Over the weekend, Ohio Gov. John Kasich had some pretty stern words for Christian conservatives who are concerned about their religious freedom.
“What I’d like to say is, just relax,” he told CNN. “If you don’t like what somebody’s doing, pray for them, and if you feel as though somebody is doing something wrong against you, can you just for a second get over it?”
That wasn’t all he had to say on the matter. He then added:
“There is a legitimate concern for people being able to have their deeply held religious beliefs, religious liberty. But there’s also people who we shouldn’t be discriminating against. We need to have a balance.
“And I just wish that everybody would just take a breath and calm down, because you see, trying to figure out how to legislate that balance is complicated and you keep doing do-overs, because nobody gets it right.
“So if we just kind of calm down here, I think things would settle down.”
Kasich has previously been critical of efforts to legislatively protect religious freedom by individual states. He was particularly harsh in his criticism of Mississippi’s new law that allows businesses to refuse to provide services if it would violate deeply held religious beliefs.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wasn’t amused by the governor’s comments. In an exclusive interview with Conservative Review, he said, “I don’t think the American people are willing to get over our basic liberties.”
“We fought a bloody revolution to protect our religious liberty,” he added. “This nation was founded by men and women fleeing religious oppression, and seeking a land where every one of us could seek out and worship God almighty with all of our hearts, minds and souls, free of the government getting in the way.
“I suppose King George could have given the same message, ‘Get over it, while I strip your freedom,’ but thankfully the American people answered that demand with musket shot.”
Cruz also noted the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton, was bipartisan in nature. But, when states pass laws virtually identical to that original legislation, today’s Democrats recoil from it.
“The modern Democratic Party is so radical, so extreme that it’s decided that there is no room for religious liberty,” he said. “That’s radical. That is un-American.”
