The NYT and the Obama administration are too kind to the
churches.
The requirement to provide contraception coverage in
employer health plans may be annoying to religious employers but it is not an
interference in their free exercise of their religion.
Unlike, say, forbidding the mass.
(But not unlike, say, forbidding animal sacrifice.)
But I suppose we may as well admit it.
At one extreme we might read it as guaranteeing everyone a right to do anything he thinks is religiously required of him.
Ritual murder, say.
But at another we might read it as guaranteeing just that right only to the then known sects of Christian and Jews represented in America, based on the historical context.
It's probably safe to take it to guarantee freedom of worship as constrained by laws not explicitly targeted at it.
President Obama has lately denounced religiously affiliated educational institutions as divisive and harmful.
Would federal laws banning them run afoul of the free exercise clause?
The guarantee of freedom of speech?
For that matter, Richard Dawkins would likely go further in silencing believers.
Does free exercise include the right to raise your kids in your religion?
How about freedom of speech?
Just how far do we want the government messing about in people's private lives and opinions, anyway?
In the last century, many governments followed the French Revolution in attempting to stamp out religion in general or Christianity in particular.
Not all of them were Communist governments.
But all of them were pretty scary, if you ask me.
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