FIAT OVER FAITH - HOW PROGRESSIVES OPPOSE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

 DEMOCRATS LOATHE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

IT DOES NOT FIT THEIR AGENDAs

The issue today is no longer whether progressive dogmas from abortion and marriage equality to gender identity will prevail. Most already have.

The question now is whether those who dissent from the new orthodoxy will be permitted to live their lives and run their institutions in accordance with their beliefs.

... As a part of Obamacare, the administration in which Mr Biden served as Vice President, issued a rule requiring Catholic care providers like the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their convictions by paying for contraception and abortifacients for their employees or face ruinous fines.

The Sisters have since won at the Supreme Court. Mr Biden's response? Restore the mandate with the fake exemptions the Little Sisters objected to in the first place.

A Biden Harris administration would mean a federal bureaucracy less interested in accommodating religious Americans and their institutions than in constricting them.

Democrats say so in their platform, in which the "reject" the "broad religious exemptions" that "allow businesses , medical providers, social service agencies, and others to discriminate." In other words religious liberty.

This is the sleeper threat. It is already playing itself out in everything from licensing requirements (can agencies that do not place children with gay couples offer foster care?)

and tax exemptions (Orthodox Jewish schools fear losing their status for adhering to biblical definitions of marriage)

to conscience protections (a nurse in Vermont was forced to participate in arranging an abortion against her will).

Mormons wonder if the Equality Act, strongly backed by Biden and Harris, would make Brigham Young University students ineligible for Federal Research dollars, Pell grants, and student loans.

Americans were given a preview of coming attractions when Democratic Officials treated bars and casinos better than churches.

All these things will come in the name of "reproductive health," "equity," "Inclusion," and "non-discrimination."

It's hard to find a single religious liberty case where the Democrats took the religious side.

"Little Sisters of the Poor"

Hosanna Tabor,

The Green Family,

The Cake Baker,

The town of Greece N Y,

the Pharmacist who doesn't want to fill birth control prescriptions,

the Satmar Hasidim who want to require modest dress at their stores,

the regulation of circumcision,

the Bladensburg Cross,

In every case," says Seth Lipskey , the Democrats oppose the religious side.

President Trump was mocked when he said Mr. Biden would hurt God and the hurt the Bible." But today's Democrat party is willing to use the full force of the federal bureaucracy to bring religious institutions to heel--no matter how much Joe Biden may love his rosary beads.

"Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have this upside down," says Bill Mumma CEO of the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty. "The constitution protects religion from government interference. But in their view, any government objective, no matter how controversial, takes priority over religious belief."

Selected from WILLIAM McGURN, in WALL STREET JOURNAL Aug 25 2020