Note: The FAQs is an ongoing TGC series in which we answer your questions about the latest news and current events.

TGC previously produced a list of frequently asked questions about the Obama administration's controversial contraception-abortifacient mandate. Since the Obama administration has proposed a rule change Friday it says will appease the concerns religious organizations have about the abortion/contraceptive mandate, we're updating that post to include more recent information. The newer updates are posted first with the original information posted below.

What changes has the Obama administration proposed to make to the mandate?

Under the proposed revision, the main change is that religious organizations will be allowed to offer employees a plan that does not directly cover contraceptives. According to the Washington Post, their health insurer will then automatically enroll employees in a separate individual policy, which stands apart from the employer's larger benefit package and only covers contraceptives. The religious organization would not "have to contract, arrange, pay or refer for any contraceptive coverage to which they object on religious grounds."

With this change insurance companies, instead of religious institutions, will be required to cover abortifacients and contraceptives at no cost in their insurance policies. In other words, the insurer would be required to provide the services "free of charge" and pay for them out of their own pocket.

For organizations that self-insure, the revisions states:

With respect to self-insured group health plans, the eligible organization would notify the third party administrator, which in turn would automatically work with a health insurance issuer to provide separate, individual health insurance policies at no cost for participants.  The costs of both the health insurance issuer and third party administrator would be offset by adjustments in Federally-facilitated Exchange user fees that insurers pay.

In other words, the American taxpayer will pay for the contraceptive-abortifacient policy for organizations that self-insure.

What's wrong with that compromise plan?

Opponents of the mandate consider the change an "accounting gimmick," arguing that the premiums they pay to a health insurer could ultimately end up paying for the contraceptives they opposed.

As economist Steve Landsburg explains, the proposed compromise does not really change the fact that the religious employers are still being forced to pay for the contraceptives-abortifacients:

[A]ll economists (and I hope everyone who's successfully completed a Principles course) understands that transferring the responsibility from employers to insurers amounts to transferring the cost from insurance buyers to insurance providers, which is to say that it's not a change in policy. One of the first and most important lessons we teach our students is well summarized by a slogan: "The economic burden of a tax is independent of the legal burden". Ditto for a mandated insurance purchase. It is not the law, but the underlying price-sensitivities of buyers and sellers, that determines where the burden ultimately falls.

Your president knows this. He's banking that you don't.

What other changes are included in the proposal?

In the original rule, the definition of a religious employer is one whose purpose is "the inculcation of religious values," and which both primarily employs and primarily serves people who share its religious faith." The narrow definition excluded a number of faith-based employers, including Christian colleges, religious hospitals, and religious charities. In the new proposal, the administration removed the language about serving and employing mostly people of the same faith and so has defined a religious employer by just referring to the IRS definition. As Yuval Levin notes,

This makes the rule less insulting to the American tradition of faith-based civil-society institutions, but as far as I can see it doesn't actually exempt from the rule's requirements any employers who weren't already eligible to be exempted. In fact, HHS says so plainly in today's rule: "this proposal would not expand the universe of employer plans that would qualify for the exemption beyond that which was intended in the 2012 final rules." It is still the case that essentially only houses of worship are exempted.

Additionally, to qualify for the proposal, an organization must self-certify that it "holds itself out as a religious organization," according to HHS. As the Baptist Press points out, "Ironically that could mean that many of the nation's leading pro-life organizations -- despite being non-profits -- won't qualify for the accommodation because they're technically not religious organizations."

What meaningful protections to religious liberty does the proposal offer?

None. "Today's proposed rule does nothing to protect the religious freedom of millions of Americans. For instance, it does nothing to protect the rights of family businesses like Hobby Lobby," said Kyle Duncan, General Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.  "The administration obviously realizes that the HHS mandate puts constitutional rights at risk.  There would have been an easy way to resolve this—expanding the exemption—but the proposed rule expressly rejects that option."

The Becket Fund says the proposed rule fails to fix the HHS mandate's fundamental problems:

• The proposed rule provides no coverage for family businesses like Hobby Lobby.
• The proposed rule does not meaningfully expand the "church-only" exemption - which is the real relief that our clients are entitled to under our constitution.
• For other religious non-profits, HHS proposes a convoluted "accommodation" that may not resolve religious organizations' objections to being coerced into providing contraceptives and abortifacients to their employees.
• Finally, the long-awaited rule provides no concrete guidance for religious groups that are self-insured.

What is this contraception mandate everyone keeps talking about?

As part of the universal health insurance reform passed in 2010 (often referred to as "Obamacare"), all group health plans must now provide---at no cost to the recipient---certain "preventive services." The list of services includes sterilization, contraceptives, and abortifacient drugs.

If this mandate is from 2010, why are we just now talking about it?

On January 20, 2012, the Obama Administration announced that that it would not expand the exemption for this mandate to include religious schools, colleges, hospitals, and charitable service organizations. Instead, the Administration merely extended the deadline for religious groups who do not already fall within the existing narrow exemption so that they will have one more year to comply or drop health care insurance coverage for their employees altogether and incur a hefty fine

Is there a religious exemption from the mandate? If so, who qualifies for the exemption?

According to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, there is a "religious employer" exemption from the mandate, but it is extremely narrow and will, in practice, cover very few religious employers. The exemption may cover certain churches and religious orders that inculcate religious values "as [their] purpose" and which primarily employ and serve those who share their faith.

Many religious organizations---including hospitals, charitable service organizations, and schools---cannot meet this definition. They will be forced to choose between covering drugs and services contrary to their religious beliefs or cease to offer health plans to their employees and incur substantial fines.

"Not even Jesus' ministry would qualify for this exemption," they note, "because He fed, healed, served, and taught non-Christians."

Doesn't the mandate only apply to religious organizations that receive federal funding?

No. The mandate applies to religious employers even if they receive no federal funding.

When did the government begin requiring employer-insurance programs to pay for contraceptives?

According to the Becket Fund, the trend toward state-mandated contraceptive coverage in employee health insurance plans began in the mid-1990s and was accelerated by the decision of Congress in 1998 to guarantee contraceptive coverage to employees of the federal government through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP).

After FEHBP---the largest employer-insurance benefits program in the country---set this precedent, the private sector followed suit, and state legislatures began to make such coverage mandatory.

When did the mandate take effect?

As of August 1, 2012, employers are required to offer abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization for their employees. Employers are obligated to provide these services at no cost to their employees through their company's health insurance.

I thought Obamacare didn't begin until 2014?

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), often referred to informally as "Obamacare", began on March 23, 2010. Most major provisions are being phased in by January 2014 with the remaining provisions phased in by 2020.

If employers don't comply, what happens to them?

If employers don't change their plans, they will be hit with fines of up to $100 per employee per day. But if they stop providing health coverage, employers with more than 50 employees could be hit with an alternative fine of $2,000 per employee per year.

As the Heritage Foundation has noted, for many companies, the level of these fines would mean going out of business. Applying the $100 per employee per day fine to Hercules Industries---a family-owned business with 265 employees that is challenging the mandate in Colorado---would mean a fine of $795,000 per month  ($100 per day x 30 days x 265 employees)---over $9.5 million per year.

However, if Hercules were to drop its health coverage, forcing its employees into government-run exchanges under Obamacare, it would face a fine of approximately $2,000 per employee per year ($2,000 x 265 employees), for a total of $530,000 per year.

Didn't a federal court put a stop to the mandate?

To date, of the 14 for-profit plaintiffs that have obtained rulings touching on the merits of their claims against the Mandate, 10 have secured injunctive relief against it.

Are legislators doing anything to overturn the mandate?

Republicans in Congress have vowed to undo the rule, and the Republican-led House has voted numerous times to overturn the Obamacare provisions. Senate Republicans also attempted to hold a vote to repeal the entire health care law, but Democrats objected and the legislation has stalled.

Why is the federal government dictating that contraceptives should be covered by insurance?

In 2000, the EEOC issued an opinion stating that the refusal to cover contraceptives in an employee prescription health plan constituted gender discrimination in violation of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). That law was added by Congress in 1978 in response to a Supreme Court decision holding that an employer's selective refusal to cover pregnancy-related disability was not sex discrimination within the meaning of Title VII, the primary federal law addressing employment discrimination.

As the Beckett Fund notes, "Although this opinion is not binding on federal courts, it is influential, since the EEOC is the government body charged with enforcing Title VII. This opinion led to many lawsuits against non-religious employers who refused to cover prescription contraceptives." The federal district courts have split over the issue of whether the PDA requires employers to provide contraception, the only federal court of appeals to reach the issue held that the PDA did not include a contraceptive mandate.

But what about the First Amendment protections? Isn't such a requirement inherently unconstitutional?

In Employment Division v. Smith, the Supreme Court announced that the First Amendment's free exercise clause "does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a 'valid and neutral law of general applicability,'" simply because "the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes)." According to the Becket Fund this means that the fact that an act infringes on the religious beliefs or regulates the religiously motivated policies of a religious institution does not necessarily make the law unconstitutional.

Isn't this just a Catholic issue?

No. Although the Catholic Church has been the most vocal opponent of the mandate, many Protestant, Jewish, and Muslims also oppose the mandate. In fact, several evangelical leaders have called on evangelicals to stand with Catholics in civil disobedience to this law. Additionally, 300 academics and religious leaders---including TGC's D.A. Carson and Justin Taylor---signed a statement by the Beckett Fund explaining why the mandate is "unacceptable." 

What is the Catholic Church's position on contraception?

The Catholic Church has always opposed contraception. In response to the then newly invented birth control pill, Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical letter Humanae Vitae ("Human Life"), which reemphasizes the Catholic Church's teaching that it is always intrinsically wrong to use contraception to prevent new human beings from coming into existence.

What is the mainline Protestant and Evangelical position on contraception?

As on most issues related to the faith, opinions among Protestant denominations vary.

Historically, the church has viewed contraception as evil. The Church Fathers and early Reformers were consistent in their opposition to birth control. Martin Luther said that contraception was "far more atrocious than incest or adultery" and John Calvin considered it "doubly monstrous" because it "extinguish[es] the hope of the race" and acts "to kill before he is born the hoped-for offspring."

Most Protestant denominations shared this view until the 1930s. However today, few denominations---whether Mainline or Evangelical---actively oppose the practice.

I don't oppose contraceptives, so why should I care about this issue?

There are two reasons that all Christians, regardless of their view on contraceptives, should be concerned about this mandate.

The first is because it forces Christians to pay for abortion-inducing drugs. The policy currently requires coverage of Ulipristal ("Ella"), which is chemically similar to the abortion drug RU-486 (mifepristone) and has the same effect (to prevent embryos from being implanted or, if already implanted, to die from lack of nutrition). Additionally, RU-486 is also being tested for possible use as an "emergency contraceptive." If the FDA approves it for that purpose, it will automatically be included under the mandate.

The second is that it restricts religious liberty by forcing religious institutions to pay for contraceptives and abortifacients even if the employer has a religious or moral objection to such practices.

Okay, while it may be a pro-life concern, it isn't a religious liberty issue for me since I support the use of contraception, right?

If the mandate is allowed to stand it will set a precedent that the government can not only force citizens to violate their most deeply held beliefs but that we can be sanctioned for refusing to do so.

As John Leo notes, today it is contraceptives and abortifacients, but "down the road it will be about suicide pills, genetic engineering, abortion and mandatory abortion training, transgender operations, and a whole new series of morally problematic procedures about to come over the horizon."

Indeed, as Leo notes in his column, a Catholic-run California hospital was sued because it refused to perform breast-enlargement surgery on a transgendered patient. The state court ruled the hospital had violated  the state's anti-discrimination laws. (Caving under litigation, the hospital paid $200,000 to the transgendered man.)

Other Posts in this Series:

Women in Combat

The Fiscal Cliff

God and the God Particle

The Supreme Court Ruling on Obamacare

Southern Baptists, Calvinism, and God's Plan of Salvation

Are Mormons Christian?

The Contraceptive-Abortifacient Mandate

Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?

The Story: The Boy Scouts of America is considering changing its longstanding national membership restrictions based on sexual orientation. The new proposal would allow the religious and civic groups that sponsor Scout units to decide for themselves how to address the issue of whether to exclude or include openly homosexual young men as Scouts.

The Background: Since it's inception 103 years ago, the Boy Scouts has excluded both homosexuals and atheists. (Spokesman Deron Smith said a change in the policy toward atheists was not being considered, and that the BSA continued to view "Duty to God" as one of its basic principles.) The Scout have been pressured to change the policy by gay rights groups, corporate sponsors, and even the President of the United States.

According to Baptist Press, the Boy Scouts released a statement just six months agostanding by the ban, saying a "majority of our membership" agrees with the policy and that the "vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their rights to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers, and at the appropriate time and in the right setting."

The Boy Scouts released a new statement Monday describing the proposal, saying that the national policy would be rescinded in favor of a policy allowing local councils to determine their own policy. Scouting officials will take up the matter at next week's scheduled national Board meeting.

Why It Matters: The Scouting oath begins by saying, "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country" and concludes with a pledge to stay "morally straight." Allowing openly homosexual members and leaders would show young men that the Boy Scouts put political correctness ahead of their own commitment to moral principles.

"The goal or aim of Scouting is to instill in youth the ability to make moral and ethical decisions over a lifetime by a careful application of the Scout Oath and Law," says Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee. "However, this move appears to fly in the face of both the Scout Oath and Law."

Currently about 70 percent of all Scouting units are owned and operated by faith-based organizations. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leads all faith-based organizations with 38,000 units (and 420,000 participating youth), followed by the United Methodists (11,000 units; 371,000 youth), the Catholic Church (8,570; 283,000), and Southern Baptists (4,100; 109,000). Many of these churches may discontinue their support since it will open them to discrimination lawsuits.

Matthew J. Franck, director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute, says that churches will be right to discontinue the affiliation:

For it will only be a matter of time before the Boy Scouts of America will pronounce itself in favor of same-sex marriage; will adopt instructional materials, mandatory in all troops, on the compulsory acceptance, by all members and leaders, of homosexual relations as normal and normative; and will move to silence all dissent from the new orthodoxy by boys, parents, troop leaders, and sponsoring organizations. The Scouts, in short, will rapidly become, from the top down, a national pro-gay organization, local control be damned.

Note: The FAQs is a TGC series in which we answer your questions about the latest news and current events.

What is the new change concerning women in combat?

Last week, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta lifted the military's official ban on women in combat, which will open up hundreds of thousands of additional front-line jobs to females in the military. Under the new policy, women may soon be able to volunteer—or be assigned—to infantry, artillery, and other front line combat units.

Each branch of the military will have to come up with an implementation plan in the next several months. If a branch of the military decides that a specific job should not be opened to a woman, representatives of that branch will have to ask the defense secretary for an exception.

Haven't women already been serving in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Technically, no. While women are allowed to serve in air and sea combat operations and are allowed to serve in certain units that expose them to danger and harm (800 women have been wounded in the two wars and more than 130 have died), they are not allowed to serve in the artillery, armor, infantry, and other such combat roles. During President Bill Clinton's first term, the Secretary of Defense issued a memorandum on the "Direct Ground Combat Definition and Assignment Rule." The memo defined "direct ground combat" as:

. . . engaging the enemy on the ground with individual or crew served weapons, while being exposed to hostile fire and to a high probability of direct physical contact with the hostile force's personnel. [It] takes place well forward on the battlefield while locating and closing with the enemy to defeat them by fire, maneuver, or shock effect.

Despite this rule, in February 2012 the Defense Department opened up 14,500 positions to women that had previously been limited to men and lifted a rule that prohibited women from living with combat units.

If women can meet the same physical requirements, shouldn't they be allowed to serve in combat jobs?

The DOD has lifted the requirement without any evidence that females in the military can meet the same physical requirements as their male counterparts. The military has only recently begun to perform evaluations to make the determination of whether women could qualify for combat jobs.

For instance, last year the Marine Corps admitted two women to take part in the Marine Corps' Infantry Officer Course, a course in which about 25 percent of men don't make the cut or voluntarily drop out. One of the woman volunteers washed out on the first day because she was unable to complete the program's introductory combat endurance test. The other woman was dropped from training a few days later due to unspecified medical reasons. The Marine Corps wants to test at least 90 more women in the course before making any decision about women serving in infantry roles, but so far those two women are the only one's to volunteer for the training.

The military is unlikely to find a sufficient number of qualified women because of the physiological differences between men and women. Comprehensive tests in 1987 and 1990 at Marine Recruit Depot Parris Island found that 45 percent of female Marines could not throw a live grenade safely beyond the 15 meter bursting radius. And as Mackubin Thomas Owens notes:

The average female soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine is about five inches shorter than her male counterpart and has half the upper body strength, lower aerobic capacity (at her physical peak between the ages of 20 and 30, the average woman has the aerobic capacity of a 50-year-old male), and 37 percent less muscle mass. She has a lighter skeleton, which means that the physical strain on her body from carrying the heavy loads that are the lot of the infantryman may cause permanent damage.

In the Marine Corps Gazette, the professional journal of the Marine Corp, Captain Katie Petronio wrote an article titled, "Get Over It! We Are Not All Created Equal":

I understand that there are female servicemembers who have proven themselves to be physically, mentally, and morally capable of leading and executing combat-type operations; as a result, some of these Marines may feel qualified for the chance of taking on the role of [Infantry Officer]. In the end, my main concern is not whether women are capable of conducting combat operations, as we have already proven that we can hold our own in some very difficult combat situations; instead, my main concern is a question of longevity. Can women endure the physical and physiological rigors of sustained combat operations, and are we willing to accept the attrition and medical issues that go along with integration?

As a young lieutenant, I fit the mold of a female who would have had a shot at completing [Infantry Officer Course], and I am sure there was a time in my life where I would have volunteered to be an infantryman. I was a star ice hockey player at Bowdoin College, a small elite college in Maine, with a major in government and law. At 5 feet 3 inches I was squatting 200 pounds and benching 145 pounds when I graduated in 2007. I completed Officer Candidates School (OCS) ranked 4 of 52 candidates, graduated 48 of 261 from [The Basic School], and finished second at [Military Occupational Speciality] school. I also repeatedly scored far above average in all female-based physical fitness tests (for example, earning a 292 out of 300 on the Marine physical fitness test). Five years later, I am physically not the woman I once was and my views have greatly changed on the possibility of women having successful long careers while serving in the infantry. I can say from firsthand experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not just emotion, that we haven't even begun to analyze and comprehend the gender-specific medical issues and overall physical toll continuous combat operations will have on females.

Won't women be excluded if they can't meet the physical requirements for combat jobs?

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged on Thursday that commanders must justify why any woman might be excluded and, if women can't meet any unit's standard, the Pentagon will ask: "Does it really have to be that high?"

Importantly, though, if we do decide that a particular standard is so high that a woman couldn't make it, the burden is now on the service to come back and explain to the secretary, why is it that high? Does it really have to be that high? With the direct combat exclusion provision in place, we never had to have that conversation.

The decision to open combat jobs was not made because anyone in the military believed it was necessary to enhance military readiness. Rather, the rule change was a politically motivated decision to advance the abstract notion of "equality." Because of this most critics of the change fully expect the military will be forced to do what the U.S. military has always done to expand opportunities for women to serve: resort to gender-norming.

Gender norming is the practice of judging female military applicants, recruits, and servicemembers by less stringent standards than their male counterparts. This has been the standard procedure for most physical requirement in the military for the past several decades.

For example, men in the Marine Corps are required to do pull-ups for the semi-annual fitness test while women perform a flexed-arm hang, in which they hold themselves above a chin-up bar for 60 seconds. In 2014 a new change will require women to also do pull-ups, but gives them a higher score for the same pull-ups as their male counterparts.

To get a perfect score on the fitness test a young male Marine would need to perform 20 pull-ups, 100 abdominal crunches in 2-minutes, and run 3 miles in 18 minutes or less. For a young female to get a perfect score she only needs to perform 8 pull-ups, 100 abdominal crunches in 2-minutes, and run 3 miles in 21 minutes. A Marine who was only able to complete 3 pull-ups, 75 crunches, and 3 miles in 30 minutes would fail—if he were a male. The same score would be a passing score for a female Marine.

Other physical requirements are also less stringent. In recruit training, male Marines must complete a fifteen-mile march carrying a forty-pound pack and weapons in five hours, while women must march ten miles with twenty-five pounds and no weapons in three and a half hours. (Infantry officers carry an average of about 70 pounds of gear on their body in combat and can march for miles. That weight can nearly double when Marines are carrying crew-served weapons, such as mortars and heavy machine guns.)

"Two decades ago, the U.S. Military Academy identified 120 physical differences between men and women," says Owens, "not to mention psychological ones, that resulted in a less rigorous overall program of physical training at West Point in order to accommodate female cadets."

Don't women serve in combat already in other countries?

Women are allowed to serve in front-line combat positions in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Eritrea, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, North Korea, Poland, Romania, and Sweden. However in most of these countries women make up a tiny percentage of actual combat forces. For example, while the French infantry is theoretically open to women, in practice they make up only 1.7 percent of combat troops. And in Israel, it is reported that the Israeli Defense Force often doesn't accept women for units for which they are eligible and evacuates women during combat situations.

None of these countries can be adequately compared to the United States or used as a model for gender integration. Despite having standing armies, most of those countries rely on the U.S. for their national security. Their military readiness is questionable and it is unlikely they could defend against a foreign threat without the aid of American forces.

Will women now be forced to sign up for the Selective Service and be eligible for military conscription (i.e., "the draft")?

Most likely. At a Pentagon press conference on Thursday Secretary Panetta admitted that females may soon be included in the Selective Service and qualify for a potential draft should one be ordered by the president. Panetta said he didn't know who ran the Selective Service, but whoever does will "have to exercise some judgment based on what we just did."

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, said the new rule will affect "unsuspecting civilian women, who will face equal obligations to register for Selective Service when a future federal court rules in favor of litigation brought by the [American Civil Liberties Union] on behalf of men."

At least one Congressional representative, Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY), has proposed reinstating the draft for both men and women.

Why is this issue a concern for Christians?

Not all Christians will agree, of course, but complementarians and other gender-traditionalists will have serious reservations about the wisdom of allowing women in combat. Even some of those who hold an egalitarian view of ecclesiological issues may not think it is prudent for our sisters and daughters to join our sons and brothers on the front lines of the battlefield.

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood issued a resolution in 1997 that outlines some of the concerns:

The moral justification for military combat service is the duty to protect vital national interests, of which the most vital and most essential is the welfare, security and good order of families; and so moral justification for combat service is derived from, and is thus essentially linked to, the divinely assigned role and responsibilities of self-sacrificial male headship of the family (Eph. 5:23-24); and

WHEREAS, Intentional rejection of the connection between male headship in the family and the male protective role that defines and justifies service as a soldier in military combat necessarily strikes at the complementary nature of male and female relationships established in the order of creation, and unavoidably undermines the order, structure, strength and stability of families within any society that determines to ignore, deny or erase this gender-based distinction; and

WHEREAS, The pattern established by God throughout the Bible is that men, not women, bear responsibility to serve in combat if war is necessary (Gen. 14:14; Num. 31:3,21,49; Deut. 20:5-9,13-14; Josh. 1:14-18; 6:3,7,9; 8:3; 10:7; 1 Sam. 16:18; 18:5; 2 Sam. 11:1; 17:8; 23:8-39; Ps. 45:3-5; Song of Sol. 3:7-8; Isa. 42:13)

Additionally, there are potential religious liberty and family concerns that Christians should be aware of and prepare to address. For instance, young mothers and women who are not pacifists but who object to serving in combat may not be able to receive exemptions from future military conscription. As Lydia McGrew explains:

We should understand this: It is not possible to make a claim to be exempted from registering for the draft on conscientious grounds. The law is quite clear that those (currently only men) who would apply for CO status should they be called up must nonetheless register. The issue of whether their request for exemption would be granted is thus deferred indefinitely, and they would simply have to be ready to mobilize their arguments for a conscientious exemption within a matter of ten days (!) if a draft should be called and their name should be chosen.

To bring this home a bit, consider the fact that in the current all-volunteer force women have been sent away from their small children. In some cases women have their young children with them overseas in government-run daycare. In Brian Mitchell's invaluable book he even describes one pilot who did her pilot runs in between breast-feeding an infant. So you, if you are the relevant age, or your daughters, or your wife, could be given the choice of taking a baby to a foreign country to be mostly cared for by the government or of leaving the baby behind without its mother. If the father were also unlucky enough to be called up, the children could be left in effect orphaned. My recollection is that we have had cases like this, with both parents sent abroad leaving the children behind, in the all-volunteer force.

Women who object to serving in the military for gender-traditionalist reasons would also therefore have to make it clear that they object to "alternative service" that, if they had children, would require them to leave their children. This, too, arises from the unique nature of the objection--an objection not to war but to feminism.

Other Posts in this Series:

The Fiscal Cliff

The Supreme Court Ruling on Obamacare

Southern Baptists, Calvinism, and God's Plan of Salvation

Are Mormons Christian?

The Contraceptive-Abortifacient Mandate

Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?

The Story: A new report from Barna Group ranks how 96 of the largest cities in the nation on how they view the Bible.

The Background: The study, based on 42,855 interviews conducted nationwide, attempts to determine the overall openness or resistance to the Bible in the country's largest markets. The report ranks the most and least "Bible-minded" cities based both on weekly Bible reading and who strongly asserts the Bible is accurate in the principles it teaches.

The Takeaways: Some of the more interesting findings from the survey include:

• The top ranking cities, where at least half of the population qualifies as Bible-minded, are all Southern cities.

• The least Bible-oriented markets include a mix of regions, but tend to be from the New England area.

• Among the nation's largest 30 cities, 10 of them are in the top half of the Bible-minded market rankings, while 20 of them are in the bottom half.

• Generally speaking, the more densely populated areas tend to be less Bible oriented.

• Markets having a higher percentage of Hispanic Catholics are less likely to engage the Bible.

• The cities with the highest percentage of the population being defined as 'Bible-minded' are:

1. Knoxville, TN (52%)
2. Shreveport, LA (52%)
3. Chattanooga, TN (52%)
4. Birmingham, AL (50%)
5. Jackson, MS (50%).
6. Springfield, MO (49%)
7. Charlotte, NC (48%)
8. Lynchburg, VA (48%)
9. Huntsville-Decatur, AL (48%)
10. Charleston, WV (47%)

• The cities with the lowest percentage of the population being defined as 'Bible-minded' are:

85. New York, NY (18%)
86. Las Vegas, NV (18%)
87. Buffalo, NY (18%)
88. Cedar Rapids, IA (18%)
89. Phoenix, AZ (17%)
90. San Francisco, CA (16%)
91. Boston, MA (16%)
92. Hartford, CT (16%)
93. Portland, ME (16%)
94. Burlington, VT (16%)
95. Albany, NY (10%)
96. Providence, RI (9%)

An infographic listing all 96 cities can be found here.

The Story: To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Center for Reproductive Rights released a creepy video in which actor Mehcad Brooks attempts to humorously sexualize and anthromorphize the abortion-on-demand law.

The Background: "To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade we didn't buy a ruby," says the Center for Reproductive Rights. "Instead [the Center] asked asked Mehcad Brooks of the USA Network's "Necessary Roughness" and HBO's "True Blood" to prepare a special video message just for you.

In response to the video, Ryan Bomberger, an African-American pro-lifer who runs the Radiance Foundation, said:

The Center for Reproductive Rights, like Planned Parenthood, certainly understands its main demographic. Happy 40th Anniversary Baby ironically uses a man (who is normally treated as persona non grata) to pitch abortion. The fact that they use a black man just screams irony . . . with the black abortion rate as high as it is and black fathers as absent as they are, it's just sick to see Mehcad Brooks shill for the number one killer in the black community, and the killer of 55 million plus since '73.

Why It Matters: As Bomberger rightly notes, African-American women are a prime demographic for abortionists. According to the National Vital Statistics Report from June 2012, African-American women experience an average of 1.6 times more pregnancies than white women, but have 5 times more abortions over their lifetime. And research released by Protecting Black Life reveals that 79% of Planned Parenthood's surgical abortion facilities are located within walking distance of African-American and/or Hispanic/Latino communities.

Additionally, pro-abortion supporters have hindered efforts to regulate these clinics. In Virginia health inspectors discovered despicable conditions in every single clinic and in December, Women's Medical Services in Muskegon, Michigan was forced to shut down because of unsanitary conditions dangerous to human life.

But the most notorious and heartbreaking example is the Philadelphia Women's Medical Society, the late-term abortion clinic run by Kermit Gosnell. The 3801 Lancaster Film Project is an ongoing documentary series about Gosnell, his clinic, and the cover-up by state and local oversight agencies. You can watch the film below.

(Warning: The video contains graphic images.)

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a United States federal holiday marking the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around the time of King's birthday, January 15. Here are 9 things you should know about MLK:

1. The campaign for a federal holiday in King's honor began soon after his assassination in 1968, but Martin Luther King, Jr. Day did not become a U.S federal holiday until Ronald Reagan begrudgingly signed the holiday into law in 1983. (Reagan was concerned that a paid holiday for federal employees would be too expensive.) Only two other persons have U.S. national holidays honoring them: George Washington and Christopher Columbus.

2. King's literary and rhetorical masterpiece was his 1963 open letter "The Negro Is Your Brother," better known as the "Letter From Birmingham Jail." The letter, written while King was being held for a protest in the city, was a response to a statement made by eight white Alabama clergymen titled "A Call for Unity." An editor at the New York Times Magazine, Harvey Shapiro, asked King to write his letter for publication in the Magazine, though the Times chose not to publish it.

3. While much of King's philosophy of nonviolence was derived from Christian—especially Anabaptist—sources, a significant influence was the work of Indian leader Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi. While in seminary King's gave a presentation he prepared for a class entitled "Christian Theology for Today," in which he included Gandhi as one of a number of figures he identified as "individuals who greatly reveal the working of the Spirit of God."

4. In 1964, King became the second African American—and the third black man—to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

5. In his autobiography, King says that in 1960 he voted for John F. Kennedy and that if the president had lived he likely would have made an exception to his non-endorsement policy for a second Kennedy term. But it was JFK's brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who issued a written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, recorded his extramarital affairs and reported on them to government officials, and mailed King a threatening anonymous letter that he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide. While King was in jailed in Birmingham, JFK's wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, even called Coretta Scott King to express her concern—neither of them realizing the phone was being tapped.

6. King held unorthodox views on theology, which he expressed during his time at Crozer Theological Seminary. In a paper he wrote for a systematic theology class he cast skeptical aspersions on the doctrines of divine Sonship, the Virgin Birth (". . . the evidence for the tenability of this doctrine is too shallow to convince any objective thinker"), and the Resurrection (". . . the external evidence for the authenticity of this doctrine is found wanting"). In the conclusion of another paper he writes,

Others doctrines such as a supernatural plan of salvation, the Trinity, the substitutionary theory of the atonement, and the second coming of Christ are all quite prominent in fundamentalist thinking. Such are the views of the fundamentalist and they reveal that he is opposed to theological adaptation to social and cultural change. He sees a progressive scientific age as a retrogressive spiritual age. Amid change all around he is willing to preserve certain ancient ideas even though they are contrary to science.

7. A decade before he was assassinated, King was nearly stabbed to death in Harlem when a mentally ill African-American woman who believed he was conspiring against her with communists, stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener. He underwent emergency surgery, and remained hospitalized for several weeks but made a full recovery. The doctor who performed the operation said, "Had Dr. King sneezed or coughed the weapon would have penetrated the aorta. . . . He was just a sneeze away from death"

8. On April 4, 1968, King was assassinated by the #277 man on the FBI's Most Wanted Fugitives list. In 1967, James Earl Ray escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary by hiding in a truck transporting bread from the prison bakery. After being convicted for the murder of King Ray was sentenced to 99 years in Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. In 1977, Ray became the #351 on the FBI's Most Wanted Fugitives list after he and six other convicts escaped from the prison. He was recaptured three days later and given another year in prison, bringing his sentence to 100 years.

9. King delivered his "I Have a Dream Speech" at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.

[Note: "Debatable" is a occasional feature in which we briefly summarize debates within the evangelical community.]

The Issue: Louie Giglio, pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta and founder of the Passion Conferences, an organization that brings college students together in prayer and worship, was selected by President Obama to deliver the benediction at his inaugural this month. He withdrew because of controversy over a sermon he delivered in mid-1990s on homosexuality.

Various evangelical thinkers and leaders have commented, often coming to quite different conclusions on the question, "How should evangelicals respond?"

Position #1: Gabe Lyons, a best-selling author and founder of Q Ideas, says Giglio is a "target of intolerance" and "reverse discrimination at its finest":

As gays come out of the closet, are Christians meant to swap and go hide back in closets of their own? This zero-sum game is the most un-American of games.

Freedom to speak your mind and live by your convictions---a person's freedom of conscience---is the first, most fundamental, American right. James Madison believed strongly in the freedom of conscience, even claiming, "This right is in its nature an unalienable right" in his Memorial and Remonstrance written in 1785. Maintaining and defending "freedom of conscience" protects every citizen from being coerced, cajoled, intimidated or bullied into taking a point of view that goes against their deepest convictions.

It's a sad day in America when that right is up for debate.

Position #2: Author and blogger Matthew Lee Anderson, in a guest post for CNN, argued that while Christians have a right to be concerned, we ought to shrug off inaugural pastor rejection:

In such moments, conservative Christians have been ready and quick to demonstrate their ample supply of passion for the truth.

The last imbroglio about homosexuality in our country was the Chick-Fil-A affair, which resulted in long lines of socially conservative people cheerfully waiting to eat their chicken sandwiches. This time, the response has already been more strictly rhetorical, but just as swift and as strongly worded. Russell Moore's website crashed because of the massive amount of traffic, he wrote.

It is somewhat ironic that Giglio, the founder of Passion, stepped so quietly from the stage given the cacophony all around him. His statement was gracious without changing his stance. It did not denounce the White House or those seeking to dismiss him.

In fact, this sort of political dispassion is precisely what we could all use a lot more of, and conservative Christians have better reasons than most to lead the way.

Position #3: Scot McKnight says that while Giglio did the right thing by withdrawing, he "could have done the right-er thing by never accepting such an invitation":

Any evangelical on the platform of any Inauguration, Democrat or Republican, is being used. No one's prayer will be acceptable to specific faiths... and if you tailor your prayer to all you shift your theology.

This is what happens when you enter the political forum. When you enter politics you risk sullying the gospel. In DC everything is political. Who speaks, who stands where, who gets to be in the parameters of the photos, who speaks when and when one speaks where... To agree to the political space is to agree with the politics.

What happened to Louie is what happens when pastors and Christian leaders become complicit in politics. Politics determines everything. Not one's theology, not one's noble efforts to bring down trafficking, not one's capacity to pray or lead the nation in a prayer for all. Politics determines everything. And the pastor who stands on that platform makes the gospel complicit in that platform's politics.

Scoring the Debate: How should evangelicals respond to the Giglio incident? Should we be outraged? Should we shrug and recommit ourselves to good works? Or should we simply avoid letting politicians use us for their PR purposes?

Like many other evangelical reactions to the Giglio incident, each of these men provides persuasive, if incomplete, reasons for their positions. But it's difficult to say what arguments will be most effective in a our strange era, a post-Christian society in which most people still identify as Christians. Perhaps we should simply be encouraged that we're still having debates influenced by neo-Calvinism or neo-Anabaptism when too many Christians have embraced neo-secularism.

The Story: Louie Giglio, pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta and founder of the Passion Conferences, an organization that brings college students together in prayer and worship, was selected by President Obama to deliver the benediction at his inaugural this month. He was disinvited, though, after it was discovered he had delivered a sermon about homosexuality in the mid-1990s.

The Background: According to Addie Whisenant, the spokeswoman for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, "Pastor Giglio was asked to deliver the benediction in large part for his leadership in combating human trafficking around the world." But criticism over the selection came after the liberal website Think Progress posted audio of a sermon that Giglio gave in the mid-1990s. In the audio, Giglio calls unrepentant homosexuality a sin and adds:

That's God's voice. If you want to hear God's voice, that is his voice to this issue of homosexuality. It is not ambiguous and unclear. It is very clear. If you look at the counsel of the word of God, Old Testament, New Testament, you come quickly to the conclusion that homosexuality is not an alternate lifestyle. . . . homosexuality is not just a sexual preference, homosexuality is not gay, but homosexuality is sin. It is sin in the eyes of God, and it is sin according to the word of God.

[. . .]

The only way out of a homosexual lifestyle, the only way out of a relationship that has been ingrained over years of time, is through the healing power of Jesus. . . . We've got to say the homosexuals, the same thing that I say to you and that you would say to me . . . it's not easy to change, but it is possible to change.

Think Progress described the sermon as "vehemently anti-gay", a sentiment that seems to be shared by the White House. As Whisenant added, the inauguration committee was "not aware of Pastor Giglio's past comments at the time of his selection and they don't reflect our desire to celebrate the strength and diversity of our country at this Inaugural."

On his church's website Giglio says that "after conversations between our team and the White House I am no longer serving in that role."

Why It Matters: For the past several decades voices inside and outside the church have said that Christians have hurt our witness by focusing on issues that challenge individualistic sexual permissiveness. They say that if we would only focus on actions that show how much we love our neighbor, actions like ending human trafficking, we would be welcomed in the public square. But as the Giglio incident reveals, no amount of good works can atone for committing the secular sin of subscribing to the biblical view of sexuality.

It's not even enough to stop talking about the issue. As Giglio says in his statement,
"Clearly, speaking on [homosexuality] has not been in the range of my priorities in the past fifteen years." But for the sexual liberationists, both secular and religious, it is not enough to have stopped talking about an issue decades ago. Anyone who has ever spoken about the issue---or at least has not recanted from believing what God says about homosexuality---is to be treated as a bigot.

In her statement Whisenant add that, "Choosing an affirming and fair-minded voice as his replacement would be in keeping with the tone the president wants to set for his inaugural."

The message of religious intolerance being delivered by President Obama, his staff, and many of his supporters is unmistakable: If you do not affirm homosexuality then you cannot be fair-minded. Affirmation of homosexual behavior is now a litmus test for President Obama and his political party. As Russell Moore notes, "by the standards of this controversy, no Muslim imam or Orthodox Jewish rabbi alive can pray at a presidential inauguration."

What is most disturbing is that this new standard is not just applied to political appointees but to religious leaders whose sole function is to deliver a prayer. The effect, as Moore says, is that we now have a "de facto established state church":

As citizens, we ought to insist that the President stand up to his "base" and articulate a vision of a healthy pluralism in the public square. Notice that the problem is not that this evangelical wants to "impose his religion" on the rest of society. The problem is not that he wants to exclude homosexuals or others from the public square or of their civil rights. The problem is that he won't say that they can go to heaven without repentance. That's not a civil issue, but a religious test of orthodoxy.

We can and should oppose affirmation of homosexuality as a religious test of orthodoxy. We should do so forcefully but charitably, remembering that our purpose is not to defend our rights but to ensure that we can effectively love our neighbor. We should impose any efforts that hinder the spread of the Gospel and our ability to tell the truth about human sin and God's grace.

However, we should also remember that our Lord says that because he has chosen us out of this world that the world will hate us. (John 15:19) This hate is not a mere effect of our focusing on divisive cultural issues. This is the default attitude of the world toward Christians. Jesus healed the sick, cured the blind, and even raised the dead---and for these good works they crucified him.

We shouldn't be so naive as to believe that if we focus exclusively on serving the homeless and fighting to end human trafficking that they world will stop hating us. We must both serve our neighbor and tell them the truth about the human condition, that the wages of unrepentant sin is death. No one can truly love their neighbor and affirm their sin. For us to remain silent about homosexuality would show that we hate the world as much as the world hates us.

Update: Several commenters raised questions about whether the use of the term "disinvited" in the title was accurate. I'll let the reader decide, but here is a quote from the New York Times that sheds some light on the issue:

People familiar with internal discussions between administration and committee officials said the White House viewed the selection as a problem for Mr. Obama, and told the panel on Wednesday night to quickly fix it. By Thursday morning, Mr. Giglio said he had withdrawn.

As the father of two sons born in Russia, I was enraged by Vladimir Putin's government ban on American adoptions from the former Soviet state, and I said so in every venue open to me. A Russian national (and evangelical Christian) responded to me via social media with a rebuke: "Russia needs the gospel, not Americans adopting our children," he said. "Why don't you Americans solve your own problems before interfering in ours?" I think his response is worth pondering.

We must first acknowledge that this reaction is precisely what the Putin government wants from Russians. The Obama administration rightly supported sanctions against Russia for its abysmal human rights record. The leftover KGB thugocracy responded by "punishing" Americans by cutting off adoption, knowing this would play well with jingoistic nationalism.

At one level, this is quite understandable. Imagine if the Cold War were reversed---the United States having collapsed into impoverished separate states and Soviet citizens adopting children from here. We'd probably see people screaming lines from Red Dawn at the new parents in the airports. The situation would be a blow to national pride. And that's exactly the point.

National Pride

This Russian evangelical's taunt seems to assume "the gospel" is something that doesn't address questions of national pride or public justice. It is simply "spiritual" in giving the way to heaven. But that's not the kind of gospel Jesus or his apostles preached. The gospel not only proclaims grace, it also exposes sin and calls for repentance. The gospel of the kingdom announces, as theologian Carl F. H. Henry put it, "the criteria by which God will judge men and nations."

That's why John the Baptist, in preaching the gospel, spoke also of sexual morality (Luke 3:18-20). That's why Jesus, in preaching the gospel, talked about the economics of tax collecting and caring for the poor (Matt. 22:15-22; Luke 12:33-34). That's why the apostle Paul, in preaching the gospel, talked about self-control and the coming judgment (1 Thess. 5:1-11). The gospel confronts us in our sin---in that persistent, satanic temptation to shrug, "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen. 4:9).

This is hardly unique to Russia. Jesus' contemporaries thought they were making a merely political statement when they said, "We have no king but Caesar" (John 19:15). My Southern Baptist ancestors said they were simply protecting their Southern "way of life" when they cruelly denied justice to African Americans for more than a century. And, even now, many professing Christians think it's none of the church's business when we speak of the lordship of Christ over pocketbooks or hormonal glands. The gospel blows all of that prideful resistance away by offering mercy, but also by convicting us in sin.

The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church has endorsed this Russian strongman's wicked policy, as the church has done too often in history. At the same time, though, he has called on Russian Christians to adopt orphans. I can only pray this will gain traction.

The answer to orphanages teeming with doomed children isn't, ultimately, American adoption. The answer is, ideally, a Russia so revived by the gospel of adoption in Christ that Christian families receive children even as they have been received into the household of Christ. Ultimately, of course, we seek a a landscape devoid of orphanages, as American cities are devoid of slave auctions. To that end we pray the gospel would stabilize families and uproot the causes of orphanhood: poverty, alcoholism, illegitimacy, and so on.

Until then, we preach the gospel to every creature, including our Russian friends. And, until then, we stand for what Jesus cares about, including the "least of these," those orphaned in the womb, in foster care, and in orphanages at home and around the world.

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. But a different gospel, one that says to the hurting, "Be warmed and filled" (Jas. 2:16), is a gospel to which we must say "Nyet."

Articles you need to know about, summarized in 60 seconds (or less).

The Article: Paedophilia: Bringing Dark Desires to Light

The Source: The Guardian

The Author: Jon Henley

The Gist: Academic and psychological experts disagree about what causes pedophilia, how much harm it causes, and whether it should be more tolerated by society.

The Excerpt:

There is a growing conviction, notably in Canada, that paedophilia should probably be classified as a distinct sexual orientation, like heterosexuality or homosexuality. Two eminent researchers testified to that effect to a Canadian parliamentary commission last year, and the Harvard Mental Health Letter of July 2010 stated baldly that paedophilia "is a sexual orientation" and therefore "unlikely to change".

[. . .]

Even now there is no academic consensus on that fundamental question - as Goode found. Some academics do not dispute the view of Tom O'Carroll, a former chairman of PIE and tireless paedophilia advocate with a conviction for distributing indecent photographs of children following a sting operation, that society's outrage at paedophilic relationships is essentially emotional, irrational, and not justified by science. "It is the quality of the relationship that matters," O'Carroll insists. "If there's no bullying, no coercion, no abuse of power, if the child enters into the relationship voluntarily ... the evidence shows there need be no harm."

The Bottom Line: In the mid-1990s, the late Joseph P. Overton, proposed the "Overton Window" which describes a "window" in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse. All issues fall somewhere along this policy continuum, which can be roughly outlined as: Unthinkable, Radical, Acceptable, Sensible, Popular, Policy. When the window moves or expands, ideas can accordingly become more or less politically acceptable.

In the summer of 2011, I wrote an article for First Things explaining how the Overton model developed to explain adjustments in the political climate and later applied it to how pedophilia would be normalized. The first step---from Unthinkable to Radical---usually occurs when the topic of an academic symposium. We passed this stage several years ago.

The second step---from Radical to Acceptable---often requires the creation and employment of euphemism, such as referring to pedophiles as "minor-attracted persons", and connecting it to an issue that has already become acceptable, such as the acceptance of wide variety of sexual orientations. As Henley says in his article,

The reclassification of paedophilia as a sexual orientation would, however, play into what [Sarah Goode, a senior lecturer at the University of Winchester] calls "the sexual liberation discourse", which has existed since the 1970s. "There are a lot of people," she says, "who say: we outlawed homosexuality, and we were wrong. Perhaps we're wrong about paedophilia."

We're still a long way from pedophilia reaching the "sensible," "popular," and "policy" stages. But we've already slid further down the slippery-slope of normalizing this crime than most Christians realize.