CNN knows you religious types who insist on going to church during the pandemic need a good talking down to. Your intransigence leaves Team Zucker no choice: you’re just going to have to endure an oped from Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, a fellow with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress.
(That would be the same Center for American Progress whose former head participated in some Grade-A bigotry against orthodox Catholics. You remember, something about leaked e-mails … so, yeah, this is going to hurt.)
Fitzsimmons is an Elder in the Church of Perpetual Lockdown. It’s loosely affiliated with the United Church of Climate Change, and an offshoot of the Statist Synod.
Fitzsimmons is very cross with congregations that want to go back to being, well, congregations, and he’s super-angry that the Trump administration isn’t telling them no. The administration “will not implement any of the guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on reopening, in part, because of a ‘religious freedom’ concern about placing any restrictions on churches.” Fitzsimmons isn’t having it. “The administration is once again trying to unfurl the banner of what it might describe as religious freedom, this time as cover for a premature push to reopen the economy.”
Oh.
“From a wider perspective, the Covid-19 crisis also reveals a new dimension to how some conservatives have distorted our treasured American value of religious freedom,” Fitzsimmons writes. “This comes as many religious communities are continuing to care for one another and the common good by adapting to the trying circumstances.”
What he means is religious communities who are doing what Fitzsimmons thinks they should. But the rest of you get the waggy finger: “Religious freedom is not a license to spread the coronavirus, and this is not the first time it has been exploited to pursue a conservative agenda.”
Here it comes, you troglodytes:
For years, conservatives have tried to use religious freedom as a license to deny women reproductive health care or discriminate against LGBTQ people. According to a watchdog report, the legal advocacy groups arguing the cases challenging stay-at-home orders on religious grounds are the same ones that have waged a so-called religious freedom war against the LGBTQ community.
The very same people who were concerned with religious freedom before are concerned about it now! Coincidence?
Just last week, the US Supreme Court heard arguments concerning whether religious or moral beliefs of an employer should be an acceptable excuse to deny people birth control.
You cretins who don’t think 80-year-old nuns should be on the hook for other people’s condoms are probably the same scofflaws that sat in your cars for a drive-in Easter Sunday service. And you are so out of step with the majority:
According to the Public Religion Research Institute, majorities of all American religious groups oppose religious exemptions from coronavirus public health orders, support requiring employer-provided health care coverage to include contraception at no cost, and oppose allowing adoption agencies that receive federal support from excluding gay and lesbian couples from being considered as parents.
Big if true. In fact, it’s the greatest argument ever for religious freedom as specifically protected in the Bill of Rights.
But, er, never mind. Fitzsimmons has your number: “The ‘religious freedom’ veil on bigotry and conservative self-interest is paper thin.”
