Jeb Bush: President Obama Using 'Coercive Federal Power' to Restrict Religious Freedom
Likely Republican presidential candidate and former Florida governor Jeb Bush blasted President Barack Obama for supporting the use of "coercive federal power" to restrict religious freedom in the U.S.
"What should be easy calls, in favor of religious freedom, have instead become an aggressive stance against it," he said during his commencement address at Liberty University, a Christian school in Lynchburg, Virginia, on Saturday.
"Somebody here is being small-minded and intolerant, and it sure isn't the nuns, ministers, and laymen and women who ask only to live and practice their faith," he added.
Bush said, "Federal authorities are demanding obedience, in complete disregard of religious conscience – and in a free society, the answer is 'no'."
He defended religious freedom based on the First Amendment.
"At least, the Founding generation thought so when they wrote the First Amendment," he said. But, of course, others have their own ideas. Fashionable opinion – which these days can be a religion all by itself – has got a problem with Christians and their right of conscience. That makes it our problem, and the proper response is a forthright defense of the first freedom in our Constitution."
Bush tried to court social conservative voters in his speech and criticized federal rules that restrict religious freedom.
"So we find officials in a major city demanding that pastors turn over copies of their sermons. Or federal judges mistaking themselves for elected legislators, and imposing restrictions and rights that do not exist in the Constitution," he said.
He scored the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act's contraception provision.
He cited the Department of Health and Human Services for "dictating to a Catholic charity, the Little Sisters of the Poor, what has to go in their health plan – and never mind objections of conscience."
"I don't know about you, but I'm betting that when it comes to doing the right and good thing, the Little Sisters of the Poor know better than the regulators at the Department of Health and Human Services. From the standpoint of religious freedom, you might even say it's a choice between the Little Sisters and Big Brother – and I'm going with the Sisters," Bush added.
