Despite their wording, the questions of transgender access to restrooms and businesses serving same-sex weddings reveal a sharp division of the American public, and should not be decided in one heavy-handed way by the government, Tedesco said.
"You see that these issues are issues that reasonable people take different positions on," he said. "Reasonable people can come to reasonable disputes about marriage, whether marriage should be between a man and a woman, or be expanded."
Thus, government shouldn't force Americans to violate their religious beliefs, he continued. "We don't live in a society where the government takes a position on these kinds of crucial issues to society and then forces everybody to agree with the government. That is as un-American, as un-Constitutional, as contrary to the First Amendment as anything I can think of."
However, Tedesco admitted that public opinion is shifting against religious freedom, which is a "sad" and dangerous shift.
"There's no question that even as a general, societal matter, that I think religious freedom is less popular, is less appreciated today than it has been in the past, and that's a very sad circumstance because America was founded for religious freedom to escape religious persecution," he said, "and now, what, are we going to turn back the clock on that?"
Catholics responded similarly to the rest of the country on the questions, although weekly Mass-going Catholics answered differently than Catholics who attend Mass less frequently.
Catholics overall voted with the rest of the country on the contraception mandate question. Sixty-five percent said employers should be required to include contraception coverage for employees regardless of their own religious beliefs, where just 32 percent said they should be "able to refuse" coverage.
"While Catholics who attend Mass weekly are split in their views on this question, most Catholics (72%) who attend Mass less often think contraception coverage should be required," Pew stated. Fifty percent of weekly Mass-attending Catholics said employers should have to provide the contraception.
On the other questions, Catholics were split much more evenly, however.
Fifty-one percent of weekly Mass-attending Catholics said businesses should be allowed to decline to cater to a same-sex wedding, while 59 percent of other Catholics said they should be required to do so.
Sixty percent of weekly Mass-attending Catholics said that transgender persons should use the bathroom of their birth gender, while 51 percent of other Catholics said they should be allowed to use the public restroom of the gender they currently identify with.
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Despite what the rest of the country – and even many of their fellow believers – think, "people need to not become discouraged by their perception that Christians and Christian beliefs are apparently moving into a minority," Tedesco insisted.
"The First Amendment exists more than anything to protect dissidents, minority expression, from suppression by the majority," he stated. "And we have the greatest claim to the protections and promise of the First Amendment if it truly is the case that we're in the minority."
"And the thing we have to do is assert our rights and protect our rights and continue to carve out a free space where we can live, in a way that's consistent with what God calls us to do," he stated.
Matt Hadro was the political editor at Catholic News Agency through October 2021. He previously worked as CNA senior D.C. correspondent and as a press secretary for U.S. Congressman Chris Smith.