Radical left-wing activists associated with religious organizations have sued the Trump administration on the grounds that his Religious Liberty Commission lacks religious and ideological diversity. They are represented by two far-left entities, Democracy Forward and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The Religious Liberty Commission is charged with documenting incidents of religious bigotry and making recommendations to expand religious liberty. The Catholic League has turned over a trove of documents to the Department of Justice and to Commission members detailing prejudice and discrimination against Catholics.
The lawsuit is led by Rev. Paul Raushenbush, president of the Interfaith Alliance; he is a homosexual Baptist minister who claims to be married to a man, a status that is obviously in violation of Christian teachings.
Joining him are Muslims for Progressive Values, a group that is dedicated to the LGBTQ agenda, even though it is in clear violation of Islamic teachings. The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund is also party to the suit; it promotes transgender rights as part of the “liberation movement,” in flagrant violation of Sikh tenets on sexuality. Hindus for Human Rights is the fourth group; it is headed by a Columbia University professor who ignited a protest by Hindus who charged she is “anti-Hindu.”
In other words, these carping critics are not representative of the people they claim to represent. So much for respecting religious and ideological diversity.
Raushenbush, in particular, has no moral standing to lecture the Commission on excluding contrary viewpoints. The Interfaith Alliance excludes traditional Catholics, evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Orthodox Jews, and most Muslims and Mormons, all of whom are not supportive of the radical pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ worldview.
In short, there is nothing “Interfaith” about the Interfaith Alliance. It is worth noting that two years after it was founded in 1994, the Catholic League was named to its “Enemies List,” a badge of honor I continue to wear on my sleeve.
The biggest beef these activists have is the contention that members of the Commission “have promoted the primacy of a Judeo-Christian world view in the public sphere,” while also contending that “America was founded as a ‘Judeo-Christian’ nation and must be guided by Biblical principles.”
Guilty as charged. It is not an opinion to say that America was founded on Judeo-Christian values—it is an historical fact. Moreover, Christians took many of their moral teachings from the Hebrews, and together the heritage they bequeathed became the foundation of our freedoms. To put it differently, we would not be a free society today had we been founded on the tenets of any Eastern world religion—none has a history of respecting basic human rights. This may sound harsh. So be it. It is the harsh truth.
Christians are sixty-two percent of American society; Jews are two percent; Muslims and Hindus are one percent; Sikhs are less than one percent. Jews, though small in number, occupy a central place in American history given the Judeo-Christian ethos that informs the dominant culture. The same is not true of the other religions, and therefore their quest for equal recognition is unwarranted.
The two organizations that are representing these groups are tied to the politics of the Left. Democracy Forward is part of the Clinton machine. The chairman of the board is Marc Elias, Hillary Clinton’s former general counsel when she ran for president in 2016. It is funded by the Center for American Progress, an organization that is chaired by John Podesta; he was active in senior posts serving both Clintons. He has a history of anti-Catholicism.
Americans United was founded after World War II as Protestants and Other Americans for Separation of Church and State, one of the most anti-Catholic organizations in American history.
These are the people trying to kill the Religious Freedom Commission. Like a nasty fly, they just don’t go away. But unfortunately for them, neither do we.
