Bad Law

The State of Washington has passed and the purported Catholic governor signed a law which would force priests to break the seal of Confession. Briefly put, Catholic priests cannot under any circumstances make public any person's confession. It is a basic right of the free practice of religion and religious conscience. The Federal Department of Justice is investigating it as a violation of the First Amendment.

Good. If ever there was an example of tyranny, this is it. You fear Trump? I fear the left in general, and government power in particular. The left wants what it wants, and reason let alone the Constitution be damned. 

Yet before we wag our fingers too harshly at our left wing friends we should remember that, in this case anyway, it isn't only they who wish to swing the cudgel of government power against religious rights. Delaware and Vermont (unsurprisingly to me) have had recent bills die in committee which would do the same thing, while the very Republican states of Montana and North Dakota have considered similar measures. Thankfully none of them passed. But it does show that liberals aren't necessarily alone. In North Dakota anyway, two of the sponsors of the proposed bill were in the GOP.

Any way you slice it, the Washington law is bad law no matter how good the intention; we seem too ready and able to forget about the road to perdition. We have a Constitution precisely that the citizenry may be protected from such disregard for individual rights. We must teach our friends to respect it.