McCarthy: Pastors, staffers prepared to deal with Supreme Court marriage decision – Illinois Review.

Frequent commenter to this blog Margaret McCarthy covers  Daniel McConchie, Vice President of Government Affairs for Americans United for Life, in a Grayslake IL presentation, including threats to conscience, including:

Here in Illinois, [where] Holy Family Catholic Church in Inverness is faced with a lawsuit over employment discrimination by Colin Collette because he was fired when he married his male partner.

In Illinois, we have had The “Illinois Right of Conscience” [as] one of the strongest protections for religious objections . . . successfully used to protect a Catholic pharmacist from civil penalty when he refused to supply a customer with abortificient drugs.

Currently, SB 1564 . . . passed and . . . before the General Assembly, would weaken those protections.

Chicago Tribune columnist and blogger Dennis Byrne gave us a look at this book in April as applying to abortion.

As if we weren’t looking, pro-choice forces this week are pushing an anti-conscience abortion bill through the Illinois Legislature.

Illinois Senate Bill 1564, which rewrites theHealth Care Right of Conscience Act, is designed to cripple or shut down  pregnancy resource centers, such asAid for Womenand theWomen’s Center, that offer womenalternatives to abortion.  Ironically, the bill reduces choices for women and takes direct aim at health care providers whose conscience (whether religiously inspired or for logical reasons) does not allow them to participate in abortions.

That means that workers atpregnancy crisis centers would have to violate their conscience by describing the “benefits” of abortion and refer clients to abortion clinics.

The bill is presumed also to cover same-sex confrontations, McCarthy reports:

For several years, the homosexual lobby has been aggressively seeking out businesses whose owners refused on religious grounds to provide services for their prospective weddings. When refused, the couples sued, citing discrimination based on already existing laws permitting gay marriage. 

McConchie cited numerous cases across the country of florists, caterers, wedding chapels, bakers that were singled out for attack.  Some were defended successfully, others were fined and/or put out of business.

McConchie was blunt about it, warning his Christ Church “Crossroads” audience, “You may not be interested in politics, but if you don’t pay attention, politics will roll over you.”