March 2, 2004

SEAN HANNITY: Now on our newsmaker line is our good friend Ambassador Alan Keyes, who's known a protester or two when he's been out and about around the country. How are you, sir?

ALAN KEYES: Pretty good. How are you, Sean?

HANNITY: I always love talking to you. We'll get a little bit into some politics in a minute here. I thought of you, though, when this ruling came out yesterday, the [California] Supreme Court ruling, 6-1 decision, that a Roman Catholic charity must provide employees with birth control coverage, despite its opposition to contraception. I just, I cannot believe we're living in these times.

KEYES: Well, Sean, we're seeing the inevitable working out of the situation we've allowed to arise in the country, where this issue of "separation of church and state" is now trending into what is going to be (and I predicted this for many years) an era of persecution for the Christian churches, in which we will not be allowed in fact to follow our Christian conscience and beliefs, and if we do so, we are going to find ourselves under penalties of law and punished for it.

I think we see it in this case with contraception. It's going to happen on issues like homosexuality, where that trend has already started in Canada--and it will happen elsewhere.

So, I think that this is the inevitable consequence of allowing what we've seen over the course of the last several decades to the notion that somehow any kind of religious faith, principle, expression, or belief is inappropriate in politics, inapplicable in government, inappropriate in law. That's all a lie, of course, but that's what we've accepted--and the next step, of course, is that all law must be made without any regard whatsoever for religious conscience, and people of religious conscience must be forced to follow laws that violate their conscience in fundamental ways and have them supporting things that they believe to be deeply immoral.

That's where we are now, and I think that this going to increase over the years ahead.

HANNITY: But explain this to me. All right, we have, supposedly, freedom of religion in this country. As part of Roman Catholic teaching and their belief system (and I'm a Catholic) is that birth control is not to be used. Now a court is going to overstep its bounds and blur the line of freedom of religion, and force a religious organization to adopt a rule that is the antithesis of what their own teachings are about. I mean, that is the hijacking of a religion by the state, is it not?

KEYES: That's precisely what it is, but as I just said, we have tolerated this situation in the country, where we're essentially allowing the political sphere to be defined as atheistic. And that means that when you are making judgments about the law, you cannot apply religious faith or principles--and that lack of any kind of recognition of the religious sphere in the legal sense means that when you make a secular judgment, "people have the right to contraception," that judgment is then going to be applied without regard for religious conscience or objection.

HANNITY: So, there is no more . . . .

KEYES: And when people raise the objection and say, "Oh, no, no. Our religious conscience forbids that," they're going to be told, "Well, that's inappropriate. Religion has nothing to do with law or politics."

HANNITY: Well, I guess freedom of religion then is gone, by definition, if you cannot freely practice your religion and your faith without having the government step in and tell you you've got to do it another way, especially on a moral issue.

KEYES: Well, Sean, one of the things that our Founders understood--and it is why they did not establish an atheistic regime or regime in which there could be no religious expression. They left the freedom to reflect religious faith and principle, they left that intact at the state and local level, and it was not to be interfered with. There was, in fact, no principle of separation in our Constitution, as it is articulated by these lying courts. It was never there, and yet we have allowed the development of a false doctrine of law and politics--and, as I say, the natural consequence of that lie is that law and politics need have no regard whatsoever for religious conviction or belief.

The only way you can defend religious belief is to have some level at which the views of the majority, the views are going to be respected. If most people believe in God, that's going to be respected. If most people profess Christianity, that's going to be respected at some level. We now live in regime in when they're telling us it's not going to be respected, and the courts have taken it upon themselves to be the censors in this respect, and they're going to drive every vestige of religious belief or principle out of our public life.

HANNITY: Not only it's not respected--you know, for all the lectures that conservatives have gotten from liberals about the issue of tolerance, I mean, is this not the height of intolerance on their part, by definition?

KEYES: Well, of course. I think one of the problems is, as I've often told people over the years, that evil is imperialistic. That means that it is not content simply to be left alone or to leave others alone.

And in this particular respect, the notion of an atheistic state, which is what the judges are now applying in America, is a notion that can't leave religion alone. If laws are made without regard to fundamental premises of religious faith or conviction, then those laws must inevitably tread upon, and disregard, and contradict the tenets of religious faith, particularly at the ethical and moral level--and that's what's happening.

HANNITY: Let me ask you--and relate this whole issue to what's happening with the Massachusetts supreme court. I think the reason the president had to act, and I support him acting in proposing this constitutional amendment, is because he was forced to because under the federal Constitution, this Full Faith and Credit Clause, every state would otherwise have to recognize gay marriages that were conducted in Massachusetts, and the president had to take a stand as to whether or not we're going to maintain the current definition of marriage as that being a legal union of a man and a woman as husband and wife.

KEYES: Well, I think a lot of folks years ago concluded that some kind of step was going to be necessary at the federal level. They tried to discuss this marriage act, not clear what's going to happen in the courts. Folks are pushing for a constitutional amendment, and have for some time, because they see no other way to prevent what you just talked about: the fact that a homosexual marriage is accepted in one state, leading, through the Full Faith and Credit Clause, to the forcible acceptance of what other states overwhelmingly reject--and how is it to be stopped, especially given the predilections of our present court.

But I have to say, Sean, that here, too, this issue arises because we have stepped away, starting in the '70's, from the understanding that marriage, as a matter of public law and fact, is to be dealt with at the state level, and that at the state level, it is not only allowed but is necessary that one's understanding of certain institutions reflects the prevailing religious understanding--because the understanding of marriage as monogamous, as heterosexual, and as understood as an institution in the context of procreation, that's essentially a part of the Judeo-Christian heritage.

If we accept the notion that nothing in that heritage can be applied to law at any level in America, then we get into the situation we're in--you know, because, in point of fact, at the state level people have the right not just to look at homosexuals and say "this isn't an issue of civil rights," [but] to say to them quite clearly, "this is an issue of what God says about marriage, and we have the right to reflect what He says in the law"--"we" being the majority in any given state.

HANNITY: All right, we're going to continue to watch the situation. Our good friend Ambassador Alan Keyes. Ambassador, good to talk to you. We'll see you on TV soon, hopefully. Thank you.

KEYES: You're welcome.