Mary Pappenfuss reports for HuffPost:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that the U.S. Justice Department is launching a “religious liberty task force” — and Twitter erupted.
The new unit will aid the department in fully implementing the religious liberty legal “guidance” issued last year under President Donald Trump’s direction, Sessions said in a speech at the Justice Department’s Religious Liberty Summit in Washington.
The attorney general charged that the freedom to practice religion in America has come “under attack” in the nation’s current “cultural climate.”
A “dangerous movement, undetected by many, but real, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom …. It must be confronted … and defeated,” he added.
“We’ve seen nuns ordered to buy contraceptives. We’ve seen United States senators ask judicial and executive branch nominees about dogma …. We’ve all seen the ordeal faced so bravely by Jack Phillips,” Sessions added, referring to the Colorado baker who won a religious liberty challenge to LGBTQ anti-discrimination law in the U.S. Supreme Court after refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
Sessions called freedom of religion “indeed our first freedom being the first listed right in the First Amendment” and said that the Trump administration is “actively seeking to accommodate people of faith.”
Sessions touted his department’s prosecution of attacks on religion, among them court actions shielding about 90 plaintiffs from Obama-era requirements that employer health insurance cover contraception, an amicus brief “we were proud to file” on behalf of Phillips, and indictments in an arson attack and threats directed at two mosques.
Twitter exploded, with critics charging that the Religious Liberty Task Force was a front to protect religious zealots attacking LGBTQ rights and an unconstitutional push to marry church and state on the altar of Christianity.
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Read the entire Article, including the “Twitter Storm” at the link. Some pretty funny but “right on” reactions!
Yet another taxpayer-financed scam by our corrupt and bigoted Attorney General. Obviously this is a thinly disguised effort to use Government funding and power to promote and establish far right-wing Christian views and biases.
Don’t expect any help for Muslims targeted for hate crimes, irrationally excluded under the “Travel Ban,” or targeted by anti-Muslim pronouncements of Administration officials and GOP right-wing politicos. Don’t expect any assistance or protection for those religious groups actually engaged in “God’s work on earth” and carrying out Christ’s true humanitarian, forgiving teachings by providing help to migrants and resisting inhumane and illegal Administration policies. Don’t expect any help for Bhuddists, atheists, deists, or any other non-right-wing Christian groups trying to vindicate their First Amendment rights. Don’t expect any help for members of the LGBTQ community whose rights are being trampled upon by so-called Christians who promote intolerance, discrimination, humiliation, de-humanization, and hate in the name of false “religious expression.”
Interestingly, Sessions himself has been charged within the Methodist Church (of which my wife and I are members) with violation of teachings of Christ and the Church’s own rules and values.
He’s a total scofflaw and a fraud, seeking to impose his corrupt, inhumane, intolerant views on the rest of us by abusing his Government position and squandering taxpayer funds on an anti-Constitutional attempt to establish particular “so-called Christian views” as the law of the land.
PWS
08-01-18