sacrifices. But in this case, the government created its own conflict with religious freedom by mandating that private parties use their money in a way that had never been mandated before - knowing full well it would create a conflict for some religious organizations - and then refusing to grant an exemption because it just plain didn't want to. In the ruling here, the Supremes acknowledge that the government's proposed accommodation - for Catholic groups to sign a mandatory document authorizing their insurer to directly provide the services - is no accommodation at all. It is still forcing the Catholic groups to provide things they deem immoral, no matter how much the government tries to pretend it is something other than that. This is only an injunction until a final ruling, which will probably not come until some time in the summer. But the fact that the Supremes granted the injunction at all - with no dissent noted - bodes ill for the White House not only on this case but on ObamaCare in general. The whole idea of the blanket mandate is that everyone has to be in and no one can be out or the whole system can't work. That's pretty much socialism in a nutshell. The government can't bless you with the wondrous system its designers envision if some of you keep going rogue and doing things on your own. Well. The system is malfunctioning pretty nicely even with all the mandates, so even if the Supreme Court was willing to trample on religious freedom in the name of the making the system work . . . it ain't working.