Coakley Demonstrates Great Ignorance of the Constitution.
“We have a separation of Church and State”
What, exactly, is the separation of Church and State about? Does it mean that Law and where Government are superior to ones individual beliefs or that ones individual beliefs are superior to the Law and Government? Does it mean that Government and the law are defer to religious beliefs or that religion is deferred to? When one reads the “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…” in the First Amendment, one cannot reasonably deduct that religion takes a back seat to Laws passed by Congress.
Yet Coakley, someone who took the oath of office which includes no small promise to defend the Constitution, seems to have no clue what the Constitution talks about. Such ignorance of the document upon which the USA was founded is inexcusable for someone attempting to represent their State. But this is perhaps a sign of how entrenched the idea that the “Separation of Church and State” (which is an idea outside the Constitution not even found in the Federalist Papers but in a letter) means that Religion is shut out and disenfranchised rather than the State being shut out of influencing or managing Religion. The gross perverting of the Constitution to mean something contrary to what the Founders intended had not been a slow process or even a new process.
It is a process that does not hold our Freedoms or our Liberties in high esteem yet it will unflinchingly hide behind those same freedoms and liberties in order to tear them down for everyone else. It is as dishonest as it is hypocritical.
Here we have Coakley stating that because of the separation of Church and State, Catholic Doctors cannot decline to offer contraception and they should find other employment. Our Nation happened to have been founded by people who fled from statists like Coakley. The Constitution and Bill of Rights were formulated to combat them as well. May Steve Brown beat Coakley hands down.
The phrase “separation of church and state” is but a metaphor to describe the underlying principle of the First Amendment and no-religious-test clause. That the phrase does not appear in the text of the Constitution assumes much importance, it seems, only to those who may have once labored under the misimpression it was there and later learned otherwise. To those familiar with the Constitution, the absence of the metaphor commonly used to describe one of its principles is no more consequential than the absence of other phrases (e.g., Bill of Rights, separation of powers, checks and balances, fair trial, religious liberty) used to describe other undoubted Constitutional principles.
Some try to pass off the Supreme Court’s decision in Everson v. Board of Education as simply a misreading of Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. Instructive as that letter is, it played but a small part in the Court’s decision. It was only after reaching its conclusion based on a detailed discussion of the historical events leading to the First Amendment that the Court mentioned the letter. The metaphor “separation of church and state” was but a handy catch phrase to describe the upshot of its conclusion. The Court’s reading of the First Amendment in this regard was unanimous; all nine Justices agreed on that much, but split 5-4 on whether the Amendment precludes states from paying for transportation of students to religious schools.
Perhaps even more than Jefferson, Madison influenced the Court’s view. Madison, who had a central role in drafting the Constitution and the First Amendment, confirmed that he understood them to “[s]trongly guard[] . . . the separation between Religion and Government.” Madison, Detached Memoranda (~1820). He made plain, too, that they guarded against more than just laws creating state sponsored churches or imposing a state religion. Mindful that old habits die hard and citizens and politicians could tend to entangle government and religion (e.g., “the appointment of chaplains to the two houses of Congress” and “for the army and navy” and “[r]eligious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts”), he considered the question whether such actions were “consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom” and responded: “In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the United States forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion.”
You also argue that the government should not require people to do things contrary to their faith. The government could hardly operate if anyone could opt out of laws with the excuse that their religion requires or allows it. The courts have confronted this sort of issue and have ruled that the government cannot enact laws specifically aimed at a particular religion, but if the government enacts laws generally applicable to everyone or at least broad classes of people (e.g, laws concerning traffic, pollution, taxes, contracts, fraud, negligence), it can require everyone, including those who may object on religious grounds, to abide by them.
In rare (one hopes) circumstances, such a generally-applicable law could put an individual in an ethical Catch-22 if it requires one to take actions one considers immoral. This potential dilemma is not peculiar to any particular religion. Anyone–Christian, atheist, etc.–may be put in such a bind. For just this reason, when such binds can be anticipated, provisions may be added to laws affording some relief to conscientious objectors.
You do bring up a very good point concerning the requirement of laws to be followed by people of various religions. It is one I constantly think about in our society where you have various sects which would impose their religious laws on all people: such as Shia Muslims who would impose very restrictive laws and are intolerant of other beliefs.
Coakley’s comment in the interview is specifically relating to contraception and the unspoken zinger: abortion (since we are talking about people visiting a hospital rather than their family planner, this assumption makes sense to me). Contraception is not a life saving matter like heart surgery or even a medical necessity like fixing a broken leg. Additionally, the Hippocratic oath doctors takes precludes them from refusing to help. Including an exemption clause in any health care requirement with regards to contraception just makes sense.