The Boston Globe, wishing a Catholic was Massachusetts governor, instead of a Mormon, so he could tell the Church he’s not going to legislate his personal faith in the style of St. JFK, castigates Mitt Romney for daring to suggest that Catholics be allowed religious freedom. Now, I’ve already said that Romney’s proposal for an exemption for Catholic Charities in Boston is a ploy for presidential votes. Yet it’s not the idea itself that is at fault, just the unrealistic expectation that the rest of the political establishment in Massachusetts won’t kill it after Romney’s long gone.
Anyway, the Globe’s editorial sounds like the worst kind of Know Nothing rhetoric. It even accuses him of “accepting instructions on public policy from the pope.”
Romney said yesterday he would seek to exempt Catholic Charities from the law because its members ‘‘should be able to follow the practices of their religion.” But why, on a matter of public policy, should a religion’s practices trump the state’s?
I think it’s called the First Amendment. You know, that separation of Church and state thing? The Globe goes on to ask rhetorically whether religious groups who want to discriminate against blacks or even Catholics (how clever!) should also be given exemptions. As the BG’s editors well know, civil rights law recognizes race and religion as protected from discrimination. Not so homosexuality, although many people want to equate the lifestyle of homosexuality with the deep-rooted beliefs of religion or the unalterable reality of race.
Romney should tell the Church what to do and believe
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