Family Research Council Seeks Pro-Discrimination Trump Exec Order

TRUMPINGTON, D.C.*—In a live webcast today, Tony Perkins, former Congressman and current head of the reactionary Family Research Council, called for Pr*sident Trump to sign an executive order permitting businesses and social organizations to discriminate against their employees, members and customers who may be gay, trans, or who simply hold different religious views than the organization's owners/leaders. The proposed executive order seems simple enough: "Dear President Trump: "Under the Obama era's anti-religious policies, people and groups across America have either suffered religious freedom violations or are about to suffer them. We need protections that you can grant in an executive order. I urge you to take executive action to ensure their freedom to believe and live out those beliefs is protected." "In the last few years, we have seen an increase in government-imposed restrictions on the ability of Christians and other religious people to fully live out their faith in all aspects of their lives," Perkins began his webcast. "Many of these restrictions are falling on those who are most public with their lives: Business people, those running Christian organizations and those in places of high visibility within our own government, including our nation's military. The beliefs which are making them targets for government hostility and even prosecution in some cases are the same beliefs held by millions of Americans across this country... This government sponsored hostility will only expand until we stand together and demand the government respect the Constitution's guarantee of our fundamental first freedom of religion. That is the only way—the only way—any of us will ultimately remain free." Perkins went on to claim that the government's attempts to have all citizens treated equally and fairly in the public sector somehow infringes on religious adherents' ability to practice their religion—but as became abundantly clear during the webcast, such "freedom of religion" is simply a disguise to allow businesses and religious organizations to make their employees and members live by the same pseudo-religious tenets as those leaders. And as government agencies have stepped in to enforce the rights of those employees and members not to be bound by the prejudices of their bosses/leaders, organizations like Family Research Council and religious law firms like Alliance Defending Freedom and First Liberty Institute have sued to allow such discrimination to be allowed to take place. "It's not right that nuns trying to serve the poor are required to compromise their beliefs regarding human life in order to continue their work," Perkins intoned. "It's not right that a Christian organization working hard to assist victims of human trafficking should be forced out of doing that work because they don't want to adopt someone else's view on the issue of human sexuality... Our beliefs, quite frankly, are not something we can simply give up, they're not something we can negotiate away; they're fixed; they are ingrained in who we are as individuals and quite frankly as a nation." Of course, once Perkins started presenting "witnesses" and "victims" to back up his case, the charade became clear—beginning with Archbishop William E. Lori of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, who gave examples of "how religious freedom in this country, the exercise of that freedom has been inhibited in recent years," including regarding "health insurance plans, where we are in those ministries being forced in some way to insure for contraception and in some places even abortion, and where we are being driven out of adoption agency and the work of placing children with families through adoption because of our support for traditional marriage, and many other examples as well." His "prime example" was the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor, an organization of nuns who refused to provide their (non-nun) employees with access to contraception under the Affordable Care Act mandates, and when the government essentially said, "No problem; just sign this affidavit saying you have religious objections to doing this," the nuns refused to sign, saying that doing so would somehow be giving their permission for the birth control in violation of the nuns' religious beliefs. (The Supreme Court vacated circuit court rulings in favor of the government and required the circuits to reconsider their prior rulings in light on supplemental briefing which the high court had requested.) "No one's saying that we don't have the right to worship in our church," Perkins summarized, "but as you pointed out, it's when we take that faith that we're taught on Sundays and the sermons that we hear or the mass that we participate in and we go out and we live according to that; that's where the conflict has begun, when we're actually living our faith out in the marketplace." In other words, as far as Perkins is concened, religious people never actually leave their church; they take it with them outside and anyone who comes in contact with them is automatically sucked into and required to follow that religious doctrine. Perkins' next guests were Rev. Wesley Modder and his attorney Mike Berry. Those who've been following the news may remember that Modder used to be a chaplain at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command—until he was reassigned for, among other things, telling a cadet that she was “shaming herself in the eyes of God” for having premarital sex; telling another that “the penis was meant for the vagina and not for the anus,” while making what ThinkProgress's Zack Ford described as "an inappropriate hand gesture"; and telling others that homosexuality was wrong and insinuating that he had the ability to “save” gay people. Of course, that's not the way Modder sees it. "I was shocked; I felt betrayed by my country and by the Navy," Modder told Perkins. "I think the issue was, the government was not invited into my conscience, and as an ordained minister, I'm going to give that biblical worldview." In other words, didn't matter what religious beliefs the people at the training command center had; Modder was going to browbeat and attempt to intimidate them for whatever beliefs didn't correspond with his own—and he wants Trump to support and approve that sort of conduct by executive order. Next up was Dr. Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, and his attorney, Greg Baylor. Piper was called out in January of 2016 by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) for attempting to get a waiver from the government under the Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for his ultraconservative Christian school so he would not have to admit any applicant who was gay or transgender. "We refuse to comply with the misogyny endemic to the transgender agenda," Piper told the HRC. "We recognize the ontological and biological dignity of the female. We believe in science and we believe in facts and there is little more empirically obvious than one’s sex. Being a female is an objective reality and we refuse to insult women by ignoring such self-evident truth... we believe that sexual identity is a scientific fact not a human fabrication and we refuse to degrade men and women by suggesting otherwise." Guess what? Piper hasn't changed his views in the slightest—and he's added a new cause: Refusing to provide birth control to any of his female employees, despite the ACA mandate. "We're pro-life," he claimed. "By definition, you don't get hired at Oklahoma Wesleyan University unless you are pro-life, so whether you're on the staff, the faculty, the president or a professor, you must subscribe to the idea that God defines life and you don't. As a result of that, the federal government is crossing swords with us and telling us that we have to provide abortifacient drugs in our healthcare... to a bunch of pro-life women that work for us that don't want the drug, won't use the drug, and are smart enough, quite frankly, to know what kind of healthcare they want in their healthcare package." Guess what, Piper? Even women who don't believe in abortion use birth control, in part to make sure they're never put in a position where they are pregnant and don't want to be—and the drugs the ACA mandates are not "abortifacient"—they don't medically abort a fetus; they prevent the fertilized egg from being implanted in the uterus so a fetus (or what the religious would call a "person") never develops. "We are pro-women as well as pro-religious freedom," Piper claimed. "We believe that women should be given the dignity to choose what they want and don't want in their healthcare." Except apparently some of those women whose dignity he claims to support do want birth control in their health plan; otherwise, how would the government have found out that Wesleyan doesn't offer it short of one of them complaining about that deficit? Perkins' final "civilian" guest was Donald Vander Boon, co-owner of the West Michigan Beef Company—and despite his demure appearance, a dedicated anti-gay bigot. But let's let him tell it: "A couple of years ago, around the time of the same-sex marriage decision, I had seen quite a few articles in the newspaper and we have a break room with a couple of tables where people sit and eat and it got to be the practice that people could bring in magazines, newspapers to share with others," he said. "So around the time of this decision, I noticed a lot of the newspaper articles were very supportive of same-sex marriage and a lot of articles were kind of encouraging it, so when I saw an article on the internet that was giving more of a biblical idea of what marriage is and what family is and what I believe is God's plan for the family, I printed it out and put it on my break room table and didn't think too much of it, but within a few hours, I was told there were people there to see me in my office." To make a long story somewhat shorter, those "people" were the USDA inspectors who inspect meat at the plant and their boss, and the inspectors objected to being proselytized against same-sex marriage by Vander Boon in the company break room—and stated that they'd refuse to work in the plant as long as that literature was in the break room, thereby effectively shutting down Vander Boon's business. Of course, faced with that ultimatum, a more rational person might have decided, "Gee, if my religious views on marriage offend people in my workplace, maybe I'll just keep those views to myself and out of the workplace." And though no one on the webcast mentioned it, Vander Boon apparently did remove the offending article—and promptly filed a complaint with the USDA, which the agency is still considering. "This is incredible," Perkins assessed. "His own business, his own building, his own break table and if he puts information that says—if you've got the government coming in, thumbing through his mail to see what he's reading and sharing with his employees and threatening to shut down his business... This sounds like something out of Orwell." Somehow, we don't recall Big Brother being too keen on protecting anybody's rights, much less those of gay people—or, for that matter, religious ones. The final two guests were U.S. Reps. Jody Hice (R-GA), a former Baptist pastor, and Mike Johnson (R-LA), formerly an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom. "We've been in this battle for well over ten years, probably closer to 15 at this point," Hice intoned, "and we've watching the continual demise of religious liberties in our country, and there's the appetite now in the movement to take a stand and turn this around, and I'm grateful that we have a president who's willing to take a stand with us." Hice expressed his support not only for FRC's proposed "religious freedom" executive order, but also for repealing the "Johnson Amendment"—that portion of the Internal Revenue code that prohibits religious organizations and other tax-exempt entities from endorsing political candidates. "In every aspect of our society right now, when people are taking a stand for their faith, are being outspoken about their faith, particularly in the areas of life or marriage, we're watching those freedoms be taken away," Hice claimed. "And so we are talking now of the need, the necessity to be able to broaden our understanding of religious liberties, that it's not isolated just to the four walls of a church building, but it's something the First Amendment protects [for] everyone, in every walk of life." Except, of course, when those so-called "liberties" infringe on the liberties of others who don't share the same viewpoint—a point that hopefully other people on the House's Oversight & Government Reform Committee will understand when Hice brings up the topic, as he said he would. Johnson echoed much of what Hice said, claiming, "We—First Liberty Institute and others and FRC—over the years have begun to catalog and count the increasing attacks on religious freedom that we've seen. You know, sometimes the media tries to whitewash that, and it doesn't always make the evening news, but it's happening every day at a local level, a state level, impacting individuals and small business owners and professionals in every single field, and if we don't get on top of it now, we're going to have a problem that we simply can't overcome. Our fundamental freedoms are being taken away from us, and that's why these steps are necessary now." Simply put: Bullshit. These people want the ability to discriminate against people whose beliefs and lifestyles they don't agree with, and they want an executive order allowing them to do it. And of course, Trump being Trump, they're likely to get it. The full webcast can be seen here. Pictured: FRC President Tony Perkins and his guests. *Because eventually, Trump names everything after himself.