“I never thought about getting politically active, but with the government pushing more and more into my faith it has become necessary.”

I heard something similar to this while listening to NPR this morning during an interview. The person being interviewed was a Catholic who was petitioning to get a marriage equality ban on his state’s ballot for this November. I have an issue with thinking like this. The problem is that people who believe that we’re imposing on their religion when we allow other people to do something they claim is against their religion. This thinking would then lead us to essentially adopt a religion because if we bend to these “impositions” then our law is guided by these religious rules. This would be adopting a religion in practice. Which, according to the Bill of Rights, we cannot do (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof). 

Also, how is someone else being granted the right to marry imposing upon your religion? We aren’t forcing people to get married to anyone they don’t want to get married to.

Also, requiring insurance companies to cover birth control has been a topic in the news. And I’ve heard people claim that it imposes on their religion when they give other people birth control. How is that imposing on religion? It’s not. You don’t have to use the birth control. Someone else wants to use it. 

These claims of imposing upon people’s faith are disturbing to me because they’re based on false equivalencies. They also reek of the “take our country back” radical messages of the tea party which has it’s own issues.