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"I don't think there's been any evidence of a deficit," Harkins said. "If there's a change we're seeking, it's to be broader, more robust, reaching a broader section of the faith community." The issue is arising at a particularly sensitive time when Obama's critics are accusing him of enacting policies that are "choking" religious groups. Catholic bishops have filed a dozen lawsuits nationwide challenging a Department of Health and Human Services mandate that most employers, including religious groups, provide insurance that covers birth control. The president has offered to shift the cost to insurance companies. But Catholic prelates said the accommodation still links the church to a practice that violates their beliefs. Recently, evangelical, Orthodox Jewish, Catholic and Mormon leaders helped form in every state a new network of caucuses dedicated to religious liberty, with the birth control mandate as their initial focus. The advocacy group Conscience Cause formed in February to rescind or revise the birth control mandate. The organization's board includes Jim Nicholson, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican under President George W. Bush, and Republican strategists Mary Matalin and Ed Gillespie. Gillespie is an adviser to the Romney campaign. But some of the president's traditional allies are among the critics. The Tablet, the British Catholic newsweekly read widely by American Catholic liberals, said in a recent editorial that Obama "has perhaps been misled into thinking that the widespread dissent to these teachings among Catholics means he can disregard the views of the bishops without having to pay an electoral penalty." Four years ago, Douglas Kmiec, an anti-abortion former official in the Reagan administration, backed Obama, drawing widespread condemnation from fellow conservative Catholics. In a column last month in the liberal U.S. newspaper the National Catholic Reporter, Kmiec praised the University of Notre Dame for suing the administration over the narrow religious exemption in the birth control rule. In 2009, Notre Dame withstood intense criticism from American bishops and honored Obama, despite the president's support for abortion rights. "Unwittingly, perhaps, the president has allowed his appointees to drift into the secular lane and stay there," Kmiec wrote. Catholics, who comprised about one-quarter of the electorate in 2008, haven't voted in a bloc for decades, but the candidate who wins the most Catholic votes usually wins the election. Some Democrats see no problem with consigning faith outreach to the sidelines. They argue that attempts to please moderate and conservative religious groups have kept Obama from fully enacting some policies important to party members. Among these critics are Democrats who consider church leaders' complaints about the scope of the birth control mandate an attempt to extend legal privileges to religious groups at the expense of women. Advocates for faith outreach say that view is short-sighted, endangering the party and the president's re-election chances. Keri B. Thompson, who specializes in political communication and teaches at Boston's Emerson College, had started volunteering for Obama when he ran for U.S. Senate from Illinois. In an interview after the White House briefing, Thompson said she was "thrilled" by the president's endorsement of gay marriage. But the day of Obama's statement, watching her Facebook page explode with comments, she said she saw some reservations amid the celebrating. "There are some people in the religious community who are unsure," Thompson said. "I think they need to be brought to the table."
[Associated
Press;
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