<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"FacebookPinterest\n\nHere at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's annual conference and strategy briefing, where women's shoulders are mostly covered and men's shirts are always tucked, the weekend's festivities begin\u2014before the prayer, before the speeches from Senators Marco Rubio and Rob Portman\u2014with paeans to Mark Twain, a writer who saved some of his wittiest barbs for the religious.\n\n\"Mark Twain said 'There is something good and motherly about Washington, the grand old benevolent national asylum for the helpless,\" said Gary Marx, the Faith and Freedom Coalition's ecutive director, to the most committed \"citizen lobbyists\"\u2014those who came early to lobby their lawmakers on Capitol Hill, those who are now chewing their blackened chicken salads and perfect slices of cheesecake decorated with dollops of whipped cream and strawberries on top.\n\nMarx cedes the podium to Ken Blackwell, the Ohio chair of the coalition, to give the prayer. But first, Blackwell, in an amiable, booming baritone, says, \"That Mark Twain was a witty fellow. After his tenth visit to Cincinnati, my hometown, he was on a slow train ride out of the city with a young reporter from the Louisville area and the reporter asked Twain what his impression was. Twain said 'Son, if our world was ending tomorrow I would get to Cincinnati as fast as I could because things happen here ten years after they happen in the rest of the world.'\" He follows with a joke: \"My dad was so conservative that he prohibited premarital sex because he thought it might lead to slow dancing.\" There are peels of laughter coming from the crowd.\n\nJust a few months ago commentators were calling the Obama administration's \"war on religion,\" to use the parlance of Rick Perry, a potentially game-changing event in the 2012 election, that religious groups would rise up against the administration for mandating that birth control be covered by health insurance plans. The Faith and Freedom Coalition's website has a petition asking supporters to stop Obama's war on religion. So I came looking to hear some fire and brimstone rhetoric, but Portman disappointed me. In a long, discursive speech on career and his faith, he maneuvered quickly, almost muttering, through his comments on the birth control controversy. \"No freedom we've fought for is more important than the freedom of our religion, but this administration has treated it as a second class right,\" he said, his perfect, silver comb-over glaring in the spotlight. \"The Obama administration has refused to back down on the insurance mandate that needlessly pits health care against the rights of the religious ... This administration simply doesn't get it,\" Portman said.\n\nNot exactly fighting words. After the speech, reporters crowded around Portman to ask about his 2012 prospects. \"I hate to be boring, but I'm not going to talk about that now,\" he said. Of Romney's chances of winning Ohio, he told the scrum \"I think it will be a close race. It always is. We're a swing state. We're not blue, we're not red, we're kind of purple. It will depend on a lot of issues.\" Before he could be asked his thoughts on the war on religion, he was pulled away by a press aide with a hard slap on the shoulder.\n\nRubio didn't mention the mandate at all. He gave a long talk about religious freedom (\"you cannot have your freedom without your faith, because the source of your freedom is your faith\") and the positive example America sets around the world (\"where anyone from anywhere can accomplish everything.\") He paused briefly to sign copies of his forthcoming book, but, spotting the swarming media crews, stayed only momentarily before disappearing behind the screen set up to promote him.\n\nThat's not to say the Faith and Freedom Coalitioners deny the tension with the Obama administration. \"This administration has demonstrated an insensitivity, if not outright hostility to religious belief and the expression of religious belief in society,\" Ralph Reed, the Chairman and founder of the group told me.\n\nIn the end, the only person I heard use the term \"war on religion\" was, well...me. But it was just the opening day lunch. A whole cast of less rhetorically disciplined characters\u2014Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, and Michele Bachmann\u2014are still yet to come.\n\nRead more on Death Race 2012:\n\n[Today's Political Firestorm: Two Speeches and an Honorific\n\n](http://www.gq.com/news-politics/blogs/death-race#ixzz1xoSdGKnS)\n\n[Children, Do Not Give the President Rabbit Ears\n\n](http://www.gq.com/news-politics/blogs/death-race#ixzz1xoSj2xdH)\n\nHunger Reads: \"CEO\" of Obama 2012 Talks Strategy and George Allen's Latest Sports Metaphor\n\nHouse of Bush, House of Baratheon\n\nFollow Marin Cogan on Twitter for more updates from the campaign trail."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/war-on-religion-what-war-on-religion>