Possibly throughout the whole debate. Here is just part of Gary Wills' argument regarding the contraception debate. I think he makes this point better than I did:
This gets at the basic point I kept trying to make, which is that I just don't think the stance on contraception qualifies as a religious belief and thus isn't protected by the 1st Amendment. But even if I'm wrong and it does qualify, to not require religious institutions to provide it is drawing an arbitrary line as to what religious beliefs we allow them to practice.
Contraception is not even a religious matter. Nowhere in Scripture or the Creed is it forbidden. Catholic authorities themselves say it is a matter of “natural law,” over which natural reason is the arbiter—and natural reason, even for Catholics, has long rejected the idea that contraception is evil. More of that later; what matters here is that contraception is legal, ordinary, and accepted even by most Catholics. To say that others must accept what Catholics themselves do not is bad enough. To say that President Obama is “trying to destroy the Catholic Church” if he does not accept it is much, much worse. ...
The opposition to contraception has, as I said, no scriptural basis. Pope Pius XI once said that it did, citing in his encyclical Casti Connubii (1930) the condemnation of Onan for “spilling his seed” rather than impregnating a woman (Genesis 38.9). But later popes had to back off from this claim, since everyone agrees now that Onan’s sin was not carrying out his duty to give his brother an heir (Deuteronomy 25.5-6). Then the “natural law” was fallen back on, saying that the natural purpose of sex is procreation, and any use of it for other purposes is “unnatural.” But a primary natural purpose does not of necessity exclude ancillary advantages. The purpose of eating is to sustain life, but that does not make all eating that is not necessary to subsistence “unnatural.” One can eat, beyond the bare minimum to exist, to express fellowship, as one can have sex, beyond the begetting of a child with each act, to express love.
This gets at the basic point I kept trying to make, which is that I just don't think the stance on contraception qualifies as a religious belief and thus isn't protected by the 1st Amendment. But even if I'm wrong and it does qualify, to not require religious institutions to provide it is drawing an arbitrary line as to what religious beliefs we allow them to practice.
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