President Barack Obama's "retreat" last week on his administration's radical mandate that religious employers violate their beliefs or pay exorbitant fines is no retreat at all. It is but a fig leaf that will still force religious organizations to subsidize practices that violate their moral convictions.

On Jan. 20, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a ruling that under the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, religious-affiliated schools, hospitals and social service organizations must provide free abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and other contraceptive services that violate church teaching in their health insurance policies, or pay millions of dollars in fines.

In a land settled by pilgrims fleeing religious persecution and whose founders established religious liberty as the first tenet of the Bill of Rights, this flagrant violation of religious freedom awakened a sleeping giant.

More than 170 bishops throughout the country attacked the mandate in letters read to parishioners.

"Unless this rule is overturned," Patrick J. McGrath, Bishop of San Jose, and other bishops wrote, "we Catholics will be compelled either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so), which is also unconscionable."

"This is an alarming matter," Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto said, that "strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith."

The National Association of Evangelicals, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and many other faith organizations joined in vigorous opposition.

The firestorm forced Obama to back down.

But did he? On Feb. 10, the president announced an "accommodation." Now, he said, "instead of religious-affiliated organizations paying for the contraceptive services directly, the insurance companies they choose to cover their employees must pay instead."

But insurance companies won't just collect donations to provide free contraception and services. Costs will eventually be added to premiums, and the premiums will be paid by the religious employers.

So while not providing these services "directly," religious-affiliated employers will forced to subsidize them indirectly.

The bishops aren't buying this distinction without a difference. Not only, they said, would they still be effectively financing contraception coverage, the change does not protect the many religious employers who self-insure or other private employers who object. The bishops are calling for full rescission of the mandate and for Congressional legislation to protect conscience rights under the health care law.

Some critics of faith groups say that employers should not be able to "force their own religious beliefs" on their employees. But no employer is forcing any belief on anyone. Women are free to choose to work elsewhere or to obtain contraceptive services anywhere they like. It is about government coercion of employers based on their religious views.

In fact, the very same people who preach that religions should not impose their beliefs on others appear to be the first to demand that faith organizations bow to the ground the instant the government hands down an edict, as though it came directly from Mount Sinai.

Apparently in the view of those who worship at the altar of secularism, religions cannot intrude on the "wall of separation" between church and state, but the state can intrude on a church's teaching with no problem.

The White House points to states like California that already require contraceptive coverage, but California requires this only for employers who also pay for outpatient prescription drug benefits. And state mandates can be avoided by self-insuring prescription drug coverage or through other means not available under the federal mandate.

Indeed, Obama has done the country a favor by unmasking the truth about the dangers of a federal takeover of the health care system.

Remember, "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it, period." Remember "choice and competition?" Instead, Obama is using force, coercion and fines – jeopardizing faith-based charities, hospitals and schools and the poor, disabled and children they serve, in order to force his agenda.

Those who say this issue is a tempest in a teapot because many Catholic women practice contraception are blinded to the reality of what's at stake. At its core, this issue is not about contraception.

It is about religious freedom. It is about the constitutional limits on federal power.

In the end, it is not even about Obama or the "reproductive rights" zealots at HHS. It's about whether we will continue to believe the lie that government can solve all our problems without growing into an octopus that, at any moment, could snatch away our freedoms.

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Margaret A. Bengs is a former spokeswoman for state agencies and a political speechwriter who lives in Carmichael. Reach her at peggybengs@hotmail.com.

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