First amendment expert John Inazu, JD, associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, argues in a USA Today opinion column that evangelicals are wise to join the legal fight over the Department of Health and Human Services’ contraception mandate.
“The legal challenges implicate an interest that all of us — Catholics and evangelicals, religious and non-religious — should value and safeguard: the right of private groups to dissent from the prevailing state orthodoxy,” he writes.
“Freedom from state orthodoxy transcends any one value or belief. In the 1940s, the Jehovah’s Witnesses confronted the orthodoxy of patriotism. In the 1960s, civil rights groups stood against the orthodoxy of Jim Crow. In the 1980s, gay rights groups challenged the orthodoxy of heterosexuality.”
Read the full column:
Inazu is the author of Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (VIDEO).