Wall Street Journal Op-Ed:  All the Little Sisters Want for Christmas Is Religious Liberty, by William McGurn:

When Christmas arrives for the Little Sisters of the Poor, they will be looking for one special gift under the tree: an end to the lawfare against them.

You remember the Little Sisters. They are a congregation of nuns who fought the Obama administration mandate that would force them to pay for contraception and abortion-inducing drugs. Though they won twice at the Supreme Court, lawsuits by California and Pennsylvania are still alive—and the sisters fear a Grinchly rule stripping them of their religious exemption by Joe Biden on his way out the door.

They aren’t alone. A Baptist baker is taking on California in court over the state’s insistence that she bake a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding. In New York, Yeshiva University is still caught up in litigation over its refusal to recognize an organization of gay students. Across America, religious citizens and organizations are fighting government decrees that would compel them to violate their beliefs.

These lawsuits occur in an America polarized by religion. While Donald Trump won the votes of a majority of Catholics and evangelical Protestants, 7 of 10 nonreligious voters supported Kamala Harris. Religious liberty has become a partisan issue. …

The religious-freedom argument is no longer about which worldview will prevail. It’s mostly about whether those with religious convictions can live their lives in their own institutions and communities in harmony with their own beliefs. Even those who have no dog in this fight have a stake, because a government that doesn’t respect the religious liberty of its citizens is unlikely to respect much else. …

“It’s not that the religious accommodations cause harm to anyone,” says Eric Rassbach, an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “It is that it is, from the secularist’s view, an immoral outrage for the religious people to act in this nonconformist way. But for 95% of Americans, live-and-let-live religious liberty is a much better solution.” …

Mark Rienzi, the Becket Fund’s president and a Catholic University law professor[:]  “Let’s pray that the opponents of religion can remember how to live and let live.”

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