For Whose Freedom
Freedom For Whom
- Fortnight for Freedom
"The U.S. bishops have called for a Fortnight for Freedom, a two-week period of prayer and action, to address many current challenges to religious liberty. . . "
From the Pulpit
Freedom of Dogma?
The end of the Supreme Court term also usually brings a call from Catholic Bishops for a "Fortnight for Freedom". The event is also usually set up to co-incide with July 4th.
Usually, the main goal is attacking women's reproductive rights, and that is again a component,though a bit more indirectly than in past years.
This time the focus is on marriage, or the efforts to deny homosexual couples the same protections and rights that heterosexual couples have. The two major cases on this may be decided before the "fortnight" even begins. The whole debate over homosexual marriage has, like many other civil rights issues, been made out to be a case where the group demanding nothing more than equality is asking for a special right. Media, especially the right-wing media, play a part in advancing this idea and help buld resentment. It's the strategy of the outgroup rearing its head again.
But reproductive freedom is not spared from the Bishops' ire. The idea of hospitals, etc being able to deny services in the name of conscience, is also to be prayed for by "good catholics". The HHS mandate is also filtered through this. But how is imposing religious values, or using them to make decisions, an example of "Freedom of Religion". In a sense, the freedom of the patients or employees are being denied in the name of dogma. Many of the same people who cry "sharia" are trying to say that their faith trumps secular law, in a sense, they wish to impose a sort of "American Sharia".
Calling the event a "Fortnight for Faith" would be a better term. The real "Fortnight for Freedom" would, and perhaps should be coming from People for The American Way, Americans United For Separation of Church and State, and the ACLU.
