Senator Baldwin Attacks the First Amendment

US Senator Tammy Baldwin

Junior US Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) celebrated the Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, which imposed same-sex marriage by judicial fiat, despite erudite dissenting opinions. She then attacked the First Amendment:

[I]n institutions of faith that there is absolute power to, you know, to observe deeply held religious beliefs. But I don’t think it extends far beyond that. . . I think there are clear limits that have been set in other contexts and we ought to abide by those in this new context across America.

The Bill of Rights outline innate powers bestowed on individuals regardless of government force or collective manipulation. Corporate membership and legal precedent has extended these rights to private corporations. Rights mean nothing if limited to specific places, for the mind is free, as Framer Thomas Jefferson established in The Virginia Statues of Religious Freedom.

Baldwin has already been the subject of heated controversy following the dubious firing of a staffer-turned-whistleblower who identified that the Senator did nothing to rectify reported abuses at a Wisconsin Veterans Administration Hospital. Baldwin also voted with her Democratic colleagues to effectively repeal the First Amendment, when she joined a Senate resolution to overturn the Citizens United decision. Now Baldwin declares that freedom of religion only applies to houses of worship. If individuals cannot act according to their conscience in public, then it is not a freedom.

Based on her record and rhetoric, Baldwin has joined a disconcerting movement to stifle the First Amendment. Wisconsin voters should hold her accountable.