The Patriot Post® · Clinton: Religion Must Surrender to Progressive Ideology

There is little question the American Left is arrogant. It is an arrogance suffused with a self-aggrandizing worldview that begins and ends with the simplest premise: You either agree with us, or you’re wrong. But not just wrong in the sense of having a different opinion. Wrong in the sense that you’re a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal at best, or the embodiment of evil itself at worst. In other words, you’re either on board with us, or you’re completely illegitimate.

The above explanation fits Hillary Clinton to a tee. At the sixth annual Women in the World Summit, Clinton brought up one of the Left’s most cherished planks, abortion on demand. “Far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth,” she insisted, “and laws don’t count for much if they’re not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice, not just on paper.”

One is left to wonder what denial of access Clinton bemoans. It can’t be Planned Parenthood (PP), an organization whose name completely belies its true function. As its 2013-2014 Annual Report reveals, PP received more than $528 million in taxpayer funds in the form of government grants, contracts and Medicaid reimbursements that accounted for 41% of its total resources. And despite its ostensible non-profit status, the abortion giant has $127 million in excess revenue and more than $1.4 billion in net assets.

Where does the money go? According to a fact sheet disseminated by the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, PP devoted 94% of 2013 “pregnancy services” to performing abortions. Prenatal care and adoption services accounted for 5% and 0.05% of its activities, respectively. Moreover, between the years 2011-2013 for which figures are available, PP performed 988,783 abortions.

PP chair Alexis McGill Johnson and president Cecile Richards couldn’t be happier. “We’ve come a long way since Margaret Sanger was jailed in 1916 for opening America’s very first birth control clinic,” they explained at the report’s release. “Today, 99 percent of sexually active American women at some point in their lives use birth control — and, thanks to Planned Parenthood and the Affordable Care Act, more than 48 million women are now eligible to receive it with no copay.”

Sounds like a boatload of access, at least to “reproductive” health care. Safe childbirth? Not so much, a reality that deeply troubles people of faith — a group with this “crazy” notion that abortion constitutes the wrongful termination of a human life.

Not to worry, though. Hillary has a “solution” for their concerns. “Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will,” she declared. “And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed. As I have said and as I believe, the advancement of the full participation of women and girls in every aspect of their societies is the great unfinished business of the 21st century and not just for women but for everyone — and not just in far away countries but right here in the United States.”

If that sounds like people of faith must either abandon that faith or be considered wholly illegitimate, or “structurally biased” as it were, it’s because that’s exactly what Clinton proposes. In short, you’re either pro-abortion or a “bitter clinger.” That euphemism entered the national zeitgeist courtesy of Barack Obama, whose administration has made it clear that the only thing standing between it and the evisceration of the First Amendment’s Freedom of Religion clause is a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby v. Burwell case. The Court decided corporations with sincerely held religious beliefs are under no obligation to provide a full range of contraceptives — including abortifacients — at no cost to their employees as mandated by ObamaCare.

Yet abortion is only one arena where people of faith are being steamrolled. As Solicitor General Donald Verrilli made clear during oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the subject of same-sex marriage, the heavy hand of government will be imposed on those who refuse to embrace progressive “values.” When asked by Justice Samuel Alito if the Obama administration would be willing to impose penalties on institutions that refuse to abide same-sex marriage, Verrilli admitted as much. “It’s certainly going to be an issue,” he conceded. “I don’t deny that.”

Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins spells out the inevitable, writing, “Translation: If churches, religious groups, schools, or nonprofits won’t surrender their beliefs on marriage, the government will make it hurt.” And regardless of what the Court decides, Justice Anthony Kennedy illuminated the stakes with a simple remark, noting the definition of marriage as between a man and a women “has been with us for millennia.” Therefore, he said, “[I]t’s very difficult for the Court to say, ‘Oh well, we know better.’”

Progressives have no such inhibitions. And that would be fine were it not for the reality that they are determined to forcibly impose their worldview by any means necessary on those who disagree.

How arrogant is Clinton in that regard? As recently as 2013 she opposed same-sex marriage, and in 2004 she called traditional marriage a “fundamental bedrock principle.” How hypocritical? “I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you’re not patriotic,” she huffed in 2003.

Not patriotic? Now if you disagree with the leftist onslaught, you’re a homophobic, religiously impaired bigot who must abandon millennia of traditional beliefs — or be deliberately targeted if you don’t.

Live and let live? A concept for which those who profess to be the most tolerant among us have zero tolerance. “Evolving” on issues as Clinton and Obama have on same-sex marriage? Embrace progressive ideology right now or be penalized in every way possible.

A number of Christian leaders are fighting back with a pledge defending traditional marriage. One of their reasons for doing so stands out. “Family is the first vital cell of society, the first government, and the first mediating institution of our social order,” the pledge states. “The future of a free and healthy society passes through marriage and the family.” Anyone else think this is a message that might resonate in Baltimore right about now?

One last thought regarding abortion: Perhaps the debate on the issue might be imbued with far more honesty if the phrase “a woman’s right to choose” included the first choice, as in the decision to have unprotected and/or irresponsible sex leading to an unwanted pregnancy.