Birth Control Yes, Government Control No

By JAMES TARANTO

New York Times editorials are often worth reading--stop laughing, we're serious!--because they provide a window into the mindset of the liberal left, the ideological tendency that dominates many major cultural institutions and, for at least the next 11 months, the executive branch of the federal government.

Times editorialists write for people who think alike and seek reinforcement of their prejudices. Unconstrained by any need for compromise or political sensitivity, they provide an honest distillation of left-liberalism, something you can't always get from politicians who need to appeal broadly enough to win electoral majorities or even from the leaders of other institutions that serve a more diverse audience or clientele. What you learn from reading Times editorialists is that the fundamental attitude of left-liberalism today is one of contemptuous ignorance.

Thus after President Obama made a symbolic concession to religious liberty last week, the Times once again employed scare quotes to sneer at the entire idea. This time it was in the very first phrase of its Saturday editorial:

In response to a phony crisis over "religious liberty" engendered by the right, President Obama seems to have stood his ground on an essential principle--free access to birth control for any woman. . . .

Nonetheless, it was dismaying to see the president lend any credence to the misbegotten notion that providing access to contraceptives violated the freedom of any religious institution. Churches are given complete freedom by the Constitution to preach that birth control is immoral, but they have not been given the right to laws that would deprive their followers or employees of the right to disagree with that teaching.

In truth, no one denies that individuals have "the right to disagree with that teaching," and the religious institutions that object to the mandate do not claim the authority to police their employees' private lives or opinions. Rather, they oppose the government's attempt to coerce them into facilitating the practices they preach against.

The editorial continues by assuring the Times's readers that everyone who disagrees is dishonest, because the Times knows what they really think: "The president's solution, however, demonstrates that those still angry about the mandate aren't really concerned about religious freedom; they simply don't like birth control and want to reduce access to it." The evidence for this assertion is laughable:

Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican of Florida, has introduced a bill that would allow any employer to refuse to cover birth control by claiming to have a religious objection. The House speaker, John Boehner, also supports the concept. Rick Santorum said Friday that no insurance policy should cover it, apparently unaware that many doctors prescribe birth control pills for medical reasons other than contraception.

The Rubio and Boehner examples, as described here, offer zero support for the Times's claim that opponents "don't like birth control" and contradict the claim that they "aren't really concerned about religious freedom." The Rubio bill would give broader recognition to religious freedom than an exemption limited to religious institutions.

Podcast

James Taranto on birth control and government control.

As for Santorum, our sense is that he has serious, and quite reasonable, doubts that birth control is good for society, But let's stipulate for the sake of argument that he doesn't "like birth control." First of all, so what? The Times editorialists may believe that birth control is valuable or beneficial, but it's weird that they get bent out of shape merely because other people don't like the stuff. Second, even if the Times accurately characterizes the former senator's views on birth control, it is both a non sequitur and, knowing Santorum, a completely preposterous assertion that he isn't "really concerned about religious freedom."

This columnist likes birth control a lot. To our mind, it is one of the greatest conveniences of modern life. As we are not Catholic, we don't share the church's moral objections to abortifacient drugs or sterilization procedures. But as we are American, we care a lot about religious liberty, and about liberty more generally. Thus we view the birth-control mandate as a particular outrage and ObamaCare more generally as a monstrosity.

Times columnist Gail Collins went off message, beginning her column on the same day as the editorial: "It's not really about birth control." We got a good laugh imagining left-liberals who look to the Times for guidance, driving themselves crazy trying to reconcile the dueling messages.

But Collins is right that it's not about birth control. It's about freedom from government coercion. She wants more coercion; as she puts it sneeringly: "National standards, national coverage--all of that offends the Tea Party ethos that wants to keep the federal government out of every aspect of American life that does not involve bombing another country." But at least she has some rudimentary understanding of the other side of the debate.

Not so Nicholas Kristof, who in his column yesterday treated us to this magnificently funny display of un-self-awareness:

I may not be as theologically sophisticated as American bishops, but I had thought that Jesus talked more about helping the poor than about banning contraceptives.

The debates about pelvic politics over the last week sometimes had a patronizing tone . . .

Yeah, tell us about it! Physician, heal thyself. But the most revealing Kristof quote is this one: "The basic principle of American life is that we try to respect religious beliefs, and accommodate them where we can."

This prompted an incandescently furious response from Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:

Nicholas Kristof's statement is light years beyond the President in disrespect for religious liberty.

Where would we find what Kristof describes as "the basic principle of American life," when he goes on to state that principle with language as chilling as "we try to respect religious beliefs, and accommodate them where we can"?

The language of accommodation is almost as old as the Constitution itself, but it was never framed as Kristof frames it--certainly not by the founders who spoke of "inalienable rights" granted to human beings by the Creator's endowment.

Can you imagine any of the founders speaking as Kristof writes, of an intention to "try to respect religious beliefs"?

Mr. Kristof is a serious man, and he raises serious issues in this column. But with this one simplistic and condescending sentence he throws religious liberty under the bus and reveals what makes sense to so many in the secular elite.

They will try their best, they promise, to respect our religious beliefs, and to "accommodate them where we can."

That's it. Don't dare ask for anything more.

Religious liberty--no scare quotes for us--is one of America's basic principles, the first freedom in the Bill of Rights. The separation of church and state protects religious minorities, and nonreligious ones, from the coercive imposition of religious law. It is also a bulwark against a secular government's impositions on private conscience.

Albert Mohler is a Baptist. This columnist is an agnostic. But we're with Mike Huckabee, another Baptist, who said last week: "We're all Catholics now.