Why the HHS Regulations Are All About Religious Liberty

First of all, here's a good overview of the issues.  Excerpts:

...I wasn’t going to write about this, because E.J. Dionne and Michael Gerson have laid out many of the problems already — and when those two gentlemen agree, doesn’t that give the White House just a little pause?

Yet here we are, two weeks after the ruling, and I see no dawning appreciation that it’s time to respond any more meaningfully than this:

The White House posted a blog item on its Web site that answers the criticism by pointing out that “churches are exempt.” Yes, but church-run schools, hospitals and social service agencies are not. And that’s where the feed-the-hungry work goes on. As Obama so aptly noted at the prayer breakfast, that work is precisely what Jesus called us to do, time after time, in the Gospels.

(The coup de grace, though, is that only outfits that serve their own kind are exempt from the requirement. As retired Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington has asked, are workers in soup kitchens supposed to start asking not “Are you hungry?” but “Are you Catholic?”)

The White House Web site also notes that “no one will be forced to buy or use birth control.” No, just to give it away, as part of employee health packages.
It notes, too, that “contraception is used by most women,” Catholics included. Again, true but not remotely the issue, which is the religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment...

In the comments, you encounter statements such as this:

Sanchos_
12:07 PM EST
violate church teaching or violate the rights of Americans? What is a president to do? Enforce the church's teaching? Nobody's forcing Catholics to use birth control

And false dichotomy is rampantly on display!

Look--when you force the clergy of a particular religion to violate their church's teaching, you are actively violating the rights of Americans. Many Catholic priests in America are actually US citizens, guys, as are many of the bishops, nuns and sisters, religious priests and brothers, etc.

US citizens.

They have a right to the free practice of their religious faith. Part of that includes the bishops' belief that their role demands they be good stewards of the money and resources of the Church. Part of being good stewards is not paying for things that are, according to Church teaching, intrinsically evil.

As American citizens, their rights to freedom from state interference in the practice of their religion and forcing the churches to behave in ways contrary to Church teaching are just as real as the rights of any other American citizen.

Is there anything unclear about this?

Also--Evangelicals and Orthodox bishops stand with the Catholic Church on this issue.