Poor Strategy

I'm generally sympathetic to the notion that Christian tradition is under attack in America. There are many places where this is evident, not least the spread of "holiday parties" (held a week or two before Christmas), "spring picnics" (held on Easter weekend) and the like. I suspect I will find much to dislike in this vein in the public school system.

But there are good ways to fight this, and not so good ways. One of the latter is "engag[ing]... co-workers in conversations about intelligent design and hand[ing] out DVDs on the idea while at work." (Source. An irrelevant tidbit from the article is that the guy who did this was a team lead at NASA. So what? Engineers can be religious. Many are.)

The gentleman who was proselytizing his co-workers was laid off, and now he's suing.

"It's part of a pattern. There is basically a war on anyone who dissents from Darwin and we've seen that for several years," said John West, associate director of Center for Science and Culture at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. "This is free speech, freedom of conscience 101."

No, it isn't, and we shouldn't adopt the tactics and speech modes of the Left, even when we're fighting the Left. Free speech is the freedom to publish, to make your speech available, to avoid public censorship. It is not the freedom to say whatever you want at your place of employment. Employers can fire you for annoying other employees, and that's what happened here. (Heck, employers can fire you for nothing at all in most cases. Just as you can quit any time.)

I'm sure there are many other NASA employees who believe in intelligent design. If they are fired merely for believing it, that's a mistake by NASA (and closer to a violation of "freedom of conscience" ideals). But being fired for badgering your co-workers violates no right, and in the wider culture wars this is not a hill worth defending.

Catholics and Contraceptives

At first blush, the Obama administration's heels-dug-in posture of not allowing a religious exemption to the requirement for insurance to cover contraceptives and abortifacients seems like a political mistake. But I wonder if there's a grand plan here?

First, a quick overview of the arguments on both sides. Catholics and conservatives say that this is an attack on religious freedom. Liberals say that Catholics are hypocritical to object since some large percent of them use contraceptives anyway (I've heard 50% and I've heard 98%, but I will argue that the actual number makes no difference). The liberal argument is incorrect on two grounds. First, it isn't hypocritical. Many Catholics drink alcohol. That doesn't mean the State should force the Catholic Church to buy it for them. Second, even if it were hypocritical, that wouldn't argue in favor of the requirement. Liberals often use "hypocrisy" as a brickbat to attack principled arguments. But merely because a person has a gambling problem doesn't mean he's wrong to oppose gambling.

Conservatives are, I think, in the right here. It gets worse when you consider that the Obama administration has already granted over a thousand waivers to other PPACA requirements. They are meant to show that the law is "flexible". Not, apparently, in this case.

There may be method to the madness, though. If the administration continues to be uncompromising, the result will probably be that the Catholic Church will cease to provide health insurance to its employees, and will pay a fine instead. Fast forward a few years. The next step the liberals will take is to continue the push to a single-payer system, and then they will tout the current crisis as a point in their favor! Look, they'll say, this whole thing could have been avoided if we had a single-payer system. The Church wouldn't have any objection, no one would have lost insurance coverage, and everyone would have been happy.

Of course, there still would be a loss of religious liberty. Catholics would still be paying for contraceptives and abortions, via their tax dollars instead of their tithes.