In Illinois, government officials stopped working with Catholic Charities on adoptions and foster-care placements after 40 years because the agency refused to recognize a new civil union law. Illinois bishops had sued the state but on Monday said they would stop the legal fight and no longer provide state-funded services.
((Bishops suing for privileged exclusion from law))
In New York, the bishops, along with Orthodox Jewish leaders and others, have complained that the religious exception in this year's law allowing gay marriage is too weak to be effective.
((religions push for privileged exclusion from law))
On the federal level, the bishops have been pressing the Health and Human Services Department during its public comment period for a broader religious exception to part of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul that mandates private insurers pay for contraception.
"We should not be obliged to provide services or other initiatives that are contrary to our conscience," said Lori, bishop of Bridgeport, Conn. "We don't need the government forcing our hand."
((Bishops pushing for privileged exclusion from law))
((religions pushing against the first amendment))
Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the bishops are not just reacting to Obama's policies, but to a broader society in a "drive to neuter religion" and "push religion back into the sacristy."
((the corporation is losing customers, the corporation has no desire to obey laws that work against recruitment schemes, the corporation keeps pushing for privilege and to preserve its access to vulnerable people through its charities))
Bishops hope to persuade federal lawmakers to retain the Defense of Marriage Act, which passed in 1996, and launched a new website called Marriageuniqueforareason.org. Obama has said his administration would no longer defend the law, calling it "counter to the Constitution." Bishops said it was wrong to describe their religious convictions as discrimination.
"The church has nothing against compromise, but we can't compromise principle," Dolan said.
((religions want to limit the value of marriage to procreation, that tends to inhibit the fuller development of the married and narrows persception of marriage values, religions also want access to more children to recruit and inculcate and manipulate and abuse))
The bishops are confronting the Health and Human Services Department on another front. The government agency recently decided not to renew a contract held since 2006 by the bishops' refugee services office to help victims of human trafficking.
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing to stop the agency from making grants to groups who "impose religiously based restrictions on reproductive health services" for human trafficking victims. The women are often raped and forced into prostitution by their captors.
((religion sees vulnerable people and vulnerable children that are prime targets for recruitment, few people are more vulnerable than those who have been trafficked and these people, in particular, can provide children too if religion can get to them))
((the most influential religions in the US push hard against laws and against the first amendment which hamper their ability to access, unculcate, manipulate, abuse vulnerable people))
The source article can be read here