The outrage on the right over the Obama administration’s efforts to provide women with insurance coverage for contraception has been so surreal, I haven’t known how to approach it. I shouldn’t have ignored the story for so long, though, because it’s a big deal. So here goes.

Yesterday, the House oversight committee held a bizarre hearing, entitled “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?” At that hearing, a panel full of men, and not a single woman, tried to explain how it was their religious right to prevent women from gaining access to contraception.

Conservatives, let me explain how this works. Under the First Amendment, you have every right to exercise your beliefs. You do not have the right to impose religious law on others. Yet that’s exactly what you’re demanding.

It’s worth taking a step back and reiterating just what the Obama administration’s proposal is here. The initial proposal would have required organizations affiliated with a religious sponsor — such as charities and hospitals — to cover contraception in their health plans. The religious right freaked out. I don’t agree with the right on this, but I can at least understand their objections.

So Obama offered a compromise. Under the compromise proposal, the religious organization would have absolutely nothing to do with contraception. Instead, the insurers themselves would be required to subsidize access to employees whose employers had a moral objection.

For some reason, the religious right is still freaking out, claiming that Obama has “trampled on freedom of religion.” They must have a very different idea of how freedom of religion works that I do.

I don’t agree that requiring a religious organization to cover basic healthcare for their employees is “trampling freedom of religion.” But that’s not even the proposal. Obama’s compromise would leave the organization out of it, and would simple ensure that the employee can get access to contraception if she wants. No religious organization has the right to demand that they have a say over their employees’ bodies.

Blocking your employees’ access to contraception is not “freedom of religion.” It’s an attempt to impose religious law, and it’s absolutely not acceptable.

The Christian Right has spent the last year freaking out over made-up claims that American Muslims want to subject us all to Sharia law. But how is that any different from their demands on contraception? They want to be able to decree that their employees be prevented from obtaining contraception — even if they wouldn’t have to pay a dime for it.

That’s not freedom of religion, it’s Sharia. And you don’t get to argue that religious law for Muslims will destroy our country, but that religious law for Christians is your Constitutional right.