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religious freedom
The Right Uses ‘Religious Freedom’ to Attack Trans People—What About Mine?
When politicians attempt to ban gender-affirming care, bar trans kids from playing sports, and legally erase trans people, they are not protecting religious freedom; they are imposing Christian nationalism.
Jul 02, 2026
This week, the Supreme Court dealt transgender Americans another devastating blow, upholding state bans on transgender athletes’ participation in girls' and women's sports. The decision represents the latest in a long series of attacks on trans lives, as we remain in the crosshairs of a manufactured culture war. The architects of these attacks usually wrap their bigotry in a familiar defense: “religious freedom.” They claim their faith compels them to legislate a strict, inflexible gender binary, and that any deviation from it is a threat to their religious liberty.
But as a trans Jew, and a leader of a major national Jewish organization, I have a question for them: What about my religious freedom? What about the freedom to live our Judaism?
My grandmother was born at home on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, spoke Yiddish as her first language, and was raised by immigrants who worked 12 hour physical jobs six days a week. She would not have known the phrase “gender identity” if her life depended on it. And yet, when I transitioned two decades ago, she did not hesitate. She took a deep breath, took a long look at me, decided it was still me she was seeing, and accepted me completely from that moment on.
When politicians attempt to ban gender-affirming care, bar trans kids from playing sports, and legally erase trans people, they are not protecting religious freedom. They are imposing Christian nationalism. Real religious freedom—the principle this country was founded on—only counts if it applies to all of us. Christian nationalists advocating against the rights of LGBTQ+ people are actively suppressing Judaism and other religions that don't neatly align with their theology.
We cannot let that vocal and well-funded Christian nationalist minority implement laws that endanger transgender people like me.
For years, the far-right has successfully monopolized the concept of religious liberty in this country, weaponizing it as a license to discriminate. But our past does not have to be our future. The theology they are attempting to encode into law is not a universal truth. In fact, it runs in direct opposition to my own religious tradition.
Judaism is a deeply embodied religion. It does not view the physical body as a prison, a shameful secret, or a rigid test of obedience; it delights in it. More than a thousand years before the advent of contemporary thinking about gender identity, the rabbis of the Talmud recognized seven different embodied genders. When faced with the reality of human diversity, they didn’t panic or attempt to legislate it out of existence. They acknowledged it, discussed it, and made space for it in Jewish law.
Today, the major streams of American Judaism, including the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative movements, as well as plenty of Orthodox communities, explicitly affirm that being transgender is real, and healthy, and holy. And again, that affirmation is grounded in ancient theology and Jewish religious law.
At Bend the Arc, we organize progressive Jews because we understand attacks on trans people are a part of the authoritarian playbook. The very same political forces attempting to erase trans lives are the ones mainstreaming antisemitism, suppressing votes, abducting immigrants, and attacking reproductive freedom. They demand conformity because human diversity is a fundamental threat to their consolidation of power.
When I transitioned, my Jewish grandmother understood on a theological level that I was still me, and still made in the image of God. She also taught me that we do not abandon our people to appease bullies.
We cannot let a vocal and well-funded Christian nationalist minority dictate the narrative on religious freedom in America. We cannot let that vocal and well-funded Christian nationalist minority implement laws that endanger transgender people like me. LGBTQ+ people and everyone who loves us must wield our joy and pride every day as a weapon against Christian nationalism and authoritarianism, and we must stand unapologetically in our own traditions as we insist on living that joy in public.
My faith commands it. My humanity demands it. And our democracy depends on it.
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The One Conscience Claim America Won’t Honor
Religious liberty claims win everywhere, except when it comes to financing war.
Jun 04, 2026
The war in Iran has forced many Americans to confront what their tax dollars make them party to. After the US has killed hundreds of Iranian children in school and bombed the country’s civilian infrastructure, more and more Americans are considering tax refusal. It’s a tradition older than the republic itself. Quakers resisted military taxes in the colonies, sometimes at the price of seized property. Thomas David Thoreau was jailed for refusing a poll tax in protest of slavery and the Mexican-American War. And hundreds of thousands resisted the telephone tax during the Vietnam War, when the National War Tax Resistance counted 192 centers in 45 states.
Call that “freedom.”
In an age of ascendant religious liberty, a fortunate class of Americans enjoys it in special measure. Employers, schools, religious institutions, and corporations have won exemption after exemption from ordinary legal duties they claim violate their religious faith. Creationist craft store chains no longer have to pay for contraceptive coverage for their employees. Public school football coaches may launch disruptive displays of prayer at midfield. For every belief, the court has seemed ready with a baroque exception.
Except one, of course: the pacifist’s objection to financing war. One of the oldest religious and conscience claims in American life has been a consistent loser in court. Even the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993, which helped make religious freedom claims an all-conquering force in American law, worked no change for war-tax resisters. In the late 1990s, Quaker objectors tried RFRA and First Amendment claims in federal court. Some offered to pay their full income-tax bill if the money could be directed to nonmilitary uses; others withheld the military portion and redirected it to life-sustaining organizations. All lost.
Once it’s war your conscience abhors, and not condoms, the show stops, and the killing must go on.
Mushrooms have fared better. In 2001, a mushroom company challenged a federal program that required it to help pay for generic mushroom advertising. The company argued that it could not be made to fund a message it did not believe: that mushrooms were mushrooms, and that its own were no better than anyone else’s. The Supreme Court agreed, finding the program violated the First Amendment. Free speech principles have thus protected the consciences of corporations from being wounded by mushroom advertising. But when pacifists, under a similar theory, have objected to financing war? Court after court has told them to get over it.
In this way, American law has built a vast sanctuary for conservative religious conscience and libertarian free speech sensibilities. That sanctuary ends at the gates of the only thing more powerful: the national-security state. Once it’s war your conscience abhors, and not condoms, the show stops, and the killing must go on.
Courts might be able to throw up their hands and say there’s nothing they can do, but Congress has no such excuse. It has let the most tepid solution to conscientious objection to war taxation languish for decades. The Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act, most recently reintroduced in 2021, would deposit the income, estate, and gift tax payments of conscientious objectors and religious pacifists into a fund reserved for nonmilitary uses. Americans who object to war would no longer have to choose between violating the law and violating their conscience. Instead, the bill would offer them a third way: Pay in full, but not for war.
The Peace Tax Fund Act has been reintroduced for five decades, and a more embarrassingly modest intervention is hard to imagine. The bill reduces neither military spending nor objectors’ tax burden. It would offer accommodations less burdensome than those given to other religious-liberty claimants. And it’s been backed in different iterations over the years by giants like John Lewis, the “conscience of Congress”; Ron Dellums, the first Black chair of the House Armed Services Committee; and Mark Hatfield, an evangelical Republican, World War II veteran, and one of the first Americans to witness Hiroshima after the atomic bombing.
All of this raises the question: so why hasn’t it passed? If Congress cannot enact even this most minimal of bills—one that leaves the military budget untouched and still requires objectors to pay their full federal tax burden—then the objection cannot really be about administrative inconvenience or military necessity. Indeed, the Peace Tax Fund is far more dangerous than that. By making war taxation visible as a moral choice, the act would make Americans do what the national-security state is desperate to prevent them from doing: think.
That would begin on the otherwise dry tax form, where it would be hard to miss a new option to object to war. A taxpayer might wonder why it exists. She might begin to question how the military and intelligence agencies spend their combined trillion-dollar budget. She might wonder why the country goes to war and plucks foreign leaders from their beds without public debate. The national-security state has fought hard to keep those questions at bay by keeping citizens in the dark. Questions, after all, can quickly lead to demands for answers. The Peace Tax Fund would encourage them by inviting Americans to take a hard look at the killing done in their names, and that kind of public scrutiny is an existential threat to the military and intelligence agencies accustomed to immunity from it.
This is the only explanation for an otherwise odd situation. Congress appears more willing to lose money to scattered acts of illegal tax resistance than to provide conscientious objectors with a legal pathway to objection. That makes sense once one sees that legal objection is more dangerous to the national-security state than evasion. The Peace Tax Fund Act would legitimize opposition to the military-industrial complex and its casual violence by transforming that opposition into a recognized claim of conscience. Once the state recognizes those claims as the stuff of deep moral conviction rather than the anarchical fringe, it undermines the military-industrial complex’s favorite tactic: ridiculing opponents as traitors and stigmatizing their claims as beyond the pale.
The consciences of objectors and pacifists do not command the tender political theater reserved for the craft store chain, the football coach, or the mushroom company. But that should tell opponents of the American war machine something hopeful: The people who operate it do not believe it can survive public scrutiny. The task, then, is to drag more of that machinery into the light, where everyday Americans might begin to ask whether the country uses its power for good in the world—or for them.
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US Commanders Want to Make War With Iran as ‘Bloody’ as Possible to Bring About Biblical End Times, Officers Report
One noncommissioned officer said he was directed to tell his troops that Trump was "anointed by Jesus" and that war with Iran was "all part of God’s divine plan" to bring about Armageddon.
Mar 03, 2026
In less than a week, the US and Israel's war has rendered unfathomable suffering upon the people of Iran. Over 180 schoolgirls and staffers were killed in a massacre this weekend, and several hospitals have reportedly been struck, amid numerous other attacks on civilians.
But some US troops are being told the bloodletting is all a part of God's plan.
At a briefing on Monday, as President Donald Trump unleashed what has been called a "carpet bombing" of Tehran, a combat-unit commander reportedly told noncommissioned officers (NCOs) that the commander-in-chief was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth."
The complaint, sent by one of those noncommissioned officers, was just one of at least 110 similar reports received by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) since Trump first launched strikes on Saturday.
In compliance with the First Amendment, the Department of Defense has long adopted rules against proselytizing within the armed forces. But under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an evangelical Christian who has said the West must wage a "crusade" against Islam, Christian nationalist invocations in the military have become commonplace.
Mikey Weinstein, the president and founder of MRFF and an Air Force veteran who served in the White House of former President Ronald Reagan, told independent journalist Jonathan Larsen that the group has been “inundated” with complaints from NCOs since Saturday, which all have “one damn thing in freaking common.”
"Our MRFF clients report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new 'biblically-sanctioned' war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian 'End Times' as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation," Weinstein said.
"Many of their commanders," he added, "are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be, zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world eschatology."
According to Larsen, who first reported on the MRFF's findings on Monday, the message has been spread far and wide as US troops rained missiles down upon Iran.
Larsen reported that the "complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations," and have involved commanders in every branch of the US military.
One noncommissioned officer, who did not identify himself out of fear of retaliation, said his commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”
The NCO added that his commander "had a big grin on his face when he said all of this, which made his message seem even more crazy."
"Our commander would probably be described as a 'Christian First' supporter," he said. "He has been this way for a very long time and makes it clear that he desires all of us under him to become just like him as a Christian. But what he did this morning was so toxic and over the line that it shocked many of us in attendance at the ops readiness briefing."
The NCO identified himself as a Christian, but emailed MRFF on behalf of 15 of his troops, which included at least one Muslim and one Jewish person.
He said that their commanders' remarks “destroy morale and unit cohesion and are in violation of the oaths we swore to support the Constitution.”
Christian nationalism has long simmered just under the surface of US military culture and has been invoked by presidents of the past, including George W. Bush, who referred to his War on Terror as a "crusade."
But Hegseth, who regularly hosts Christian prayer services at the Pentagon during work hours, rails against "secular humanism" and the "godless left," and has hosted the notorious fundamentalist pastor Doug Wilson—who opposes the right of women to vote and calls for the US to be a Christian theocracy—at the Pentagon, has dropped any pretenses of religious pluralism.
"While America’s relationship with Iran is influenced by all the typical geopolitical factors of oil, culture, and nuclear weaponry, there is a part of American foreign policy that is influenced by apocalyptic evangelical theology," wrote Josh Olds, a pastor and theologian, on Monday for Baptist News Global.
Christian fundamentalists, some of whom have the ear of the White House, he said, view an Iranian war with Israel as central to triggering Armageddon, during which God will miraculously strike down Israel's enemies, Jesus will return to Earth, and Christians will be raptured to Heaven, according to Biblical teachings.
He said that while Iran's Muslim leaders are often accused of being dangerously irrational out of blind religious fundamentalism, "it is increasingly clear that American actions are shaped by it as well."
In just over three days, US and Israeli strikes have killed at least 787 people in Iran, according to a Tuesday report from the Iranian Red Crescent Society, including hundreds of civilians. In addition to schools and hospitals, attacks have been reported against crowded residential buildings, a radio and TV broadcast center, and a sports complex.
"Donald Trump partnered with Israel to bomb Iran because of the influence of an eschatology that sees conflict with Iran as setting the stage for fulfilled prophecy," Olds said. "The irony is profound: A faith centered on loving enemies and making peace becomes a framework that welcomes and advocates violence. The result is not the advance of God’s kingdom but its irrevocable damage in the eyes of the world."
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Arresting the Witness: Don Lemon, the DOJ, and the Chilling of Press Freedom
When journalists are punished for observation, the public loses access to contested truth and fear becomes a tool of narrative control.
Feb 04, 2026
When federal agents arrested journalist Don Lemon and independent reporter Georgia Fort in connection with a protest inside a Minneapolis church, many commentators rushed to frame the incident as a straightforward defense of sacred space: Worship was disrupted, congregants were frightened, and the law intervened to restore order. That framing captures part of the truth—but it obscures the deeper constitutional and moral stakes at play.The arrests are not simply about a protest in a house of worship. They are about whether journalists can witness and document contentious public events—especially those where power, conscience, and institutional authority collide—without facing criminal charges for the act of seeing itself.
The legal action stems from a January demonstration at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where protesters interrupted a service after learning that one of the church’s pastors also serves as an official with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. For demonstrators, that dual role represented a profound moral contradiction: How can a religious leader entrusted with spiritual care also participate in an agency responsible for detention, deportation, and family separation?
Lemon was present to report. He did not identify as a participant, did not lead chants, and did not incite the crowd. He documented the scene, spoke with parishioners and protesters, and relayed what was happening to the public. Georgia Fort, a Minnesota-based independent journalist, was live streaming coverage of the protest and later live streamed her own arrest outside her home. Both were subsequently detained and charged.
Federal prosecutors allege that Lemon, Fort, and others conspired to interfere with religious worship, invoking the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a 1994 law that also applies to religious spaces. Lemon and Fort were released after initial court appearances. A judge placed limits on Lemon’s travel and contact but did not require pretrial supervision. No violence occurred during the protest.
Don Lemon and Georgia Fort did not interrupt worship. They interrupted silence.
That fact matters—but it does not end the ethical inquiry. Fear, particularly in contemporary America, is not abstract. Houses of worship have been sites of mass shootings, and the threat of violence is a lived reality for congregants across faith traditions. No one can read another person’s mind, and no one can fully know the intentions of a group entering a sanctuary in a volatile political moment. Even actions intended as nonviolent moral protest can be experienced as frightening.
Holding this truth is essential. Civil disobedience does not exist in a vacuum, and claims of nonviolence do not erase the perception of danger felt by others. Moral confrontation can be principled and still deeply unsettling. Ethical seriousness requires acknowledging that tension rather than dismissing it.
But fear alone cannot become the standard by which constitutional rights are curtailed—especially the rights of journalists whose role is to observe, document, and inform the public. The central question is not whether congregants felt afraid. It is whether that fear justifies arresting reporters who were not organizing, directing, or participating in the protest.
After his arrest, Lemon emphasized that he was being punished for doing what he has done for decades: covering the news. The First Amendment, he argued, exists precisely to protect that work. Fort echoed this concern, warning that criminalizing documentation of public events—particularly protests—poses a grave threat to journalism itself.
Almost immediately, a familiar dismissal surfaced: Don Lemon is not a “real journalist.” The argument is both unserious and dangerous. Who decides what journalism is? Cable news hosts routinely blend reporting, commentary, and political advocacy, often with privileged access to power. Independent journalists, freelancers, and live streamers—many of whom take on greater personal risk—are frequently denied legitimacy after the fact, especially when their reporting makes institutions uncomfortable.
If journalism is defined by function rather than branding, Lemon and Fort clearly qualify. They observed. They documented. They informed. For that, the state sent federal agents to their doors.
The irony is that Christianity itself has a long and uneasy relationship with disruption. In the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly confronted religious authorities, challenged imperial power, and disrupted ritualized comfort in the name of justice. The early Christian proclamation “Jesus is Lord” was not a private devotional claim; it was a public rejection of imperial sovereignty.
That tradition carried forward. The civil rights movement drew deeply from Christian theology to justify nonviolent confrontation with unjust laws and complicit institutions. Figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Pauli Murray, and James Lawson understood that faith divorced from justice becomes hollow.
Acknowledging this history does not negate the fear congregants may have felt. It clarifies why moral confrontation so often occurs in places of symbolic authority. Sacred space has never been immune from ethical challenge—nor should it be.
This is where the Department of Justice’s response raises deeper concern. The arrests do not merely defend religious freedom; they signal to journalists that covering morally charged protests—particularly those implicating powerful institutions—may carry criminal risk. The chilling effect is unmistakable.
This pattern is not new. Over the past decade, journalists covering protests have faced arrests, equipment seizures, subpoenas, and legal threats. While the legal contexts vary, the cumulative message is consistent: Some forms of witnessing are increasingly treated as suspect. When journalists are punished for observation, the public loses access to contested truth. Fear becomes a tool of narrative control.
This is not a choice between religious freedom and press freedom. Both matter. But when the state treats observation as interference, the balance collapses in favor of power. Protection becomes insulation. Accountability becomes disruption.
Journalism is not a threat to faith. It is a threat to unaccountable authority—especially when that authority cloaks itself in moral or divine legitimacy. A functioning democracy depends on contested spaces, on the ability to observe power where it gathers, even when that power claims holiness.
Don Lemon and Georgia Fort did not interrupt worship. They interrupted silence.
The question now is not only whether Lemon and Fort will prevail in court. It is whether witnessing itself will remain a protected act in American public life—or whether fear, once invoked, will become a legal solvent capable of dissolving press freedom wherever power feels exposed.
If journalists can be arrested for documenting protest inside a church, the precedent will not remain confined to sacred spaces. It will travel—to campuses, courtrooms, town halls, and streets—wherever institutions claim moral authority and demand insulation from scrutiny.
A democracy that punishes witnessing does not preserve order. It preserves silence.
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'Educating, Not Evangelizing': Court Rules Against Texas Ten-Commandments-In-Every-Classroom Law
"Children's religious beliefs should be instilled by parents and faith communities, not politicians and public schools," said a Texas rabbi who sued the state over the law.
Aug 20, 2025
A federal judge on Wednesday shot down a Texas law that would have mandated all public school classrooms across the state display the Ten Commandments.
As reported by local news station KSAT, US District Judge Fred Biery of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction, ruling that the state's law crossed the line from education to proselytizing on behalf of a specific sect of Christianity.
Noting that "the Ten Commandments set out in Texas's Ten Commandments law differs from the version observed by some Protestant faiths, and most adherents of the Catholic and Jewish faiths," Biery argued that the law violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which states that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion.
Biery imagined the uproar that would ensue if the city of Hamtramck, Michigan, which is majority Muslim, passed a law mandating that all public schools post passages from the Quran in all classrooms. He then argued that such a law would be just as unconstitutional as the Texas Ten Commandments law.
"While 'We the people' rule by a majority, the Bill of Rights protects the minority Christians in Hamtramck and those 33% of Texans who do not adhere to any of the Christian denominations," he wrote.
The judge also argued that the classroom displays "are likely to pressure the [students] into religious observance, meditation on, veneration, and adoption of the state's favored religious scripture, and into suppressing expression of their own religious or nonreligious background and beliefs while at school."
Organizations that advocate for the separation of church and state were quick to praise Biery's decision to strike down the law, which had been due to go into effect on September 1.
Tommy Buser-Clancy, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said that the ruling affirmed that the state cannot coerce any Texans into adopting a particular religious faith.
“Today's ruling is a major win that protects the constitutional right to religious freedom for Texas families of all backgrounds," he said. "The court affirmed what we have long said: Public schools are for educating, not evangelizing."
Rabbi Mara Nathan, one of the plaintiffs who sued to get the law overturned, welcomed the ruling and stated that "children's religious beliefs should be instilled by parents and faith communities, not politicians and public schools."
Freedom From Religion Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor similarly said that "religious instruction must be left to parents, not the state, which has no business telling anyone how many gods to have, which gods to have or whether to have any gods at all."
Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, hailed the ruling and said that it sends a "strong and resounding message across the country that the government respects the religious freedom of every student in our public schools."
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Christian Nationalism for Lunch? Thanks, But No Thanks
A new U.S. Office of Personnel Management memo allowing workplace proselytizing is not a great recipe for harmonious and productive coworker relations.
Aug 13, 2025
Imagine you’re a federal civil service employee, reading today’s paper while having a sandwich during your lunch break in the cafeteria. Another federal employee, maybe a coworker or maybe not, sits down beside you and politely begins to tell you why his faith is correct and why yours, actually, isn’t. Sounds annoying, possibly enraging, and presumably inappropriate if not prohibited? Think again.
According to a July 28, 2025 memorandum to the heads of all federal departments and agencies from Scott Kupor, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), employees “attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views,” including “why the non-adherent should re-think his religious beliefs,” is perfectly okay and even protected religious expression, so long as it falls short of harassment.
As a former federal attorney who worked for the U.S. Labor Department for 39 years, including eight years as a senior executive who ran a regional office, I find this policy disconcerting at best. From the standpoint of office mission effectiveness, maintaining positive and respectful peer-to-peer relationships is crucial. It’s one thing for coworkers, during breaks, to have candid and even heated discussions about sitcoms, musical tastes, or even politics. It’s quite another to laud one’s own spiritual belief and disparage, if not outright insult, another’s. Not a great recipe for harmonious and productive coworker relations.
This right to attempt to convince others that their religious convictions are misguided extends not only to peer coworkers, but to supervisors too. In other words, as you’re enjoying your sandwich in the cafeteria, your supervisor could sit down next to you and explain why your deeply held beliefs happen to be wrong. Not quite so easy to tell them it’s none of their damn business.
The prospect of federal supervisors advising their subordinates that their religious convictions aren’t the “correct” ones becomes dramatically more troubling if supervisors’ tenure is subject to the president’s whims.
But there’s another aspect of this policy that casts an even darker shadow. All this arises in an administration fueled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s vow to “bring back Christianity,” and populated or supported by self-described Christian nationalists like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Russell Vought, once again head of the powerful Office of Management and Budget.
Christian nationalism means different things to different people, but has a number of core beliefs. A major 2024 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute included five statements designed to measure support for Christian nationalism. The list included:
- God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.
- The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.
- Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
- If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
- U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
The study found that 30% of Americans can be classified as Christian nationalism “adherents” or “sympathizers” (those who fully or mostly agree with the five statements), compared to two-thirds of Americans found to be “skeptics” or “rejecters” (that is, they mostly or fully disagree with the statements). Nevertheless, according to preelection reporting by Politico, “Vought and his ideological brethren would not shy from using their administration positions to promote Christian doctrine and imbue public policy with it.”
According to Christian nationalism expert and history professor Kristin Du Mez, “This is not a pluralist vision for all of America coming together or a vision for compromise… It is a vision for seizing power and using that power to usher in a ‘Christian America.’” She believes that if the Christian nationalist movement gets what it wants, “There will be no meaningful religious liberty. There will be essentially a two-tier society between the quote unquote, real Americans—those who buy into this, or pretend to—and then the rest of Americans.”
Is this latest OPM memo part of a veiled effort to advance a Christian nationalist vision for our country? Consider that the prospect of federal supervisors advising their subordinates that their religious convictions aren’t the “correct” ones becomes dramatically more troubling if supervisors’ tenure is subject to the president’s whims—including, potentially, loyalty to a Vought-endorsed Christian-nationalist-inspired belief system. During Trump’s first term, Vought tried to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees, which would have enabled mass dismissals of those deemed unsuitable. A similar effort is underway this time around. Will espousing Christian nationalism be one of the unstated litmus tests to get, or keep, a supervisory job?
Whether there’s a Christian nationalist agenda lurking behind the OPM memo or not, a better policy for government workers would suggest, if not require, that unless asked, they—and particularly supervisors—keep their judgments of others’ personal belief systems to themselves.
But since the July 28 memo says otherwise, federal employees, please note: As you’re minding your own business munching a tuna salad sandwich at lunch, you might find your supervisor offering a spiritual lesson that wasn’t on the menu. If it works for you, fine. But if it doesn’t go down well, do send it back, with a polite but firm “no thank you.” Assert your freedom of religion, or your freedom not to be religious, while you still have it.
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'Strong Message to Christian Nationalists': Judge Blocks Louisiana Ten Commandments Law
"Public schools are not Sunday schools," said one advocate, "and today's decision ensures that our clients' classrooms will remain spaces where all students, regardless of their faith, feel welcomed."
Nov 12, 2024
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a Louisiana law requiring every public school classroom in the state to display, in large font, a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments—a mandate that the new ruling characterizes as plainly unconstitutional.
The decision by U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana Judge John deGravelles, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, prohibits Louisiana's Republican-dominated government from enforcing the Ten Commandments requirement, which was set to take effect on January 1, 2025.
The judge wrote that the law—which President-elect Donald Trump endorsed earlier this year shortly before Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed it—is "unconstitutional on its face and in all applications."
The injunction against H.B. 71 came in response to a lawsuit brought in June by a coalition of Louisiana parents who argued the mandate "substantially interferes with and burdens the right of parents to direct their children's religious education and upbringing."
Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill, a Republican, pledged to "immediately appeal" the decision.
Heather Weaver, senior staff attorney for the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, said in a statement Tuesday that "this ruling should serve as a reality check for Louisiana lawmakers who want to use public schools to convert children to their preferred brand of Christianity."
"Public schools are not Sunday schools, and today's decision ensures that our clients' classrooms will remain spaces where all students, regardless of their faith, feel welcomed," Weaver added.
Rev. Darcy Roake, a plaintiff in the case, called H.B. 71 "a direct infringement of our religious-freedom rights, and we're pleased and relieved that the court ruled in our favor."
"As an interfaith family," Roake added, "we expect our children to receive their secular education in public school and their religious education at home and within our faith communities, not from government officials."
H.B. 71 is the first state law to require public schools to display a government-approved version of the Ten Commandments since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky mandate in 1980, calling it a violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause.
Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Tuesday that "this ruling will ensure that Louisiana families—not politicians or public school officials—get to decide if, when, and how their children engage with religion."
"It should send a strong message to Christian nationalists across the country that they cannot impose their beliefs on our nation's public school children," said Laser. "Not on our watch."
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Keep Church and State Separate to Preserve Reproductive Justice
The principle of the separation of church and state is not just a constitutional provision but a safeguard crucial to preserving the autonomy and well-being of diverse populations.
Dec 29, 2023
In the ongoing battle for reproductive justice, the intersection of religious beliefs and public policy casts a long shadow over the fundamental rights of individuals, particularly those in marginalized communities, including LGBTQ+ and non-binary individuals. That’s why the newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s remark that “the separation of church and state is a ‘misnomer’” is so chilling.
The principle of the separation of church and state is not just a constitutional provision but a safeguard crucial to preserving the autonomy and well-being of diverse populations, particularly in matters as personal as reproductive health.
Reproductive justice hinges on the right to make informed, personal decisions about one’s body, family, and future. However, the intrusion of religious ideologies into legislation poses a significant threat to this autonomy. The separation of church and state is not a mere abstraction; it is the cornerstone of protecting individual freedoms from the encroachment of religious doctrines that may not align with the diverse beliefs and circumstances of our society.
The separation of church and state provides the necessary framework to safeguard patients from being denied essential medications based on someone else’s religious beliefs.
The Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP), the largest independent abortion fund, works with marginalized communities, including LGBTQ+ and non-binary individuals, who often bear the disproportionate brunt of restrictive reproductive policies driven by religious ideologies. These communities face unique challenges, including limited access to affirming healthcare and discriminatory practices that compound the impact of religiously motivated policies. The separation of church and state becomes a crucial shield against the intersectional barriers faced by individuals at the crossroads of multiple marginalized identities.
The role of all healthcare providers is pivotal in upholding medical ethics and ensuring that patient care is driven by evidence-based practices rather than religious doctrine. Physicians take an oath to prioritize the well-being of their patients, and this commitment should transcend religious biases. When the separation of church and state is compromised, healthcare professionals face the ethical dilemma of navigating between religiously motivated policies and their duty to provide comprehensive, unbiased care.
In societies where religious beliefs infiltrate legislative decisions on reproductive rights, doctors find themselves torn between upholding their commitment to patient well-being and adhering to laws that may compromise patient health. WRRAP and other abortion funds have seen countless cases through the years even prior to the overturning of Roe. The separation of church and state becomes a protective shield for doctors, allowing them the professional autonomy to prioritize evidence-based medical care over religious doctrines.
The impact of religious influence extends beyond doctor-patient interactions to the realm of pharmacies, where pharmacists may encounter moral objections to dispensing certain medications. When religious beliefs seep into legislation, pharmacists may be compelled to prioritize personal convictions over the immediate healthcare needs of patients. This not only infringes on the principle of secular governance but also jeopardizes individuals’ timely access to reproductive healthcare.
WRRAP has heard of many cases in which a patient was denied access to medications like misoprostol, which are used to manage other conditions like autoimmune diseases and gastric ulcers, but, because this drug is also used for medication abortions and treatment for ectopic pregnancies, these prescriptions are denied or delayed by some pharmacists, infringing on and jeopardizing these individual’s healthcare needs.
A pharmacist must dispense medication according to professional and ethical standards, without discrimination. The separation of church and state provides the necessary framework to safeguard patients from being denied essential medications based on someone else’s religious beliefs. Access to contraceptives, emergency contraception, and other reproductive healthcare necessities should be determined by medical necessity, not by the religious tenets of those dispensing them, nor should a patient have to be asked by a provider to take a pregnancy test to confirm they are not pregnant.
As we navigate the landscape of reproductive justice, the separation of church and state stands as a protection against the erosion of individual autonomy. It is an assertion that decisions about reproductive healthcare should be guided by medical ethics, evidence-based practices, and the diverse beliefs of individuals, including those in the LGBTQ+ and non-binary communities, not by the doctrines of any particular faith.
To truly champion reproductive justice, we must fiercely defend the separation of church and state. It is a collective responsibility to ensure that policies respect the autonomy of every individual, irrespective of their background, beliefs, or socio-economic status. In strengthening this separation through advocacy in our communities and through the leaders we elect, we fortify the foundation of a just society—one that upholds the dignity and rights of all.
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Outraged by the FBI's Catholic Memo? Targeting Muslims Laid the Groundwork
Had conservative politicians stood up against government overreach when American Muslims were its victims, they could have prevented the government from even thinking about writing a memo focused on the Catholic community.
Aug 20, 2023
In one of the few relatively benign moments of Dave Chappelle's last appearance on Saturday Night Live, the comedian made an interesting observation: The complaints that some white Americans have made about law enforcement in recent years are complaints that African Americans have made about law enforcement for decades.
"Man, we can't trust the government," Chappelle said in his faux southern accent. "[Black people] have been on that. Man, we should dismantle the FBI. Word to Martin Luther King, bro. We've been on that."
Writing the jokes out doesn't do justice to the delivery, but you get the idea.
The memory of Chappelle's riff came to me last week, when conservative pundits and lawmakers railed against the FBI over an internal memorandum that proposed a strategy to address the purported threat of "radical traditional Catholic ideology."
The FBI memo says that followers of this ideology, abbreviated as RTC, are characterized by a rejection of reforms made during Vatican II, a "disdain for popes elected since then, particularly Popes Francis and John Paul II," and "adherence to antisemitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, and white supremacist ideology."
If you replace every instance of "church" and "radical traditional Catholic" in the FBI memo with "mosque" and "radical Islamic terrorist," the memo would read like the typical way the government has thought about and addressed the American Muslim community over the past 20 years.
To mitigate the threat of "RTCs," the memo advises, the FBI should engage in something called "tripwire," "source development," and outreach to "traditional Catholic parishes," among other things. The memo also identified conservative Catholic political stances, such as opposition to abortion, as potential triggers for acts of terrorism in the run-up to the 2024 election.
When the FBI memo first went public earlier this year, it sparked outrage among Catholics who felt it was inappropriate or even unconstitutional for the government to target the Catholic community in this way.
Conservative politicians and media personalities also latched onto the issue, exaggerating the content of the memo and using it as a new political cudgel in their ongoing feud with the bureau over its investigations of Donald Trump.
In response to such backlash, the FBI withdrew the memo and insisted it was the work of only one local field office. But a new report last week showed that multiple offices contributed to the memo and sparked renewed outrage.
As a Muslim civil rights attorney who has seen the injustices that can occur when law enforcement starts treating faith communities as suspect, I understand the concerns that Catholic voices have raised about the FBI memo.
Although every law enforcement agency has a duty to prevent and investigate crimes, the government has no business planting informants in churches, enlisting priests to help spy on community members, or equating acts of conservative piety with signs of extremism.
Even though I sympathize with some of the concerns raised about the FBI memo, I also cannot help but wonder: Where was the outrage when the federal government used identical thinking and tactics to target the Muslim community?
Indeed, if you replace every instance of "church" and "radical traditional Catholic" in the FBI memo with "mosque" and "radical Islamic terrorist," the memo would read like the typical way the government has thought about and addressed the American Muslim community over the past 20 years.
From New York to Los Angeles and cities in-between, federal and local law enforcement have used spies to infiltrate and monitor mosques.
Federal Countering Violent Extremism programs were used to build ties between law enforcement and Muslim community organizations, who would then be used to monitor, counter, and report signs of extremism.
Law enforcement training materials at the local and federal level have used explicitly anti-Muslim tropes. And only God knows how many internal memos have been dedicated to equating Islamic practices like growing a beard or praying regularly at a mosque with signs of extremism.
Yet some of the same voices who enthusiastically supported such dragnet policies when they were directed at Muslim Americans are now outraged that the government merely drafted a single memo focused on Catholic Americans.
When we allow law enforcement agencies to infiltrate, spy upon, entrap, and otherwise target one faith community, we open the door for law enforcement to do the same to other faith communities down the road.
This is why consistency is so important when it comes to opposing government overreach.
When we allow law enforcement agencies to infiltrate, spy upon, entrap, and otherwise target one faith community, we open the door for law enforcement to do the same to other faith communities down the road.
Had conservative politicians stood up against government overreach when American Muslims were its victims, they could have prevented the government from even thinking about writing a memo focused on the Catholic community.
Now, a naysayer might argue the FBI has good reason to worry about Muslims in a post-9/11 world but no reason to worry about Catholics, so it's perfectly fine to focus on mosques.
But this unprincipled stance would miss the point: Our nation's stated values and the text of the Constitution should forbid the government from singling out, spying on, or otherwise undermining faith communities from within.
Furthermore, if we accept that targeting a faith community is acceptable when a few of its members supposedly pose a threat, the FBI memo claims that it is monitoring hate groups and extremists who identify as Catholic and pose an active threat of violence. Essentially Timothy McVeigh all over again.
Even if this is true, it would not justify targeting Catholic institutions at-large to address such threats.
Law enforcement must follow real leads and track down real criminals, not go on fishing expeditions in churches, mosques, or other houses of worship. The rest of us must consistently oppose anti-religious bigotry under the guise of national security, regardless of what community is targeted.
The Patriot Act, warrantless bulk surveillance, the unconstitutional federal terror watchlist, sending informants into houses of worship—these government activities have predominantly impacted the Muslim community, but they could potentially threaten every community.
That's why our civil rights organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, opposes any attempts by federal law enforcement to focus on the Catholic American community just as strongly as we oppose targeting of the Muslim American community.
We can only hope that every American embraces this principled stance before their faith community shows up in a government memo.
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Why French Streets Are on Fire Again
The Nanterre killing, the banlieue riots, and the ongoing quest to demonize Islam are symptoms of the deep structural problems that the French government, mainstream media, and dominant culture have developed with "post-colonial" minorities.
Jul 06, 2023
Though history never repeats itself even as farce, it often seems to, as is currently the case in France.
Riots have spread since the police killing of a French teenager of North African descent in the banlieue of Nanterre, after he allegedly refused to comply with an order to stop his car. According to video evidence and witness testimony, an officer threatened to shoot the youth "in the head" before firing his gun when the car took off.
This feels like a replay of the 2005 deaths of two young teens chased by police in another Parisian banlieue, which led to weeks of nationwide riots and a state of emergency imposed by the government.
The Nanterre incident, in which one officer has been charged with voluntary homicide, also recalls the 2016 death in police custody of 24-year-old French African Adama Traore, who subsequently became a symbol of the brutality and racism of the French police—and more broadly of the French state—against ethnic minorities. His death launched a wave of protests and activism for racial justice.
Who could possibly claim with a straight face that the French state treats Islam and its practitioners the same as Christians or Jews?
In recent days, French citizens have again been subjected to a problem whose roots can be found in its colonial history: an obsessive fixation on the visibility not of "religion in the public space," as it is sometimes described, but of one religion only: Islam, whose practitioners are subjected to an ever-worsening differential and unequal treatment, securitization policies, and state persecution, in full violation of France's professed values and constitutional guarantees.
These guarantees include equality before the law, freedom of religion, and the principle of laïcité, which obligates the state to treat all religions on a strictly equal footing. But who could possibly claim with a straight face that the French state treats Islam and its practitioners the same as Christians or Jews?
Having previously banned "religious symbols" (read: Islamic ones) from public schools and burqas from public places, France is now in the midst of a new witch hunt against students wearing abayas in schools, on the grounds that they are "religious symbols" and thus fall under the 2004 law.
This has led to the usual hysterical accusations from the far right that these young girls are, if not "Islamist agents" seeking to topple the republic, at least "manipulated" by such groups, and that the Macron government is too soft on "Islamism."
Targeting Muslims
Competing for attention and headlines in the French news media, a new national debate around (and against) women's Islamic dress is again targeting "visible Muslims," vilified as threats, "Islamists," or "radicals." The media narrative is using the same old rhetoric (such as the need to "protect French laïcité" and to fight against "political Islam"), and it continues to have deleterious effects on Muslims.
Is the French Republic truly so weak that a few hundred school teens wearing long dresses, amid millions of other French students, somehow represent an existential threat to the nation—and if we don't tackle this issue, "the Islamists will win" and we will soon be living in an Islamic-State-style caliphate?
This new campaign is even more outrageous, given that the abaya has no specific religious meaning and is often a simple fashion choice allowing girls to distinguish themselves from their peers, perhaps out of rebellion against mainstream Western culture. Prominent French imams, highly respected theologians and the French Council of the Muslim Faith (the semi-official representative institution of Muslims in France) have made it clear that the abaya is not a religious sign but a cultural choice.
Instead of developing inclusive policies and encouraging an open culture more congruent with the dramatic societal transformations of France in the postwar era, the country is doing the opposite: excluding, stigmatising, vilifying, repressing, and discriminating against people and groups who only want to be treated equally.
At the same time, another recent "controversy" has focused on female football players, who have been protesting against the French Football Federation's ban on headscarves. They, too, have regularly been accused by the dominant media of being dangerous, subversive "Islamists" at war with the republic.
All these interrelated events—the Nanterre killing, the banlieue riots, and the ongoing quest to demonize Islam—are symptoms of the deep structural problems that the French government, mainstream media, and dominant culture have developed with "post-colonial" minorities in general, and in particular the largely disenfranchised and segregated populations in France's banlieues.
Instead of developing inclusive policies and encouraging an open culture more congruent with the dramatic societal transformations of France in the postwar era, the country is doing the opposite: excluding, stigmatising, vilifying, repressing, and discriminating against people and groups who only want to be treated equally. This includes the right not to get unjustifiably killed by police, and not to be summoned to choose between sport and education, or freedom of religion and conscience.
In particular, the government's response to the Nanterre killing and ensuing riots—zealously echoed by the mainstream media in their "analysis" of these events—has been at its essence repressive, aiming solely to "restore order." None of the root causes of the protests is being addressed.
Police Brutality
Most shockingly, the Macron government continues to refuse to recognize France's deep police brutality problem, the systemic racism that plagues its "security" forces, and institutional Islamophobia, however well documented these phenomena have been by scholars, activists, local associations, human rights groups, and inhabitants of marginalized neighbourhoods.
Last week, France was officially condemned twice in one day over police racism, brutality, and excessive force. The United Nations human rights office urged France to address "deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement." The same day, the International Trade Union Confederation severely condemned France for "police brutality," "blind arrests," and repeated violations of workers' rights.
Yet against all evidence—which includes the shocking declarations of France's own police forces, whose fascistic elements have openly threatened to violently turn against the government itself—Macron and his government are continuing to ignore and deny.
This suggests the Macron government is now so weak and powerless that its own police forces can openly and publicly threaten it with insurrection and violence, and get away with it.
On the U.N. condemnation, it merely declared that "any accusation of racism or systemic discrimination in the police force in France is totally unfounded," as it always does in such cases, which have become routine. This suggests the Macron government is now so weak and powerless that its own police forces can openly and publicly threaten it with insurrection and violence, and get away with it.
What we have here, in such systematic blindness, denial, and powerlessness, is not a repetition of history, but a country both unwilling and unable to even recognize, much less address, the root causes of recent events so that one day it may live up to its high ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
In the meantime, these have become increasingly vacuous words for Muslims and other minorities—and this is why the French streets are once again on fire.
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