Click here to read the rest of the article.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GOP frontrunners Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are continuing to pressure President Obama on issues of religious freedom, and they apparently have the support of conservative political pundits. Grove City College political science professor, Dr. Paul Kengor, in an email interview with The Christian Post said the reason Santorum and the other GOP leaders were standing firm in defending religious freedom, it was because Democrats were forcing the issue. \u201cHe’s being led by President Obama into this issue,\u201d wrote Kengor. \u201cRick Santorum, like tens of millions of committed Roman Catholics and evangelicals, has been pushed into this arena by President Obama, compliments of the HHS mandate.\u201d \u201cLike the Catholic Church generally, from the bishops to the laity, he didn’t ask for this fight. The fight came to him. He and other Catholics simply want the freedom of conscience they’ve always had in this nation — until President Obama assaulted them with this executive decree. Obama’s fiat was handed down from the mountaintop in Washington, a commandment to Catholics with no room for compromise.\u201d The religious freedom issue became front and center when President Obama announced a mandate by saying that employers were required to provide free birth control to all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[28,121,285,327,370,418,450],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-paul","tag-author","tag-dr-paul-kengor","tag-mitt-romney","tag-paul-stanley","tag-rick-santorum","tag-the-christian-post","tag-writer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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Grove City College political science professor, Dr. Paul Kengor, in an email interview with The Christian Post said the reason Santorum and the other GOP leaders were standing firm in defending religious freedom, it was because Democrats were forcing the issue. \u201cHe’s being led by President Obama into this issue,\u201d wrote Kengor. \u201cRick Santorum, like tens of millions of committed Roman Catholics and evangelicals, has been pushed into this arena by President Obama, compliments of the HHS mandate.\u201d \u201cLike the Catholic Church generally, from the bishops to the laity, he didn’t ask for this fight. The fight came to him. He and other Catholics simply want the freedom of conscience they’ve always had in this nation — until President Obama assaulted them with this executive decree. Obama’s fiat was handed down from the mountaintop in Washington, a commandment to Catholics with no room for compromise.\u201d The religious freedom issue became front and center when President Obama announced a mandate by saying that employers were required to provide free birth control to all [...]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.paulstanley.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/26\/romney-santorum-not-backing-down-on-religious-freedom-debate\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Paul Stanley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-02-26T19:49:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Paul Stanley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@authorstanley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Paul Stanley\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.paulstanley.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/26\/romney-santorum-not-backing-down-on-religious-freedom-debate\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.paulstanley.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/26\/romney-santorum-not-backing-down-on-religious-freedom-debate\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Paul Stanley\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.paulstanley.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/10ef2597eaf48c1f1f6f0527ff625868\"},\"headline\":\"Romney, Santorum Not Backing Down on Religious Freedom Debate\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-02-26T19:49:55+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.paulstanley.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/26\/romney-santorum-not-backing-down-on-religious-freedom-debate\/\"},\"wordCount\":233,\"commentCount\":0,\"keywords\":[\"author\",\"Dr. Paul Kengor\",\"Mitt Romney\",\"Paul Stanley\",\"Rick Santorum\",\"The Christian Post\",\"writer\"],\"articleSection\":[\"My Blog Post\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.paulstanley.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/26\/romney-santorum-not-backing-down-on-religious-freedom-debate\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.paulstanley.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/26\/romney-santorum-not-backing-down-on-religious-freedom-debate\/\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.paulstanley.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/26\/romney-santorum-not-backing-down-on-religious-freedom-debate\/\",\"name\":\"Romney, Santorum Not Backing Down on Religious Freedom Debate - 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