“We will not comply,” and “we will resist” were among the slogans chanted by a crowd of almost 1,000 persons at the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally in the Senate Park north of Constitution Avenue in a three hour rally on Friday, June 8. More a dozen speakers gave defiant speeches appealing to the principles of the American founding and citing connections between the loss of religious freedom and the loss of freedom generally, especially in modern totalitarian states.
Former ambassador Alan Keyes gave the most extensive and final, speech in the park. He claimed that those who claim the fight against the HHS mandate, requiring religious organizations to carry insurance covering contraceptives and abortion inducing drugs, is a war against women are really the ones who instituted the war. Quoting Jefferson, he said that “justice is the end of civil society.” This most basic purpose (justice) is the true basis of rights, which are not merely synonymous with freedom (individuals doing what they want). Eliminating concepts of right and wrong from the public square thus eliminate true rights, and lays the groundwork for tyranny. Far from limiting or reducing rights, moral authority is necessary for them. “Destroy authority, and you have no rights at all” Keyes said. There was agreement on the source of our rights from the American founding, specifically, that men are endowed with rights by God. While some of these rights are enumerated in the Constitution, they ultimately derive not from the Constitution but from God. This, Keyes said, answers the secularist charge that religious freedom is impractical, involving a chaos of religious freedom claims from religious groups who wish to do as they please apart from the law. Because rights are given by God, they are objective, and serve as the basis of both law and freedom, not privilege.
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