Topic category: Elections - Politics, Polling, etc.
Senate hopeful Wendy Long Defends Religious Liberty Against President Obama and Senator Gillibrand
"We cannot sit by silently any longer as Washington attempts to crush our faith and our Church."
New York's United States Senate candidates, incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand and challenger Wendy Long, each identifies herself as a Roman Catholic.
The candidate who supports the Obama Administration's HHS mandate that violates religious liberty is Gillibrand.
The candidate who supports constitutional fidelity generally and our First Freedom, religious liberty, especially is long.The Brooklyn Tablet, the newspaper of the Brooklyn Diocese, recently posted this op-ed by Long (http://thetablet.org/?p=17824):
"While crisscrossing the state in my campaign for the U.S. Senate, I was recently sitting around a table talking with some women. I asked them, 'What’s the most important issue facing our nation and our state?'
"The tears welled up in one woman’s eyes, then spilled down her cheeks.
"'Wendy, my daughter just graduated from college. She has a huge amount of debt. She can’t find a job anywhere. I was so proud of her, and now we don’t know what to do. Our children have become New York’s biggest export.'
"With so many families struggling with unemployment, the high cost of groceries and gas, Medicare and Social Security headed for bankruptcy, and the federal government debt skyrocketing to unprecedented levels, it’s understandable that many Catholics here in New York have not focused on another threat to our values – a threat that’s as big as the failure of our elected officials to address our broken economy.
"As I write this, our freedom as Catholics is being stomped upon by the Obama Administration. Obamacare is forcing Catholic institutions such as hospitals, schools, and charities, as of Aug. 1, to provide and pay for insurance coverage of sterilization, contraception, and abortion-causing drugs.
"The Obama Administration and my opponent, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, insist that this government mandate is an issue of 'women’s health." Sen. Gillibrand actually claims that the Catholic Church is behind 'attacks that are being launched against women’s rights and women’s health.'
"Her charge is so grossly wrong that it is hard to know where to start. But let me set the record straight:
- The Catholic Church has been at the forefront of protecting the lives and health of women, and all Americans. I don’t think there is another institution in our nation’s history that has done so much for so many – whether in caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, helping the poor, educating our children, and defending and protecting the weakest among us. The Church and her institutions have never attacked anyone, and they are certainly not attacking women.
- The Catholic Church believes in free will. The Church passes on to us its teaching of more than two millennia about human dignity and the sanctity of human life. The Church offers unconditional healing and help to all of us sinners. But Holy Mother Church has never — ever — attempted, as my opponent claims, to 'make medical decisions for someone' who is employed by a Church institution.
- Our nation was born of the bedrock principle of freedom of religion: that the government may not dictate to people of faith that they have to take actions that violate that faith. As Cardinal Timothy Dolan has said, 'The federal government should do what it’s traditionally done since July 4, 1776, namely back out of intruding into the internal life of the Church.'
- But for the first time in the history of our country, a President of the United States – and his allies, like my opponent – are ordering faithful Catholics and other people of conscience to genuflect at their altar of almighty government, to fall in line and obey, even if it violates their religious beliefs. If they do not abide by Obamacare’s abortion-contraception-sterilization mandate, many Catholic charitable institutions – as well as private businesses run by Catholic Americans – will face millions of dollars in fines that will force many of them out of business.
- This issue has nothing whatsoever to do with women’s health. It is about government intrusion into our Catholic faith and into the lives of all people of conscience. No one’s faith and beliefs will be safe if the Obama-Gillibrand mandate is allowed to stand. President Obama and Senator Gillibrand intend to force their anti-Catholic views on every single Catholic in this nation. And if they can crush Catholics under their boot heel, they can crush anyone else, too.
"The Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Rockville Centre have filed suit against the Obama Administration to reverse the clear violation of religious liberty and freedom of conscience in Obamacare.
"Bishop DiMarzio has issued the call to all of us: 'As citizens of a nation that prides herself on religious liberty, we should be outraged that the government would … coerce any institution to cooperate with what they deem to be evil.'
"Amen. We cannot sit by silently any longer as Washington attempts to crush our faith and our Church."
Vote for character, competence, concern and courage.
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.
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