(August 12) The court victories for religious liberty keep coming, so much so that one wonders when the virulently anti-faith Left will finally, blessedly, admit defeat. No matter how much the Left resents it, religious liberty is and must remain sacrosanct. It is, after all, the first right in the Bill of Rights.
Just two days after a federal district judge in Texas confirmed that doctors and insurers may refuse to provide sex-change surgeries or abortions against the dictates of their faith, federal district judge Richard Young of Indiana ruled that a Catholic school may refuse to employ a guidance counselor who violates Catholic teachings.
Young’s decision in Starkey v. Roncalli High School and Archdiocese of Indianapolis clearly tracks Supreme Court precedents in recent decisions known as Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC. And it comes on the heels of a recent Supreme Court term, and a longer trend in the past 15 years as well, that has seen what conservative legal activist Carrie Severino described in National Review as “an unbroken line of significant victories for religious freedom and expression.”
The Aug. 11 Starkey decision involved a guidance counselor who was dismissed by the school when her contract was not renewed after she violated both her earlier contract and long-standing Catholic teaching by entering a same-sex union. The decision is not a judgment on the rightness or validity of same-sex unions, but only on whether a private religious institution may enforce its faith position on the subject within the realm of its own community.
“Here, the decision to not renew Starkey’s employment contract,” wrote Young, “goes to the heart of the church’s right to ‘select and control who will minister to the faithful.’”
The logic is unimpeachable, and by now, the legal precedents are crystal clear…. [The full column is at this link.]
