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WASHINGTON, D.C., March 5, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Pro-homosexual forces are lining up beside their pro-abortion allies in the fight against conscience protections for those who oppose contraceptives, sterilization and abortion on religious grounds.

On Monday, a coalition of nearly 50 homosexual activist groups joined Planned Parenthood in releasing a statement supporting the Obama administration’s controversial contraception mandate – which forces employers to provide full, copay-free insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortion-causing drugs to female employees and dependents – and opposing the dozens of lawsuits that have been filed by religious employers arguing the law violates their constitutional rights.

The coalition drew a direct comparison between efforts to protect pro-life employers from being forced to facilitate the provision of anti-natal drugs and procedures, and efforts to offer conscience protections to those who oppose same-sex “marriage” on religious grounds as more states make it legal.

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“Legislation has been introduced in at least 10 states to allow companies to discriminate against LGBT people and others, while the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments from corporations that want to take away birth control coverage from their employees,” the coalition wrote. “All of these attacks are cut from the same dangerous cloth, and they would roll back the clock on the balance our nation has struck to respect religious beliefs while protecting the rights and liberties of all.”

A spokesman for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the legal group representing Christian-owned craft store chain Hobby Lobby in the most prominent of the dozens of birth control mandate cases now making their way to the Supreme Court, rejected the connection between efforts to fight the mandate and efforts to protect those who oppose homosexuality on religious grounds.  The two issues are “completely different,” the spokesman told the Huffington Post.

But American Family Association president Tim Wildmon told LifeSiteNews that pro-life Christians who avoid taking a stand on the issue of homosexuality risk being defeated by a flank attack in the culture war.

“People have different callings and different passions and both of these issues are very important. But I would say that Christians need to see what is going on in America as spiritual darkness vs spiritual light. We have several areas of engagement,” Wildmon told LifeSiteNews.

Wildmon said he wasn’t surprised by the strategic allegiance of the homosexual lobby and the abortion lobby in the fight to block religious opposition to their respective causes. “The common denominator the homosexual activists have with Planned Parenthood is they both promote actions that are diametrically opposed to the laws of God as given to us in the Bible,” Wildmon said.  “Abortion is the taking of innocent human life and homosexual behavior is immoral, unhealthy and unnatural.”

In a blog post criticizing the New York Times for its misleading coverage of the Arizona religious protections bill, Ryan T. Anderson of the conservative Heritage Foundation also acknowledged the link between the battle over the HHS mandate and the ongoing legal persecution of Christian business owners who refuse to service gay “weddings.”  But Anderson argued that the discrimination was on the side of homosexual activists and the Obama administration, who wish to force religious believers to abandon their beliefs in order to service an extreme leftist political agenda. 

“The New York Times editorial board [claims] that Arizona has just passed ‘noxious measures to give businesses and individuals the broad right to deny services to same-sex couples in the name of protecting religious liberty,’” Anderson wrote. “The Times got it wrong. The proposed legislation never even mentions same-sex couples; it simply clarifies and improves existing state protections for religious liberty. And as the multitude of lawsuits against the coercive HHS mandate and the cases of photographers, florists and bakers show, we need protection for religious liberty now more than ever.”

“While the government must treat everyone equally, private actors are left free to make reasonable judgments and distinctions—including reasonable moral judgments and distinctions—in their economic activities,” added Anderson. “Not every florist need provide wedding arrangements for every ceremony. Not every photographer need capture every first kiss. Competitive markets can best harmonize a range of values that citizens hold. And there is no need for government to try to force every photographer and every florist to service every marriage-related event.”