I bear 2nd District Rep. Alex Mooney no ill will, but modestly suggest that he end his exhumation of the right wing's imaginary war on religious freedom, a doomed archeological dig he undertook recently in this paper. Mr. Mooney, in an evident effort to distract voters with something shiny, worked overtime to manufacture true evidence that ". . . federal, state and local governments continue to violate our religious liberty . . ."
Rep. Mooney wrote that, under Obamacare, the Catholic group Little Sisters of the Poor is "forced to provide [contraception] to their employees." Sadly, there isn't a word of truth to Mooney's remark. As it happened, the Sisters objected to Obamacare's provision that contraception be provided to employees. So an accommodation was made for them so that the Sisters are not required to "contract, arrange, pay [for] or refer for contraceptive coverage" under Obamacare. But in a fit of childish petulance, the Sisters refused to even complete the paperwork that provides them with this exemption. Thus, they smacked the knuckles of a president who bent over backwards to help them. I am convinced that, if he were alive today, the physician St. Luke would take the Sisters to the hallway and give them a loving talking to, as regards healthcare.
Next, Mr. Mooney misrepresented the dismissal of the fire chief of Atlanta, saying that Kelvin Cochran was fired, "when his religious beliefs clashed with liberal dogma." That also is false. The department has more than seven hundred firefighters and no doubt at least a few dozen of them are gay. The mayor fired Cochran because he had demonstrated awful judgement when he distributed to employees a book condemning homosexuality as "vile, vulgar and inappropriate."
The fire chief's actions would have opened his department to lawsuits by gay firefighters who questioned the reasons they were denied promotions and to complaints by homeowners (with gay pride flags in their windows) whose fires were not hastily put out. For comparison, suppose the chief had handed out a book claiming the pope to be the anti-Christ. Might Catholics on the force have serious concerns about the chief's administrative judgment? The ex-chief should have been fired. He was not fit for leadership.
Mr. Mooney then described events at the high school in Buckhannon where, he claims, a student "was forced by his teachers to attend a lesbian gay bisexual transgender club event." Mooney added that the student "expressed his reservations about attending because it went against his religious beliefs [then] was punished for doing so." The Buckhannon student maintains that a teacher responded negatively to him when he expressed his unhappiness about being required to either attend the club event or be charged with skipping school. If the student's account is true, and of course they never lie about disciplinary matters, the teacher's actions were wrong, although they hardly qualify as evidence that the nation is losing its religious freedoms.
Last, one imagines the Battle Hymn of the Republic afloat in Mr. Mooney's pre-frontal cortex as he concluded his epistle on religious freedom with advice that we "remember the Pilgrims" who came to America "to escape religious persecution." The congressman wants us to emulate those Pilgrims, even though they outlawed celebrations of Christmas and Easter? To paraphrase Fox News, why does Rep. Mooney hate Christmas and Easter?
Joseph Wyatt is a Gazette-Mail contributing columnist and emeritus professor at Marshall University.