The two most powerful political figures in the country, probable (mindful that the election has still not been officially declared) President-elect Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, are Catholics who oppose religious liberty, appear quite determined to impose the comprehensive society-changing LGBT agenda on the country, and are pro-abortion.
A test of faith
Being Catholic was a central part of Biden’s campaign, and he regularly brought up his personal Catholic faith in appearances and speeches. A photo on his campaign website featured him presiding from the altar. “Joe Biden’s Agenda for the Catholic Community” was a separate section of his campaign website. There he cited Pope Francis and his Laudato Si about the “climate change crisis.” Indeed, he regularly posted pictures of himself with Pope Francis. A post-election posting by Biden quotes the Catholic hymn “On Eagle’s Wings”.
The last decade has seen an unprecedented stream of cases in the Supreme Court in which individuals and churches have defended their religious liberties against, among others, the Obama administration, the states of California and Colorado and the city of Philadelphia. Responding to the victory of the Little Sisters of the Poor in the Supreme Court in July of this year, Biden said he will restore the Obama-era contraception mandate that was the basis of that religious-liberty case.
Both Pelosi, as well as Senator and now probable vice-president-elect Kamala Harris, signed on to an amicus brief filed by Democratic members of Congress against the Little Sisters. In the Fulton Supreme Court case just argued the day after the elections, Catholic Social Services was canceled by the city of Philadelphia as an agency for placing foster children in homes because they would not place children with gay couples. Pelosi shortly afterward joined a Democrat amicus brief against the Services.
In the 2018 Senate confirmation hearing for Catholic Brian Buescher to be a federal judge, Senator Harris questioned Buescher concerning his membership in the Knights of Columbus. She asked, “were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization.” Yet, Article VI of the Constitution prescribes that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
The Equality Act
The proposed Equality Act would essentially subject all federal and state laws and regulations and all constitutional interpretations, federal and state, to a re-analysis based on LGBT. Biden has said that passage of the Equality Act will be “a top legislative priority” and that he will “direct his cabinet to ensure immediate and full enforcement of the Equality Act across all federal departments and agencies.” The 2020 Democrat Platform describes the Equality Act as “at last outlaw[ing] discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in housing, public accommodations, access to credit, education, jury service, and federal programs”—among other areas. The Platform goes on to state that the Act would go on to prohibit discrimination concerning “perception or belief, even if inaccurate.” Under the leadership of Pelosi, the House Democratic majority passed the Act 18 months ago. She said that the Act would apply “not just in the workplace, but in every place.”
Biden has said that “using religion or culture to license discrimination and demonizing LGBT individuals” is “prejudice” and “inhumanity.” In the Masterpiece Cake Supreme Court case in which the state of Colorado attempted to coerce an objecting Christian baker into baking a cake for a gay wedding, a member of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission told the baker that “freedom of religion and religion have been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history.” Pelosi and Harris joined the Democrat brief against the baker. Biden has twice officiated at the weddings of gay aides.
In the landmark Hosanna Tabor case (2012), the Supreme Court upheld the right of a Lutheran church and school to designate and certify its own ministers without government interference. The Obama administration argued that the religion clauses of the First Amendment did not actually apply, which, Justice Roberts, writing for the unanimous Court, described as “the remarkable view that the Religion Clause have nothing to say about a religious organization’s freedom to select its own ministers.” Presumably, Biden will not differ from this stance of the Administration of which he was vice-president.
Position on abortion
On abortion, both Biden and Pelosi have asserted that they will seek the repeal of the Hyde Amendment prohibiting federal funding of abortions in Medicaid. Biden has repeatedly emphasized that he wants to turn the abortion-for-nine-months Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton into a federal statute, thereby making it “the law of the land,” and he has said that his “Justice Department will do everything in its power to stop the rash of state laws that so blatantly violate” Roe. If federal agents enforced such new federal laws, it is difficult to conceive how the on-the-spot counseling and persuading practices of the pro-life movement could survive. And will there be new federal criminal laws associated with the codification of Roe/Bolton?
In the Life Advocates case in which the Court ruled in 2018 that the state of California could not require crisis-pregnancy centers to advertise abortion, Pelosi and Harris signed on to the Democrat brief against the centers. Last year, Pelosi spoke at the dinner of the National Abortion Rights Action League’s celebration of its 50th anniversary. It was her “privilege,” and she was “thrilled” to attend, Pelosi said. In addition, Pelosi just called Amy Coney Barrett an “illegitimate Supreme Court justice.”
In response to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ questioning whether the Biden presidency would be progressive enough, Biden’s campaign communications director recently asserted that Biden plans to be “progressive and aggressive.”
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