Faith on Trial

By Tom Quiner

As liberalism morphs into progressivism, the pushback against Hobby Lobby gets increasingly shrill.
A columnist for the Des Moines Register presented the typical, inaccurate talking points from the Left. A refreshing response came in, written by attorney, Mike Manno, who is also a Deacon in the Catholic Church. Mr. Manno is also host of the always insightful radio show, “Faith on Trial.”  Here is his clear response to the distorted thought-processes of the Left:

“Rekha Basu’s July 2 column (“Sweeping, Dangerous Implications in Ruling”), commenting on the recent Hobby Lobby decision, misleads her readers.
She says: “Let’s say that I’m an observant Hindu who keeps a strict vegetarian diet because my religion frowns on killing animals. And let’s say I own a software company that employs only vegetarians, because I don’t believe I should be forced to subsidize meateating with the money I pay in salaries. Could I get away with that sort of discrimination? Apparently I could, if you follow the U. S. Supreme Court’s logic Monday that a company should not be forced to subsidize an activity that offends its owners’ religious beliefs.”
That is a deliberate distortion of the court’s ruling. There was nothing in the Hobby Lobby case that dealt with whether or not Hobby Lobby could or even wanted to refuse to hire contracepting women, nor was there anything about the employer controlling how its employees could spend their salaries, as Basu implies.
The issue in the case was not whether the company’s employees could practice contraception; but rather who was required to pay for it?
The distortion was blatant and deliberate, done to create a straw man that she could easily knock down. But what was so disappointing about the article was not that Basu deliberately distorted the facts, but that the Register’s journalistic standards have sunk so low as to print it.”

If you’d like to keep up with the weekly assault on our religious liberty, tune into Faith on Trial every Tuesday at 9AM and 9PM CDT. You can stream it from anywhere in the world. It’s worth going out of your way to listen to.