Tag Archives: Religious Liberty
Religious Freedom Cases Stacking Up
Trump Admin Pressures Schools to Reinforce Transgenderism
Good News: President Trump Signs Executive Order to Promote Religious Liberty
Fulfilling a campaign promise to get rid of the “Johnson Amendment,” President Donald Trump, according to Liberty Counsel, “signed an executive order today that promotes religious liberty throughout the federal agencies in general and in certain specific areas”:
…The executive order declares that it is the policy of the Administration to protect and vigorously promote religious liberty, directs the IRS to exercise maximum enforcement of discretion to alleviate the burden of the Johnson Amendment, and provides regulatory relief for religious objectors to Obamacare’s burdensome preventive services mandate.
The Johnson Amendment, named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas
Religious Freedom and SOGI Laws
Before Christmas, I warned how Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity laws, or SOGI laws, as they’re called, create new protected classes of people based on inclination and behavior, not biological realities of race and sex.
I also warned that so-called compromises to carve out religious exemptions for churches and religious organizations would not only fail to protect people of conscience not in religious organizations, it would mark all of us seeking exemptions as bigots with a Scarlet B.
Now it seems that we’re at an impasse, but not really. I’m grateful how the Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson has demonstrated, in …
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder
Three and a half years ago in an article titled “Frightening The Horses,” writer and editor Rod Dreher opens giving a fellow writer kudos. “Ben Domenech calls it,” Dreher notes, and then excerpts him:
…I think they have really been arguing against the rise of something which has a much larger impact than just a small number of homosexuals getting married — they have instead been arguing against the modern concept of sexual identity. And this is a much tougher task, considering how ingrained this concept has become in our lives.
During the sexual revolution, we crossed
Freedom = Discrimination
“Progressives” and Religious Liberty
“Progressives” who view the cultural embrace of deviant sexuality as good seek to eradicate the last cultural obstacle to its universal embrace: biblical truth. Since that’s not possible, they seek instead to eradicate religious liberty by incrementally narrowing the cultural terrain in which the “free exercise of religion” is permitted to roam.
“Progressives” committed to the absolutely free exercise of sexual deviance view religious liberty as exercised by theologically orthodox Christians as a malignant tumor that harms the health of the republic. In order to destroy this insalubrious tumor without destroying the host, religious liberty must be excised slowly and …
NY Times Columnist Wants to Confine Religious Liberty to Church Closet
Openly homosexual New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Bruni has announced his generous support for the right of people of faith “to believe what they do and say what they wish—in their pews, homes and hearts.” (emphasis added).
Wow, thanks, Mr. Bruni.
The hubris of “progressives,” particularly “progressives” of a particular rainbow-hued stripe, seems to know no bounds. According to Bruni, conservative Christians must relinquish their constitutionally protected right to the free exercise of religion on his altar to the god of homoeroticism.
A peevish Bruni starts his screed by moaning that he feels “chafed” by claims that …
Time for a Governor to Stand up to Judicial Tyranny
Imposing Beliefs, One Institution at a Time
For an organization that frequently goads government into advancing an atheistic viewpoint on everyone within reach, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) talks a good game about how wrong it is for some people to “impose their beliefs on others.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June in favor of Hobby Lobby and another Christian-owned company that refused to comply with Obamacare’s abortifacient mandate has sent the leftwing legal group into ongoing apoplexy:
…“While religious freedom gives us all the right to make personal decisions about how to practice religion,” the ACLU states, “it doesn’t give institutions or individuals the
Left Moves to Outlaw Christianity
The mask is off. All pretense has been dropped, and the anti-Christian left’s boundless depth of hatred for individual liberty, our First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) is now on full display.
I wrote last week about the Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby opinion, a rather tepid acknowledgement of every American’s non-negotiable right to religious free exercise (yes, that includes Christian business owners). I observed, among other things, that “the secularist left’s utter meltdown over having but a small measure of control over others wrested away is highly instructive.”
The meltdown continues. This week brings two new …
How Scalia’s Prophecy Became a Moral Crisis
One year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the Defense of Marriage Act, this much is clear: Justice Antonin Scalia is a prophet.
Back in 2003, when the court handed down the decision in Lawrence v. Texas, striking down all criminal statutes against homosexual acts, Scalia declared that the stage was set for the legalization of same-sex unions. That was 2003.
“Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as a formal recognition in marriage is concerned,” wrote Scalia.
He was proved to be …
