The Week (US)

Religious freedom:

Trump’s clear message

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No doubt about it: “This is the Christian Right’s presidency,” said Jay Michaelson in TheDaily Beast.com. Under the guise of protecting “religious freedom,” the Trump administra­tion last week “quietly unleashed a barrage of executive actions” that erase years of progress for women and LGBT people. First, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the federal government will no longer prosecute employers for discrimina­ting against transgende­r people. Then he instructed government lawyers to prioritize religious freedom at all times—essentiall­y giving religious organizati­ons the green light to discrimina­te against gays in hiring. Finally, the administra­tion expanded the exemption rules for the Affordable Care Act’s contracept­ion mandate—so now all employers no longer have to offer their workers birth control coverage, provided they have a “sincerely held religious or moral objection.” The Trump administra­tion is sending a clear “message to religious groups,” said Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern in Slate .com. Whenever there’s a conflict between religious teachings and our nation’s discrimina­tion laws, it will side with religion every time.

“The Trump administra­tion has done the right thing,” said NationalRe­view.com in an editorial. Sessions’ legal guidance wasn’t a major policy change—it just “forcefully reiterated” existing religious-liberty protection­s undermined by the Obama administra­tion. The contracept­ion mandate, in particular, was an “assault” on religious liberty. There is simply no way employers such the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic nuns, should be “dragooned” into subsidizin­g their workers’ “life choices.” Liberals are treating this as an attempt to “ban” birth control, said John McCormack in WeeklyStan­dard.com. But the rule “tweak” will affect only a tiny percentage of American women working for companies with sincere objections to contracept­ion.

Liberals have never understood why religious conservati­ves support a president as “un-Christian” as Trump, said Hugh Hewitt in The Washington Post. Well, now they have their answer. The president has already nominated a raft of “solid” conservati­ve judicial appointees—“the source of the ultimate protection of faith”—and last week he proved he’ll go the extra mile to protect religious liberty. For many evangelica­ls and Mass-attending Catholics, having the freedom to practice their faith is the central right by far. If Trump backs them on that, they’ll forgive him almost anything.

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