From: Bob Marshall <bob@delegatebob.com>
To: DeWitt Edwards <l_edwards@verizon.net> 
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2012 5:47 PM
Subject: Protect Conscience from Obama Mandate

 Dewitt,
You and I both do not like the outcome of this election which is leading us to a Church/State conflict, unprecedented in American History, and which is now ominously spreading across America because of Obama Administration regulations requiring colleges, churches, and businesses to provide and individuals to buy, abortion pills, birth control and sterilization insurance coverage. 
This means that Virginia's General Assembly is the only practical and constitutional means to provide legislative protections against this Mandate. 
Under a 2012 Obama HHS regulation, all employer-provided and privately-purchased insurance policies must include payment and coverage for sterilization, and FDA-sanctioned early abortion drugs/devices and birth control without co-payment or even parental knowledge for minors' coverage.  Other drugs, from chemotherapy to flu shots, require co-payments!  
Penalties for non-compliance is $100 per day per employee, and/or $2,000 annually for each full time employee not covered by health insurance.   Hobby Lobby CEO David Green has 500+  craft stores (four in Virginia) which are run on Biblical principles.  He faces fines of $1.3 million per day if he refuses to pay for insurance which covers early abortion pills and birth control for his 22,000 employees.  
Hobby Lobby and other businesses, hospitals and schools are involved in 40 federal court cases in opposition to the HHS Mandate.  
I have introduced two bills to protect Virginia businesses, colleges, schools, churches and individuals who, for conscience reasons, want no part of Obama's novel anti-child, anti-religious mandate.  
HB 1314 protects non-profits and for-profit business owners.  It provides that no employer is required to include coverage for abortion or birth control, and that insurance companies provide consumers with a choice of policies with and without the coverage required by the HHS mandate.   
HB 1315 protects individuals by requiring that individuals must "opt in" for such coverage. Employers and insurers cannot force employee participation.  (Birth control pills sell for $9 a month with no insurance at Walmart and Target.)  
Missouri and Arizona passed bills to do the same thing earlier this year.
My bills include historical/legal findings so citizens can understand the constitutional justification and to make clear to federal judges the exact reasons for enacting this legislation. Competent First Amendment, Religious Liberty and Civil Rights attorneys have given me their experienced advice and input.    
We cannot exercise freedom of conscience if we are not free to choose beliefs or actions.  James Madison's 1785 Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments notes: "Who does not see that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one [church] establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?"   
 
The Obama Administration's Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a meaningless religious organization exemption so narrow that Jesus and His Apostles, or Mother Teresa's sisters would not qualify because, like the Good Samaritan, they did not confine their ministry to members of their denomination.  In fact, Tyndale Bible Publishers requested, but was refused, a religious exemption -- they weren't "religious" enough. 

East Texas University (ETBU) and Houston Baptist University (HBU) files a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in October.  Each Baptist University will be fined over $10 million per year, per school.  If they do not comply with the HHS Mandate. 

Dr. Robert Sloan, President, Houston Baptist University, said, "While we are always reluctant to enter into lawsuits, the government has given us no choice … Either we violate our conscience or give in to the administration's heavy handed attack upon our religious freedom.  We will not comply with this unconstitutional mandate, and we plead with our government to respect the liberties given by God and enunciated in the Bill of Rights." 

The Catholic Archbishop of Chicago said earlier this year that the HHS Mandate  if unchallenged and implemented will close all Catholic hospitals, and other Church institutions two Lents from now.   This is religious persecution.  No other words can accurately describe the actions of the Obama administration.

From 1967, to 2010, at least 21 bills were introduced in Congress to mandate birth control health insurance coverage. None ever passed.   The HHS Mandate was devised by the private National Academy of Medicine and comprised of individuals not subject to federal conflict of interest disclosures or the federal Freedom of Information Act.  The Obama Administration avoided a direct public vote in Congress on this issue knowing they could later issue regulations to impose their anti-life agenda.

We cannot be expected to express our Faith solely in church buildings on Sunday.  We cannot submit to government mandates which violate religious conscience and which seek to impose on citizens a purely secular vision of man which is contributing to the breakdown of family life.   America's Founders did not treat the "Laws of Nature and Nature's God" as purely private matters in the Declaration of Independence.  Conscience is one such law of nature.

Secularists want to impose on believers a 1936 Soviet-style "freedom of worship" for certain days of the week and only in church buildings.  This is NOT religious liberty.  The First Amendment provides for freedom of religion and conscience.  

Please go to http://vareligiousliberty.com/ and sign my petition where you can also download an FAQ on this topic to share with friends.  We need to pass conscience protection legislation in the 2013 General Assembly session.  I ask you to prayerfully consider this crisis, and act today.   
Thanks
Bob Marshall