Think of qualified immunity as serving as a protective veil for bureaucrats. It empowers government officials to engage in unethical behavior they otherwise would not. That’s because the privilege of qualified immunity protects them from the cost of defending their individual misconduct. Piercing the government veil by allowing victims to directly sue these perpetrators for their on-the-job misdeeds can be a powerful tool for government accountability.

Two stories involving small steps toward piercing the government veil made the news last week. In the first story, the government of New York City ended qualified immunity for police officers. In taking that action, it became the first city in the U.S. to do so. This is a small step that should be expanded to include all New York City government officials.

The second story involves the University of Iowa, a public university. Here, three university officials were found to have discriminated against a campus group because of its religious affiliation. In their intentional discrimination, they violated the group members’ rights under the Constitution.

In ruling against the university officials, who are state government employees, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals made no bones about what they viewed as the officials’ unconstitutional conduct in the case. They also stripped the university officials of any privilege to claim qualified immunity for their actions:

The purpose of qualified immunity is to shield good-faith actors who make mistaken judgments about unresolved issues of law, and it protects “all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 743 (2011) (citation omitted). But we do not need the benefit of hindsight to know that the individual defendants’ choices were prohibited by the Constitution. They had more than “fair warning” that their conduct was unconstitutional. Tolan v. Cotton, 572 U.S. 650, 656 (2014) (citation omitted). In fact, they knew it was. See Maj. Op. 24.

The law is clear: state organizations may not target religious groups for differential treatment or withhold an otherwise available benefit solely because they are religious. That is what happened here. The individual defendants may pick their poison: they are either plainly incompetent or they knowingly violated the Constitution. Either way, they should not get qualified immunity.

The Appeals Court sent the case back to the lower court. The next step of the legal process will set the cost of damages the three university employees must pay their victims. Better still, that money must come out of their own pockets. Taxpayers shall be free from paying for these bureaucrats’ bigoted misconduct.

But would this case have ever existed in the first place if not for the doctrine of qualified immunity? If the answer to that question is no, shouldn’t the bureaucrats’ privilege of qualified immunity be permanently pierced?

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Americans, however, have largely embraced individuals identifying along the LGBTQ spectrum as full-fledged members of our communities. And the Supreme Court of the United States, or SCOTUS, can do little to reverse this trend. The evidence is implicit in an unlikely source: the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold religious liberty in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

In Masterpiece Cakeshop, seven justices upheld the civil right of a Colorado baker to withhold his labor rather than create a piece of art that would endorse an activity he objected to on spiritual grounds. The baker was Christian and the art was a custom wedding cake that would have celebrated a gay wedding. The decision has been widely condemned as condoning and perhaps even encouraging discrimination against people who self-identify along the LGBTQ spectrum. A careful reading of the court decision, including the concurring and dissenting opinions, actually suggests the opposite.

To be sure, strong anti-LGBTQ sentiment runs deep in certain segments of American culture, especially among conservative Christians. But American attitudes have become remarkably more accepting of homosexuality and other variations of sexual identity since the 1970s. In part, this may be due to the fact those on the LGBTQ spectrum consistently and historically represent a very small minority of the overall population—less than 5% by most accounts and research.

A more relevant factor may be shifting beliefs about the nature of sexual orientation itself. The critical pivot point appears to be whether someone believes sexual orientation is biological (nature) or a choice (nurture or environmental). If sexual orientation is a choice, a person’s sexual identity or preference is an implicitly ethical one about lifestyle and their decisions about intimate partners and relationships. If sexual orientation is determined by nature, sexual identity has no moral implications. Sexual orientation would be, for many at least, pre-determined.

Most Americans now believe that sexual orientation has a significant biological component—a position consistent with scientific research—and is not solely a lifestyle choice. A 2018 Gallup survey, for example, found that half of Americans believed sexual orientation was determined by genetics. This is a dramatic change from 1977 when just 13% believed homosexuality was determined by “nature.”

This greater acceptance of the genetic foundations of sexual orientation is reflected in attitudes toward public policy, such as the legal status of marriage. Nearly nine out of ten of those who think nature determines sexual orientation also favor same-sex marriage. More importantly, perhaps, 61% of those who believe upbringing and environment are more important still believe same-sex marriage should be legal.

This brings us back to Masterpiece Cakeshop. Given these broad shifts in attitudes, discrimination against those identifying as gay, lesbian, or something else along the spectrum is becoming more isolated and less influential as a cultural issue. No matter what the Colorado baker did as an individual, or as a shop owner, gay couples were not shut out from the wedding cake marketplace or other types of markets for goods and services. Indeed, the evidence provided in the Supreme Court case, and the decision itself, revealed the gay couple in question could have taken their business to numerous other wedding cake providers in the area.

The public controversy surrounding the Masterpiece Cakeshop case revolved around the behavior of one shop owner and accusations he engaged in or promoted generalized discrimination against gays, not that he represented a broad-based attitude or general behavior among bakers. A Yelp Search using the terms “wedding cake bakery” revealed more than 200 bakers offering similar services in the Denver metropolitan area, the general location of Masterpiece Cakeshop, many of them receiving 5-star ratings from dozens of customers. More than 140 were listed by Yelp when the search location was limited to Lakewood, Colorado, the city in which Masterpiece Cakeshop is located.

More importantly, the nature of the discrimination against the gay couple in the case was very narrow. Contrary to popular perception, the baker did not refuse to sell baked goods to the gay couple. In fact, he even said he would “create birthday cakes, shower cakes, or any other cakes for them.” The baker’s decision to decline the custom wedding cake request was based on his religious belief that a marriage was a spiritual covenant between a man and a woman. He was not denying the couple’s human right to formally bond an intimate relationship (even though same-sex marriage was still not legal in Colorado at the time), nor did he insult or disparage their lifestyle or the couple as individuals. With the exception of turning down the request to make the custom wedding cake, the baker by all accounts treated the couple, who had already married in Massachusetts, with respect and dignity. Even if the court had decided against the baker and in favor of the gay couple, the LGBTQ community (or the couple in question) would not have been freer, had more access to goods and services, or at less risk to violence because of their sexual orientation.

The 7-2 majority opinion in Masterpiece Cakeshop, as well as the concurring opinions, make it clear that freedom of religion and freedom of speech are protected civil rights. The baker’s individual actions may have “humiliated” the gay couple as individuals, but their personal offense did not rise to the level that bakers, artists, or even restaurant owners must be compelled to create customized products for them when the request conflicts with their religious beliefs or free expression.

Rather than view Masterpiece Cakeshop as a harbinger of a new wave of legally sanctioned discrimination, a far more accurate reading of the case and American culture is that the law and statute has limits to changing hearts and minds. A better strategy for securing liberties and freedoms for those along the LGBTQ spectrum over the “last mile” of cultural acceptance will more likely be found in working to establish an even broader civil foundation for respecting them as individuals rather than using the coercive force of government to subvert the dignity and humanity of those with whom they disagree. Laws work best when they are protecting citizens from harm and securing fundamental liberties rather than bullying citizens into changing their moral worldviews.

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The Court punted on the free speech question, but decided that the Commission’s adjudication of this case violated “the State’s duty under the First Amendment not to base laws or regulations on hostility to religion or religious viewpoint.” The Court found hostility based on remarks from commissioners describing the baker’s religious beliefs about marriage as “one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to—to use their religion to hurt others.” The Court also noted that the commission compared the baker’s free exercise claim to grounds used to support the Holocaust and slavery. On top of this, the Court found that in other cases where bakers had refused to bake cakes containing Biblical statements condemning homosexuality, the Commission found no unlawful discrimination.

The Commission’s hostility was inconsistent with the First Amendment’s guarantee that our laws be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion. Phillips was entitled to a neutral decision maker who would give full and fair consideration to his religious objection as he sought to assert it in all of the circumstances in which this case was presented, considered, and decided. In this case the adjudication concerned a context that may well be different going forward in the respects noted above. However later cases raising these or similar concerns are resolved in the future, for these reasons the rulings of the Commission and of the state court that enforced the Commission’s order must be invalidated.

This was the right result in this case, but the Court has done little to provide meaningful guidance as free exercise and free speech clash with public accommodation statutes making sexual orientation a protected classification. It is unlikely we will ever see another Commission decision that overtly expresses hostility to Christianity. With this opinion, we do not know if the artistic expression of a specialty baker is grounds for refusing to provide services under the First Amendment. We really don’t know what the Court will do with a similar case not possessing the unique circumstances of a biased decision maker.

So, religious liberty prevailed here. We have no clue what the result will be the next time. It seems the Court is aware of the rock-and-a-hard-place situation its recent sexuality and marriage jurisprudence has placed on orthodox Christians. There seems to be a desire to throw them a constitutional lifeline, but there’s also evidence of alligator arms fearing to push back too much against the prevailing spirit of the age.

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Silence, the powerful new film by iconic film director Martin Scorcese, is a complex story of faith and spiritual inspiration set during feudal Japan’s 17th century purge of Christians and their priests. It’s also a moving and thoughtful meditation on religious freedom, on personal versus state-sponsored faith, and on how character is defined by the choice of whether or not to submit to the State.

The film is based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo. In short, two priests, Fr. Sebastiao Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Fr. Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver), travel to Japan to find their mentor, Fr. Ferreira (Liam Neeson). Reports from Portuguese traders say that Ferreira gave up the Catholic faith and now lives among the Japanese, choosing to preserve his own life rather than fight against a Shogun who has killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese Christians. The young Jesuits can’t believe someone with as deep a commitment to his Christian faith as Ferreira could turn away from the Church and God. So they set out to find the truth. Rodrigues and Garupe find themselves at the epicenter of the Shogun’s religious persecution: Nagasaki (at the southern most western tip of the main islands of Japan).

The film places the events in and around 1640, which would be just after the Shimbara Rebellion (1637-38) and several decades after the beginning of the repressive period. In 1597, ten years after the ban of Christian missionaries, 26 Jesuit priests were crucified in an effort to purge Japan of missionaries and enforce a prohibition on its teachings. The rebellion forty years later consisted mostly of Christian peasants, fishermen, and ronin (masterless samurai) who rose up against the Shogun to protest higher taxes, their anger fueled by a persistent famine and ongoing religious persecution. The rebellion was suppressed by a coalition of Japanese lords under the shogunate, and 37,000 rebels and sympathizers were beheaded. Christianity survived only by going underground. The persecution of Christianity became even more focused and repressive in the rebellion’s aftermath, as the Shogun (who was situated in Tokyo in eastern Japan) viewed western religion as a threat to national unity.

It’s in this period that Rodrigues and Garupe are led to a Japanese fishing village by Kichijiro (Yosuka Kubozuka), an alcoholic fisherman who has renounced his Christian faith. The villagers, however, are underground Christians (Hidden Christians) and excited to have the priests arrive so they can properly receive the sacraments. At the same time, the governor, the infamous persecutor Inoue Masashiga (Issey Ogata), relentlessly enforces the ban, requiring adherents to renounce their faith or suffer imprisonment, torture, and death. Rodrigues and Garupe administer the sacraments while at the same time searching for the whereabouts of their former teacher. They are eventually captured and imprisoned, and they are forced to watch believers systematically tortured and killed, some through crucifixion, others through drowning or beheading. None renounce their faith, impressing upon Rodrigues the purity and sincerity of their beliefs.

As they bare witness to the torture, Rodrigues and Garupe are forced to question their own commitment to God and their faith. If they publicly renounce God, they can potentially save the lives of the remaining believers. The Masashiga and his lieutenant (Tadanobu Sano, 47 Ronin, Thor) insist that the only reason the villagers and peasants are dying is because of a stubborn and self-centered commitment to publicly proclaiming their fealty to God and Jesus Christ. Garupe is eventually martyred while trying to save believers who are being drowned, throwing Rodrigues into an emotional and philosophical tailspin and forcing him to seriously consider abandoning the Church and teaching Christianity. 

But have the priests truly renounced their faith? This is the film’s central question. A tenet of Christianity, artfully woven into the plot through the character of the lapsed Christian Kuchijiro, is that true commitment and fidelity are known only to God and in the individual’s heart. This principle is problematic under state and cultural oppression, because Christianity is also inherently a system of social practice and ethics—Christians are mandated to act toward others in a manner consistent with God’s will, as practiced on earth by Christ Jesus. Rodrigues must reconcile the mandate to act with love and forgiveness with the fact he endangers the lives of practicing Christians every time he publicly refuses to renounce his faith before Masashiga.

But the story is more than a journey of personal faith. Silence also explores how the government uses faith to secure and consolidate power. Masashiga points out that he is not really asking Rodrigues to renounce his faith, only to stop practicing it and converting Japanese. He emphasizes the inner-directedness of Buddhism as a superior alternative to Christianity, and one consistent with the goals of the Shogun. (The film makes no mention of the indigenous Shinto religion and its practices, even though the rituals can be traced to the 8th century.) The State’s interest is national unity and subservience to the Shogun, not individual salvation or personal growth. Christianity undermines these goals because Christianity teaches that individuals have free will and are not creatures of the State, let alone the Shogun. Christians are taught that they are created by God, in the image of God, and loved unconditionally by God. Thus, God, not the State, has moral authority. Silence makes good use of this principle by telling a second, equally important story that involves whether the State or the individual will prevail when they are in direct conflict. Conventional wisdom would suggest that the State wins when priests and believers publicly renounce their faith in a Christian God. Scorcese doesn’t let the story end there, making the ending provocative and thought provoking.

Silence has been mentioned as an Oscar contender for good reason. The story is complex but well told. Despite the 25 years Scorcese invested in bringing this film to theaters, the casting is spot-on, with excellent performances by Garfield, Driver, Ogata, Kubozuka, Asano, and others. Neeson does well, but his character seemed a bit flat, considering his role in turning Rodrigues and the drama that must have accompanied his character’s meeting with his former pupil. Despite being filmed in Taiwan, the rural, mountainous setting conveys the isolation and topographically challenging environment of western Japan. The film is long, over two and half hours, and the pace methodical, but moviegoers looking for deep content rather than flash should come away more than satisfied.

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For example, Breitbart reports that Christian bakery owners in Oregon have just been hit with a gag order prohibiting them publishing any material indicating a refusal to bake cakes for same-sex weddings. Their speech is silenced contrary to the Bill of Rights. The bakers were also ordered to pay a gay couple $135,000 for mental anguish caused by the refusal to bake the cake. The Daily Caller has this article on the judge’s ruling.

Oregon law is a good example of the dangers to First-Amendment freedoms posed by state public accommodations laws.

Under Oregon’s statute “all persons within the jurisdiction of this state are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of any place of public accommodation, without any distinction, discrimination or restriction on account of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, marital status or age if the individual is 18 years of age or older.”

The statute broadly defines a place of public accommodation as “Any place or service offering to the public accommodations, advantages, facilities or privileges whether in the nature of goods, services, lodgings, amusements, transportation or otherwise.”

These statutes, rather than promoting freedom, serve to burden Christians and go far beyond the common law. Under the common law, the concept of public accommodation was circumscribed. The common law imposed a duty to serve all comers on businesses providing essential goods and services to travelers. This rule developed in light of circumstances where travel posed myriad dangers. A traveler denied access to an inn would be at the mercy of the elements, robbers, and hunger. Inns were havens, and usually the only available haven, where someone on a journey could obtain refreshment and shelter. Similarly, common carriers such as railroad companies usually enjoyed a monopoly on transportation services. If the carrier refused to sell a ticket to a traveler, then the wayfarer would be stranded and subject to many of the same indignities as a person denied access to the inn. Consequently, common carriers were cloaked with the public interest and were prohibited from discriminating.

The common law’s constraints on inn keepers and common carriers made sense. Travelers had nowhere else to turn for safety or passage. Hence, these few businesses cloaked with the public interest had to provide services to all. Early state and federal accommodation laws expanded the idea of the public’s interest, and specifically addressed the situation of the freedmen. In 1964, Title II of the federal Civil Rights Act did not stray far from its forerunners in the 1860s and 70s, and much like the old common law focused on businesses relating to interstate travel and restaurants.

But today under the law of many states, there is no limitation on what is a public accommodation. Every business finds itself in the position of the inn keeper of yesteryear. Moreover, the list of suspect classifications continues to expand. While the legislators were probably well meaning in enacting these broad statutes, the Oregon ruling and its statute should cause us to rethink the wisdom of labeling every business as a public accommodation. Actually, the First Amendment and common sense require that we do rethink these laws.

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Charter schools won big in Georgia and Washington. Georgia voters passed an amendment allowing a statewide commission to approve independently operated charter schools, not just school districts, which can be hostile to chartering schools that compete with them for students and funding. The measure is the result of a 2011 state Supreme Court decision that ruled Georgia’s Charter School Commission ran afoul of local control requirements.

Apparently the fourth time’s the charm in Washington State. At long last voters approved a plan allowing 40 charter schools in the state over the next five years, making Washington the 43rd state, including D.C., to adopt charter school legislation.

But policies affecting teachers and unions were a mixed bag. Michigan voters rejected constitutional amendment making collective bargaining a right–widely considered a test case for expansion to other states, California in particular.

Speaking of the Golden State, the California Teachers Association (CTA) is breathing a sigh of relief now that voters have decided it’s okay for union bosses to deduct political activities dues directly from teachers’ paychecks without having to get their express permission first. Guess all that time away from the classroom to campaign really paid off—for the CTA, that is, not students or taxpayers. Meanwhile voters in Idaho rejected making unions’ collective bargaining with school districts more timely, open, and transparent. Teacher performance pay plans were also a no-go in Idaho—along with South Dakota. (See here, too.)

One of the most interesting ballot measures came from Florida. Voters there rejected an amendment to the state constitution that would have prevented the state from barring individuals from choosing religiously-affiliated service providers of education and healthcare. This measure would have overturned Florida’s Blaine Amendment and paved the way for K-12 education vouchers, which were deemed selectively unconstitutional in 2006. Florida voters should know better.

Besides the Sunshine State’s own voucher program for students with disabilities, nearly 11 percent of the country’s 5.8 million school-age children with special needs are already attending private schools of their parents’ choice at public expense under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Fully, 2,600 of those children are Floridians. (See the “Parentally placed in private schools” column in Table B3-2 here.) Additionally, more than one-third of all college Pell Grant recipients (3.4 million nationwide) use public dollars to attend private and proprietary colleges and universities. Close to 40 percent of Florida Pell Grant recipients (more than 232,000) use public dollars to attend non-public postsecondary institutions. (See Table 21 here.)

Back in Idaho, voters also rejected a variety of reforms intended to bring education into the 21st century, including improved transparency, complete with fiscal report cards for school districts, and expanded online learning options for students. This reform component was the most controversial of the state’s three education propositions. The state teachers union had a field day claiming that online learning would replace teachers with laptops, which would be ruined by klutzy kids spilling soda on the keyboards (starting at 1.05 minutes). Looks like nostalgia for the 19th century factory education model won out. Well, “Esto perpetua,” as they say in Idaho.

More money for schools is always a ballot box favorite, and voters in California and Oregon passed tax measures for additional K-12 funding. Apparently, more than $11,000 per pupil just isn’t enough for voters along the Pacific Coast. Arizona voters, however, said ‘No’ to making a 2010 temporary sales tax permanent for additional K-12 funding, so schools there will have to get by with just $9,600 per pupil.

As they say, all politics is local. So, too, is education—and it doesn’t get more local than a parent with every possible education option for his or her child. Parents and voters across the country will have different ideas about which policies are best, and that’s as it should be. Certainly the last thing we need in education is a one-size-fits-all approach.

That said the elephant in the classroom is how many otherwise intelligent people go completely soft over education funding measures. They suspend all disbelief that government schools could possibly curb their profligate ways, such as hiring legions of district and school staff and building Taj Mahal facilities. (For some eye-popping figures, scroll down to the bottom of the table here to the “Capital outlay” and “Interest on school debt” rows.)

That same suspension of disbelief helps explain several higher education ballot results.

Citizens in five states decided whether to take on more than $1 billion in bonding debt to pay for campus construction and renovation projects. Voters in Arizona, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Rhode Island said ‘Yes’ to a combined $995 million worth of bonding. Maine was the lone state whose voters said ‘No’ to debt by rejecting an $11.3 million bond measure.

Obviously nobody wants students attending dilapidated campuses. Yet it’s worth considering better ways to finance what should be ongoing regular maintenance and operations. Responsible business owners plan ahead by setting aside funds for future growth. Colleges and universities can do the same.

On average, public two- and four-year institutions receive nearly $30,000 per undergraduate in 2012 dollars, consisting of roughly: $9,700 in self-generated income and gifts; $7,500 in state, local, and federal appropriations (excluding student loans); $6,800 in government grants and contracts; and $5,500 in tuition and fees.

Included in that $30,000 average is close to $1,000 worth of appropriations, grants, and gifts just for capital projects per undergraduate. So why are taxpayers being asked to spend more in the first place, much less in a way that adds significant amounts of debt interest?

A recent analysis indicates that over a fifteen-year period postsecondary administration grew more than twice as much as instructional staff. This is significant since well over 100 postsecondary mid-level and senior-level administrative and non-teaching positions command six-figure salaries, compared to a handful of faculty positions that do. We should finance colleges and universities in ways that incentivize them to use existing resources better instead of coming back for more...plus interest.

Rather than states directing general (non-capital) lump-sum appropriations to institutions, those funds should be directed to undergraduates in the form of annual performance grants. Students who complete their programs on time would not have to pay back their grants; those who don’t, would. Directing just the state appropriation share to students (about $6,300 per undergraduate) would incentivize them to find the best programs at the best price. Importantly, the onus would be on institutions to keep their costs and tuition prices down over the long term—in part by saving for future capital projects rather than asking to use the taxpayer credit card.

Bonds were not the only higher education issue decided by voters this week. Among the more interesting measures was a plan to allow two Washington state universities to invest part of their reserve funds in private companies. Ideas like this one may sound sensible at first, but Washington voters clearly had concerns about the wisdom of government entities betting on winners with taxpayer dollars. (Arizona rejected a similar proposal in 2004.) And let’s not forget, the only ones who truly invest are the people who actually earned the money and accepted the risk. Government entities don’t “invest.” They spend other people’s money. And if one of their “investments” goes bad, representatives of those same government entities would come back to the taxpayers asking for more money. Conversely, even if those government entities did happen to pick a winner, there’s no guarantee that they’d ask taxpayers for less funding in the future.

Admissions and related student residency issues rounded out the higher education ballot initiatives—and are likely to ignite ongoing debate and legal action. Maryland voters passed the Dream Act Referendum. A noteworthy change included in this act is extending the time for honorably discharged veterans to qualify for in-state tuition rates, from one year to four years. This is an important step. A change to the GI Bill last year has left college-going veterans in 38 states in a massive financial lurch. Some 250,000 veterans returned to their home states after serving their country to find that their in-state colleges and universities had mis-classified them as out-of-state students. This means those veterans are being charged about twice as much as they should be.

A controversial component of Maryland’s Dream Act is making undocumented immigrants eligible for in-state tuition rates under certain conditions. Opponents object that this is preferential treatment. Yet in 2011 the Supreme Court rejected that argument, letting a similar California law stand because the in-state rate is based on students graduating from in-state high schools, not their citizenship. Currently, a dozen states have similar laws granting in-state tuition rates to undocumented immigrants. Seven states ban the practice.

Oklahoma is one of those states, and this week voters there approved a measure to end preferential treatment based on race and gender in college admissions and other areas. In recent weeks the University of Oklahoma has been accused of preferential admissions practices based on applicants’ race. So too has the University of Texas, Austin. Decades of federal efforts to end discrimination, including 40 years of Title IX, through preferential treatment based on gender, race, or external circumstances does not end discrimination. Nor does it further equal opportunity for all.

And equal educational opportunity for all requires that voters make informed decisions, not abdicate responsibility over education to government, along with a blank check.

The post States’ Education Ballot Results Roundup: The Good, the Bad, and the Really Expensive appeared first on The Beacon.

The main goal of the mandate is not, as HHS claimed, to protect women’s health. It is rather a move to conscript religious organizations into a political agenda, forcing them to facilitate and fund services that violate their beliefs, within their own institutions.

The media have implied all along that the dispute is mainly of concern to a Catholic minority with peculiar views about human sexuality. But religious leaders of all faiths have been quick to see that what is involved is a flagrant violation of religious freedom. That’s why former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, declared, “We’re all Catholics now.”

More is at stake here than the mission of all churches, including the Catholic Church, to provide social services like health care and education to everyone regardless of creed, and to do so without compromising their beliefs. At the deepest level, we are witnessing an attack on the institutions of civil society that are essential to limited government and are important buffers between the citizen and the all-powerful state.

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