Don’t Serve the Public

On Sunday, NPR ran a feature purporting to offer a definitive analysis of the ongoing battle for religious liberty (lately the “War on Religion”) against recent government mandates. While it’s encouraging to see issues like the HHS contraception mandate and the rights of Catholic adoption agencies finally breaking into mainstream discourse, the story on the whole does a rather poor job at making distinctions among the various sub-issues, rolls a range of broader concerns together with a few Republican primary debate quips, and ultimately winds up with an unsatisfying, hemming and hawing “tone down the rhetoric” cliché.

But perhaps the piece’s (unintentionally) most clarifying line is a quote from Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who just about summarizes the view of many on the side of the recent, aggressive legal push:

Boston says of course religious believers want to impose their views on the world — witness the fight against same-sex marriage. But he says under the law, people can’t discriminate based on their religious beliefs, any more than a restaurant owner can cite the Bible in refusing to serve black customers. He says the solution is simple:

“If you don’t want to serve the public, don’t open a business saying you will serve the public.”

So not only is religion flatly equated to a “business,” but it’s one that should stop serving the public if it wants to continue operating. (Given the fact that religion is an inherently and inextricably public phenomenon, and that Christianity in particular can never conform to Boston’s wish, exactly how does a non-public serving business exist?) Boston may not be the spokesman Kathleen Sebelius wanted, but has there even been articulated a more perfect summation of the underlying attitude towards religious institutions by those pushing laws like the contraception mandate?