By REY FLORES
Three weeks ago, Attorney General Jeff Sessions made the official announcement that President Donald J. Trump had asked him to create the Religious Liberty Task Force within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
The Washington Times reported that the task force will be led by Sessions, and co-chaired by the associate attorney general, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, and members from other Justice Department divisions, including the Office for Civil Rights and the Office of Legal Counsel.
Of course, the radical leftists have responded in their predictable, loathsome, and tiresome way. In a very “Chicken Little”-like reaction, NBC’s Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove wrote that Sessions’ task force is “part of a dangerous Christian nationalist campaign of discrimination. Conservative Christians have convinced Trump that they are being oppressed. And LGBT Americans and religious minorities will pay the price.”
The hysterical Wilson-Hartgrove goes on to write that this new task force will “serve an extreme agenda” and that “it’s time for people who care about the future of democratic society to reclaim the concept of religious liberty.”
Then there are the drama queens over at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). You can bet that if the ACLU opposes something, it’s probably a good thing that we should support.
I agree one hundred percent with Wilson-Hartgrove’s last statement. It is we Catholics and Christians of other denominations who must hold onto the true meaning of religious liberty because if we don’t, we’ll soon be further ostracized and penalized for our belief and devotion to Jesus Christ and His One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
Oppressed? Perhaps not entirely — at least not yet. In reality, Christian Americans have been in the crosshairs of the socialist-wannabe left for decades. We have been the proverbial frog in the increasingly hot pot of boiling water. How long until the Godless radical left cooks and devours us completely?
We’ve seen the damaging effects of removing prayer from public education, at least only Christian prayers. Many school districts do, however, afford Muslim students time to pray whenever they please, disruption of classes notwithstanding
Also, in the last couple of generations, we’ve witnessed the horrors of abortion, contraception, and euthanasia. We’ve also see the satanic left’s continued efforts to redefine marriage, family, and even gender.
Trump’s task force comes at a time when social media and fake news giants are on a tear, censoring conservative and Christian voices, supposedly as to not offend anyone who’s already been brainwashed by academia and the secular popular culture.
Witness what Monica Showalter wrote July 26 in American Thinker:
“Seriously, do you feel as enthusiastic about Facebook as you did before all the censorship stories rolled out? The declaration of Diamond and Silk as ‘dangerous to the community’ by Facebook’s censors at its YouTube subsidiary? Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s mixed-reviews congressional appearance? Did you want to use Facebook after learning that the company is composed solely of leftist hipsters who have it in for the right?”
Interestingly enough, around the same time of Sessions’ announcement, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority (WMATA), in a lawsuit from the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., which said the transit system’s policy had gone too far in rejecting its religious-themed ad campaign.
The ad in question was a graphic showing the three kings walking toward the Star of Bethlehem, with the simple message “Find the Perfect Gift.” The perfect gift being of course Jesus being born. The ad also included the web address for the archdiocesan campaign and the hashtag #PerfectGift.
In my opinion, I see nothing overtly religious about an ad promoting a holiday which in fact celebrates the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Obviously, it was too religious for WMATA, which runs the Metro in this forsaken town.
On the other hand, as is the case with most liberal hypocrisy, ads promoting yoga are welcome on the Metro. I can almost hear some lefty say, “But Mr. Flores, yoga is not a religion, but a transcendental exercise.”
OK, let’s explore this a little bit more. Merriam-Webster defines yoga like this: “a Hindu theistic philosophy teaching the suppression of all activity of body, mind, and will in order that the self may realize its distinction from them and attain liberation.”
Merriam-Webster also provides a second definition: “a system of physical postures, breathing techniques, and sometimes meditation derived from Yoga but often practiced independently especially in Western cultures to promote physical and emotional well-being.”
I don’t care what kind of linguistic gymnastics, legalese, and liberal “logic” the WMATA or their sneaky lawyers use, at the end of the day, yoga is still derived from Hinduism. Metro will still allow yoga ads while denying a very simple inoffensive Christmas ad.
What this court just did is further empower the WMATA to literally define what religion is and what it isn’t, at least in their own twisted and biased point of view.
The one thing I can specifically point out which has given us conservative Christians a lot of hope in regard to politics is the fact that we now have hope that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will soon have a majority of strict constructionists.
We’ve already seen the fruits of a right-leaning SCOTUS when that one Colorado-based Christian baker got off the militant homosexualist gestapo’s hook.
Trump’s Religious Liberty Task Force is a blessing. It seeks not to discriminate, but to deter discrimination against Christians who love the sinners, yet not the sins of a troubled Godless and immoral culture.
+ + +
(Rey Flores writes opinion and book and movie reviews for The Wanderer. Contact Rey at reyfloresusa@gmail.com.)
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress