Church and State

President Donald Trump has invited conservative leaders to the White House on Thursday for what they expect will be the ceremonial signing of a long-awaited—and highly controversial—executive order on religious liberty, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.

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Thursday is the National Day of Prayer, and the White House was already planning to celebrate the occasion with faith leaders.

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The signing would represent a major triumph for Vice President Mike Pence—whose push for religious-freedom legislation backfired mightily when he served as governor of Indiana—and his allies in the conservative movement.

  Politico

Formally established in 1952, this seems to be yet another Red Scare attempt to distance us from "those godless communists". Screw the separation of church and state that the founders championed.

In 1952, President Harry S. Truman signed into law an annual National Day of Prayer. However, in 1988, the National Day of Prayer’s role in our history was fortified when President Ronald Reagan signed Public Law 105-225 stating: The President shall issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.

  Press-Herald

Because they may NOT every other effing day of the year?

The original draft order, which would have established broad exemptions for people and groups to claim religious objections under virtually any circumstance, was leaked to The Nation on Feb. 1—the handiwork, many conservatives believed, of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who have sought to project themselves as friendly to the LGBT community. Liberals blasted the draft order as government-licensed discrimination, and the White House distanced itself from the leaked document in a public statement.

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The new draft is being tightly held, but one influential conservative who saw the text said it hasn’t been dialed back much—if at all—since the February leak. “The language is very, very strong,” the source said.

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Signing it this week could also lessen the sting Trump’s religious backers are feeling over the newly-approved omnibus spending bill, which keeps federal funding in place for Planned Parenthood.

The Nation published an article revealing the original draft February 1...

The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act.

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 Language in the draft document specifically protects the tax-exempt status of any organization that “believes, speaks, or acts (or declines to act) in accordance with the belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, sexual relations are properly reserved for such a marriage, male and female and their equivalents refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy, physiology, or genetics at or before birth, and that human life begins at conception and merits protection at all stages of life.”

 The breadth of the draft order, which legal experts described as “sweeping” and “staggering,” may exceed the authority of the executive branch if enacted. It also, by extending some of its protections to one particular set of religious beliefs, would risk violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

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 It sets forth an exceptionally expansive definition of “religious exercise” that extends to “any act or refusal to act that is motivated by a sincerely held religious belief, whether or not the act is required or compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.”

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 Lupu added that the language of the draft “might invite federal employees,” for example, at the Social Security Administration or Veterans Administration, “to refuse on religious grounds to process applications or respond to questions from those whose benefits depend on same sex marriages.” If other employees do not “fill the gap,” he said, it could “lead to a situation where marriage equality was being de facto undermined by federal employees, especially in religiously conservative communities,” contrary to Supreme Court rulings.

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The exemptions, [Marty Lederman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center] said, could themselves violate federal law or license individuals and private parties to violate federal law. “Moreover,” he added, “the exemptions would raise serious First Amendment questions, as well, because they would go far beyond what the Supreme Court has identified as the limits of permissive religious accommodations.”

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 Section 4 of the order, “Specific Agency Responsibilities,” requires HHS to issue a rule exempting any person or organization with religious objections from complying with the ACA’s preventive-care mandate—42 U.S.C. 300gg-13(a)(4)—which includes contraceptive coverage. It requires HHS to ensure that anyone purchasing insurance on a health-care exchange have the option of purchasing a plan that neither covers abortions nor “subsidize[s] plans that do provide such coverage.”

  The Nation

So, if a group of people can opt out of subsidizing abortions, I demand the right to opt out of subsidizing bombs.

Expect the ACLU to be all over this. Praise the Lord for the ACLU!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.