A Bill KERRY Sponsers Suggests How Democrats Can Handle RELIGION

[liberalpragmatist]

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=schick112204

Bill of Rights
by Avi Schick

On July 31, 1997, John Kerry took to the Senate floor to introduce legislation that, in his own words, "would protect workers from on-the-job discrimination related to religious beliefs and practices" by ensuring "that employers have a meaningful obligation to reasonably accommodate their employees' religious practices." The legislation was necessary, he informed his colleagues, because "for many religiously observant Americans the greatest peril to their ability to carry out their religious faiths on a day-to-day basis may come from employers." The bill, known as the Workplace Religious Freedom Act (WRFA), never passed, though Kerry has dutifully reintroduced it each year since 1997.

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First, some background on WRFA. The bill would require employers to accommodate the religious practices and beliefs of employees unless doing so entailed a significant difficulty or expense. It has the support of a broad coalition of more than 40 religious groups, including the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Council of Churches, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Kerry's cosponsor on the bill is Republican Senator Rick Santorum. Yet the Bush administration never paid more than lip service to the proposal because the business community preferred the status quo, which permits employers to refuse to accommodate religious practices if such accommodation carries any cost.

<snip>

... the ACLU's campaign against WRFA was a misguided scare tactic. The bill does not permit an employee to abandon the "essential function" of his or her job--and thus would not allow a nurse to refuse to treat a patient needing an emergency abortion procedure. Indeed, many of the religious groups supporting the bill also favor abortion rights. What the bill would do is allow a nurse to request her employer's help in swapping shifts with a fellow employee for pre-scheduled abortions.

Kerry could have seized upon the ACLU's opposition to a bill that he had sponsored since 1997 as his Sister Souljah moment. He could have stood up to the ACLU and declared the group to be wrong on this issue, even though it is right on the larger issue of choice. He could have spoken out on behalf of religious employees who are forced to choose between keeping their job or keeping their faith. He could have criticized Bush for placing the interests of corporate America before the civil rights of religious Americans. But Kerry did none of these things. Instead, he ignored WRFA and the coalition that supported it. WRFA did not get a single mention in a Kerry campaign speech, ad, article, or mailing; it was as if his support for WRFA had never existed.

[Selatius]

1. Why didn't he incorporate this into his campaign?

Can someone tell me why he would not even do that?

[liberalpragmatist]

2. No idea - would have made a perfect ad

And would've helped a lot among swing voters if properly targetted.

The article says the ACLU was opposed to the bill b/c of what the author feels was a misguided belief that the bill would restrict employers' ability to provide abortions, if, for instance, a health worker could not carry out an abortion.

But the Kerry campaign I'm sure would've used this if they realized how much the religion and values thing would hurt them. They failed to focus for too long and unwisely ignored his entire Senate record. Why he didn't mention this along with BCCI, Iran/Contra, so much else - I just don't know.