Stomp Down on Education Freedom

Stand Up for Religious Freedom is hosting protests against contraceptive mandates on March 23 at locations across the nation.

PPACA (ObamaCare) includes mandates that religious groups pay for contraceptives that they find morally objectionable. I support these protests because they highlight the fact that government controlled health care leads directly to government involve in personal choices.

Contraception is widely available in the US. The issue of the protest is a mandate that forces religious groups to pay for contraceptive medications that they find morally objectionable. For example, the Morning After Pill causes the death of a fertilized egg. Many Christian groups consider fertilization to be conception. Aborting a developing life after conception is not really contraception, now, is it?

The left seeks to frame the protests as an attempt to undermine women's health, but have had only limited success in wining this argument, so far.

Sadly, to undermine this national effort, the idiotic Utah Legislature passed a culture-war law mandating that Utah Schools teach abstinence-only sex education (HB363). In a post that is bizarre beyond belief, Paul Mero of the Sutherland Instituted supports HB363 because four School Districts already use the abstinence only sex-education program. (There are 41 school districts in Utah)

HB363 is now the complete reverse of the PPACA mandate.

The Abstinence-Only Sex Ed is already available in Utah and is the choice of local school districts. In other posts Mero admits that HB363 is purely a culture war law.

If the stupid curriculum is already in use, then we do we need another stupid law on the books? Why not just expand the program through the process in place? The Eagle Forum and Sutherland Institute are immensely powerful groups that have the knack at getting their ideas pushed through the school districts.

All this effort does is show that Conservatives are the mirror image of the Progressives and are quick to use the power of the state to impose their ideas on others.

So, as conservatives march on to the streets to support religious freedom, progressives are now able to point to the Sutherland Institution and their precious little sex-ed mandate HB363 and claim that conservatives are hypocrites. This stupid law just might be enough for progressives to convince the public that Stand Up for Religious Freedom is an effort to cramp women's health.