Talk about the marginalization of Christianity!Democrat Martha Coakley, running for U.S. Senator in Massachusetts, told WBSM radio interviewer Ken Pittman that the separation of church and state trumps a person's religiously-informed conscience. The statement, shockingly clear even for a Massachusetts Democrat, came as she defended a law that would require an emergency room health worker to administer "emergency contraception" (which Ms. Coakley well knows is actually a powerful abortifacient drug).
This means that either one's pro-life conscience be damned or, as Ms. Coakley suggests, the religious person must get out of the business altogether.
The transcript and the audio are both given below -- the written transcript first and then the audio file via You Tube. (This particular part of the interview begins about 55 seconds in.)
Ken Pittman: Right, if you are a Catholic, and believe what the Pope teaches that any form of birth control is a sin. ah you don’t want to do that.
Martha Coakley: No we have a seperation of church and state Ken, lets be clear.
Pittman: In the emergency room you still have your religious freedom.
Coakley: (Pauses, hmms and haws) The law says that people are allowed to have that. You can have religious freedom but you probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.
Pittman: Wow.
Wow, indeed.
Now whether Coakley's irreligious and authoritarian attitudes will offend the 39% of Catholics in Massachusetts enough to make a difference in the upcoming election, we don't know. After all, a huge bunch of these Catholics have ignored the teachings of the Church for years -- remember, this is Ted Kennedy's Senate seat that's up for grabs.
But it certainly shows religious citizens everywhere (Catholic, evangelical, Orthodox Jew, etc.) just what modern liberalism demands; namely, keep your religion buttoned up, private and out of the way of the secular State's demands.
