Harry Knox is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC). Reverend Knox is a national leader in the progressive faith community and a well-known advocate for reproductive and sexual health and justice. As a compelling moral voice for human rights, Reverend Knox was appointed in February 2009 by President Obama to the President’s Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Reverend Knox was the founding director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Religion and Faith Program, where he supervised the creation of a national speakers’ bureau that reached more than 10 million Americans monthly and was instrumental in creating a national network of 22 progressive state clergy coalitions. Since 2011, he has been Interim Executive Director of Integrity USA, the voice of LGBT Episcopalians and their allies. He will begin his position at RCRC July 16, 2012. Reverend Knox’s management and advocacy experience includes positions with the American Cancer Society; Equality Florida; Georgia Equality; and Freedom to Marry. He has pastored churches in Georgia and Texas. He was the recipient of the 2000 Cordle Award for Promotion of God’s Diversity and Lancaster Theological Seminary’s 2005 Robert V. Moss Medal for Excellence in Ministry.
St. Francis was a non-violent reformer who gave up inherited riches to live, work with, and advocate for the poor. With the new Pope, I am hoping that there is something in a name.
A woman with a pregnancy as the result of rape is facing one of the most difficult and confusing situations imaginable. Indeed, the larger problem remains, which is that Rep. Akin and his conservative allies in Congress and state legislatures stand by their desire to limit the health care options a pregnant woman has available to her.
The Obama Administration is right to require insurance companies to cover contraception for public employees. The bishops are wrong to seek to use the government to limit the decision-making power of American women. And they are surely wrong to call what they are trying to do freedom.
