♪ ♪ ♪ ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, america's leading defenders of freedom, moderated by the senior council for the american center david grinch. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> it is my great pleasure to introduce an esteemed panel to discuss this issue and i'll introduce them first and we'll launch right into the discussion. first we have tim gagline, tim is a senior fellow at the heritage foundation, the vice president of external relations

at focus the family. he served as an assistant to george w. bush where he was deputy director of white house office of public liaison from 2001 to 2008. ladies and gentlemen, tim gagline. next, we have deal hudson, publisher and editor of "crisis" magazine for 12 years and "inside catholic".com and an author of eight box including "onward christian soldiers, the growing power of catholics and evangelicals." deal hudson. and last, and certainly not least dr. richard land, the long time president of the ethics and civil liberty commission and the southern baptist convention and he's held the oft since 1988 and for ten years he served with the u.s. commission on international religious freedom and former president obama selected dr. lamb for the first two terms of the commission and he was appointed by senator bill frist

in '05 and senator mitch mcconnell in 2007 and graduated from princeton with a doctors in philosophy from oxford. let's kick off the discussion and go in the same order that we did. this alphabet cal order. let me begin by saying it was in 2008 when the presidential campaign was in full swing. hit privilege of serving my country in diyala province in iraq, but even in iraq we received reports of this presidential race and this new candidate of hope and change, and one of the essential elements of hope and change for this new candidate was that he was going to break through the partisan divide on religion. he was going unite catholics and evangelicals to a greater degree than ever before under his banner and it was going to break the republican and conservative

stranglehold on this religious conservative vote. that was the promise and that's what was going to happen. what happened? >> let's start with tim gagline. thank you, david and good afternoon, everybody. you're right, david, not on the way that president obama intended, but he has indeed united evangelicals and catholics as never before. i think it is fair to say that not just in the history of the contemporary presidency, but in the history of the presidency we have never had a chief executive who was more actively hostile to religious liberty and the rights of conscience than president obama. it's attempting to sort of speak in rhetorical and lofty tones when it comes to the issue in life of the health and human

services mandate, but in fact, as we all know famously, everyone is entitled to his own opinions, i think it was daniel patrick moynihan who said this, but not everyone is entitled to his own facts and the fact of the matter is that the obama administration is actively hostile to traditional marriage, to the sacredness of each and every human life and to religious liberty and the rights of conscience and i would like to take one step back, if i may. one of the things that we do at our peril is to imagine that our founding fathers were in one piece on the major issues of the mid-18th century. that, in fact, is not the case. towering giants at the founding like alexander hamilton and thomas jefferson, for instance disagreed on very big things. they disagreed on the concept of

the constitution. they disagreed on whether we should have a national currency and it goes on and on, but it is not an overstatement to say that all of the founding fathers agreed on one big thing. they all agreed that you could not have liberty without virtue, and they said that virtue was moral excellence which in the american experience, they said came directly from the judeo-christian tradition from the holy bible that's a fancy way of saying you could not have liberty without virtue and you could not have the exceptional snach you are of our incredible, constitutional republic, the greatest country in the history of man without the flourishing of religious liberty. and i think that the reality, and may i say, unfortunately,

the reality of the primary definition of the obama administration in these areas is that he has proven himself and the administration has proven itself to be actively hostile to the basic religious liberty that is found not in philadelphia, but even in the very pre-foundation of our great country, and so it's fair to say, david, that in some that there has not been a time both in contemporary american history or in american history, where the hhs mandate is the most obvious examel and there are many others and i'm sure that deal and richard will talk about them, but i think it is fair to say that for jews, for christian, for buddhists, for hindus, for those practicers of islam, that in this regard we

ignore this major trend line at our own peril, and i think it is fair to say that we are not going to ignore it and that to begin where you began, catholics and evangelicals, protestants, christians, jews, we have never been more united in our concern than we are now and i'm glad to be a part of this panel because i think the very essence of faith and freedom and the faith and freedom coalition is rooted in the narrative of the relationship, the great relationship in the american experience between our flourishing liberty and a flourishing religious liberty. thank you all very much. >> tim, we are all catholics now.

i'm sure you've heard this phrase. i know i've seen dr. land quote as saying it and as an ex-southern baptist turned catholic 26 years ago the fact that i can get an applause line on the fact that we are all catholics now tells me that something has changed. there has been a sea change that the very phenomenon that ralph reid predicted to me in 1996 when we first met in washington, that there would be a surging and coalescing of catholics and conservative kath elections and pro-life catholics and the evangelicals that had entered into the political process and there would be a vast, national merging and it's happening because we have as tim sowell kwently said in his

administration, hostile to faith. i want to bring up a flipside iss issue, you know, what has grabbed the headlines or so is the hhs mandate requiring catholic institutions to offer health insurance that contains coverage for birth control and sterilization. so what is the crime there? the crime there is that you are forcing by law, by power of government to do something that goes against the moral teachings of your faith and what we call against your conscience, but you know, there's even a more serious violation more heinous

going on. and it's one that this particular crime is premised on because you will recall that barack obama at notre dame and the now infamous commencement speech promised the catholics nationally that catholic health care worker rights would be protected. he specifically said it. so what did he do to prove that he kept his promise? he defined a catholic institution as one that serves only catholics. so what kind of catholic institution got an exclusion?

know? that i know of unless it's a monastery full of nuns and nobody else. if they got a cook or gardener or someone working the horses and not catholic, they're out. now, what is -- why do i call that a more heinous crime? think about it. think about it in your own hospitals. your own soup kitchens and your own retirement homes and your own children's summer programs, disadvantaged and poor. why do we as christians do that? why do we help people who are not from our own clan, from our own ethnicity, from our own faith tradition? why do we help people that aren't texans, really? and the answer is our faith teaches us to love. our faith teaches us charity,

caritas, agape, i'll do the greek and latin before dr. land landau. at the core of our christian faith and our shared faith we're taught to be generous, be sacrificial, to help this merit or to be the samaritan. so what's more heinous than this is that this administration, barack obama's definition of what any religious institution whether it's catholic or baptist, church of christ or methodist is that it's religious if it serves only its own. so, in effect, he is saying we will recognize you as religious if you're not charitablcharitab you're not generous, if you are not loving, if you are not

imitating cries, if you are not a disciple. so he is cutting the heart out of the christian life, the life that ironically is behind what barack obama himself says he believes in. he believes in helping the poor and the vulnerable. he believes in social justice. how can you have social justice if you're only serving your own? you can't. so he's in a huge self-contradiction to his own life, to his own experience and his own example. and it's that level of his attack on our faith that troubles me the most. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> the obama administration, if you want to see the ugly face of

the direct intent and the hostility to that religious freedom and you need to have taber case. taber case is the case where you have a religious instructor at a christian school who was terminated. she took her case to the eeoc, the obama administration got behind her. they went to court and the obama administration argued that the eeoc, the government should decide for religious institutions who were religious workers and who weren't religious workers, taking this away from the authorities of those churches and those religious organizations, and arguing that a religious institution has no more special protection under the first amendment than a country club. their position was so radical that they got a 9-0 vote against

them in the supreme court. even justice sotomayor and justice kagan voted against them and john roberts who is developing a reputation for remarkable succinctness said in his opinion he found the obama administration's position remarkable, that there would be no special protection for religion in the first amendment since religion is mentioned twice. now the hhs mandate is another example of the ugly face of secularism. they want to take us from the broad uplands of religious freedom to down to a valley of freedom of worship where they will tolerate our expressing our religious faith within the narrow confines of our church

and our home or as was pointed out to just ourselves, if we just want to minister to ourselves and talk among ourselves and they'll let us do that. that's kind of them. religious freedom involves the ability to be obedient to go out into the byways and to be like and to share the gospel and to share the love of our lord and savior jesus christ and that's what's protected in the first amendment. [ applause ] >> make no mistake about it. make no mistake about it. the hhs mandate is about religious freedom and not reproductive freedom. it is about conscience, not catholics and it's about freedom. it's about our right to practice our faith and to not be coerced against our faith to pay for that which we find unconscionable. most protestants disagree with catholics about contraception,

but they defend to the death catholics' right not to be coerced. [ applause ] what they can -- what they can do -- what they can do to catholics today they can do to others tomorrow. we're all in this together. [ applause ] now -- in the middle of world war ii when our country was in dire peril the supreme court of the united states in a case called west virginia versus bryant in 1943 defended the right of jehovah's witnesses not to pledge allegiance to the flag and the justices said that if there is a fixed star in the constitutional constellation it is the fixed star of freedom of conscience, and this even

pre-dates the constitution. in 1775 when our nation was in probably more dire peril than its ever been, when a fleet of -- of 200 ships carrying 35,000 soldiers the largest invasion of fleet to leave the british isles until june 6, 1944, left britain to come back and reconquer the colonies and we needed every able-bodied man to be under arms, our continental congress said that no one shall be coerced to violate their conscience and the moravians and the quakers believe that violence was never justified should have the legal protection to not be coerced and not be punished for following

their conscience. in other words, conscientious objector status in 1775. what's at stake here is our god-given right to freedom of faith and following our conscience. this is as dire a struggle as we've ever faced and it is time for us to stand up. if we're all willing to stand up and fight, then we win. if we're all willing to go to jail, nobody's going have to. >> god bless you and god bless america. [ applause ] >> we've got time for moderator's privilege of one

question and it's for the panel, and we at rcij represent the man challenging this mandate and at least that i can think of off the top of my head, 15 and 16 other catholic institutions have filed lawsuits. the catholic -- the bishops are completely united in opposing this mandate even to the point of pledging civil disobedience. as a protestant, i see individual activists stepping up, where is the protestant institutional response? are we letting the catholics fight this fight? >> i know at least one baptist college that has followed suit. the louisiana college in louisiana has filed suit and our southern baptist convention is having its annual meeting next week and i can, as much as anyone can guarantee what any group of baptists is going to do, i can almost guarantee that

there will be a very strong statement, a very strong resolution or religious freedom that will refer specifically to the crisis brought on by the hhs mandate, and i suspect there will be others who will be filing suit in due course. i know several who are in consultation with their attorneys and with others to see when and if and under what circumstances they should do this because we're in the same situation of catholics, our southern baptists are. most southern baptists are covered by guidestone resources which is our own self-insured insurer, so to say that the insurer will pay for it doesn't do any good for us because we'll not pay for any board. >> there's over 40 catholic institutions that joined together to sue the federal government and what's interesting about the list is it all kind of levels from like a catholic high school to a

diocese to a hospital to a couple of universities. georgetown refused to join into that and was specifically called to rome to be pressured to join it, but refused. i did want to mention, and it's the right moment. you've heard the bishop's call to the fort night for freedom, have you heard of this? >> yes. >> this is a two-week period starting june 21st with a mass in baltimore with archbishop moore, i think you've heard of him, and then it ends on july 4th with a mass with cardinal worrell and preached by archbishop shapu on the morning of july 4th. it should be a magnificent event, but if you look at the statement the bishop's made, it is the strongest, most

determined, most intense statement i've ever seen from american bishop. >> that's right. >> they call for the maximum amount of energy that can be exerted by the catholic faithful on this issue. one little thing in fine print and then i'll let tim speak. it says there should be demonstrations not just during those two weeks, but specifically on the feast of christ the king and the feast of christ the king is on the last sunday of the lett liturgical calendar and it's november 25th which means that there will be preparations for those demonstrations going on in september and october and early november for that to hit on november 25th and the feast of christ the king was instituted for one reason, to oppose totalitarianism and the bishops call it that, totalitarianism. [ applause ] .

>> i'll do this quickly since we're getting the please wrap up sign. i think it's probable that the most remarkable statement ever made by a protestant in another country and in another century perfectly applies to what we're talking about and david, i think it goes to the heart of what those of us who are not catholics, but love our catholics and brothers and sisters in christ believe in the most heady trial in british history which was rooted in faith and public life, a very famous man whose name you all know begins with the name thomas said i have been the king's servant, but i am god's servant first. and i think that that is the narrative statement for this panel. thank you all very much.

>> for many years we've been fighting this notion called separation of church and state, a phrase that doesn't even appear in the constitution, but we are now seeing that this hhs mandate and the idea that the government is going to intrude among every aspect of life other than at least for now the ability to worship in your own church and sing your songs in your own church is that we might be looking at the separation of church and state and the replacing of church with state, and i think that is the core of what we're fighting here and that is the abolition of the distinctive christian witness in our wider culture and that is the philosophical and those are the philosophicalstate stak sta. thank you, panelists. >> thank you. >> thank you all very much.

[ applause ] . ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage the former deputy attorney general for the commonwealth of virginia and the

chairman of the faith and freedom coalition, mr. ashley taylor! ♪ ♪ ♪ thank you and good afternoon. a man who is an insurgent candidate, a man whose timeless career is based on the principles we all hold dear. in 1991 he was redistricted out of his seat for the house of representatives and he bounced back and the campaign for governor in 1993, he was 29 points and $2.5 million behind, but he triumphed that november by the largest margin of victory in over 30 years and when he took office in 1994 is it rocked the political establishment and ushered in the area of leadership not only in virginia, but across america, he abolished

parole for violent offenders and instituted truth in sentencing and reformed welfare, instilled high academic standards for public education and helped create 300 thousand net new private sector jobs and signed the new pro-life legislation in virginia and these reforms unleashed the periods of unprecedented freedom and prosperity that became the virginia renaissance and became a model followed by other governors across the nation. elected to the u.s. senate in 2000, he brought common sense jeffersonian conservative principles to washington and he strove to make congress, like families live within their means by pushing for budget reforms, real budget reforms like a balanced budget amendment and the line-item veto and the paycheck penalty for congress when they failed to pass appropriation bills on time and he led the fight to keep the internet tax-free.

now he's running for senate for re-election again and this tuesday he received the party's nomination. so he's off and running in the general election with the blueprint for america's comeback, a pro-growth action plan for jobs, competitiveness, freedom and opportunity for all. ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to introduce to you a great virginian and a true conservative leader and an original fighter, my friend, george allen. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> laenl, freedom-loving patriots, good afternoon. it is a good afternoon and thank you for that very kind and invigorating introduction, ben markey and jason