The equation is simple: More rights means less freedom.
Maybe this seems counterintuitive, but let’s get our terminology straight. Rights are what we are given, whereas freedoms are what can’t be taken. It’s an important distinction.
More and more, you hear people complain that their rights are being infringed upon. You see it especially with issues of religion. One Million Moms thinks that Ellen DeGeneres is an unfit spokeswoman for j.c.penney, because they send the message that it’s OK to be openly homosexual is an affront to traditional values. Then there’s prayer in schools, the “War on Christmas,” the resistance to using religious symbols in public spaces. All of these are considered issues of religious rights.
Somewhere along the line, Christians got the idea that freedom of religion means the right to do whatever they want.
People cry, “Constitution!” but they don’t know what it means.
I’ve got news for you, folks: it’s not only that you don’t have any religious rights, you don’t want any religious rights. You don’t want the government involved in faith. If rights are what we are given, then they are also what can be taken away by whoever gave them to us in the first place. The best option for everybody is to keep religion as far away from the public sphere as remotely possible.
One of the most brilliant aspects of the Constitution is that it creates a governing framework without providing anything that can be guaranteed by freedom. Our government was not intended to give us much of anything; it was meant simply not to rob us of rights endowed by an omnipotent authority.
So this whole notion that Christianity is under attack is absolutely absurd. The government can’t touch Christianity, because Christianity has no place in the government. Religion is not a right — it’s a freedom — and it’s only when that changes that people of faith will have reason to fear.
The issue that has had Catholics hollering — mandatory reproductive services that contradict belief — is not a religious issue. Nobody will ever be forced to have abortions or to use contraception. People say that making Catholic insurers provide these services is like making Muslims eat pork. It’s not. It’s like making a Muslim-owned restaurant serve pork, and again, that’s not a religious issue. It’s much, much bigger. The federal government is steadily infringing upon the freedom of all its citizens as it extends itself into the private sector. This is something that should be feared by Christians and non-Christians alike. Nobody except everybody is threatened.
As certain groups gain certain rights, we as individuals lose our freedom. If all women, according to the U.S. government, have the right to equal access to reproductive services, then private corporations lose the freedom to not provide those services.
Similarly, if efforts are made to provide Christians with specific legal rights, the inevitable consequence is that those who don’t adhere to Christian dogma lose freedom, and that Christians begin to relinquish control of what goes on within their own institution.
I’m not going to venture to say that the expansion of rights is inherently bad. Surely absolute freedom would be a terrible thing — it would be anarchy — and the vision of equality for all is a noble one. But we need to understand that as the domain of what we have the right to expands, the domain of what we are free from diminishes. The more we are protected and provided for, the less we can protect and provide for ourselves.
Eli is a sophomore majoring in human rights and English.
