Columnist.
President Donald Trump said he'd promote commonsense policies that would "Make America Great Again" and would stand up to politically correct bullying from the Left. So why isn't he doing that in the case of religious freedom?
Last month, America lost a great defender of freedom, Michael Novak. Novak was committed to rightly ordered liberty and cared deeply about the principles and practices that produce it. His enormous body of work emphasized the cultural prerequisites for political and economic freedom, as he stressed that economic conservativism and social conservatism are indivisible.
Any lecture on the crisis of liberty in the West faces at least one serious limitation: time. I know time is in short supply, as is liberty, for the crisis of liberty in the West is expansive, multifaceted, and more deeply rooted than many of our political slogans suggest.
The biggest problem with current sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) laws — including "Fairness for All," which proposes a grand-bargain compromise between SOGI laws and religious liberty — is that they do not appropriately define what counts as discriminatory.
The Trump administration acted Wednesday night to fix the Obama administration's unlawful "gender identity" school policy and return authority to parents and teachers in the states.
For the past several years, all across America, parents, teachers and local school districts have been having conversations about how best to accommodate the dignity, privacy and safety concerns of students who identify as transgender while also addressing the dignity, privacy and safety concerns of other students.
Openness to win-win policy solutions that address the needs and concerns on all sides of a policy debate are all to the good. This is just as true in current debates about the needs of people who identify as LGBT (lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual) and concerns about infringements of religious liberty as it is in any other policy area.
Liberals are up in arms over a possible executive order from President Donald Trump protecting religious freedom. A draft copy of the executive order was leaked to LGBT groups and liberal media outlets in an attempt to prevent the president from issuing it. But the president should not cave. He should stand up to the liberal outrage and hostility to ordinary American values that fueled his rise in the first place.
The media was abuzz [Monday] with rumors that President Donald Trump was preparing an executive order that would protect religious liberty in the aftermath of the redefinition of marriage. Trump should issue such an executive order, and he should rescind former President Barack Obama's executive actions on sexual orientation and gender identity that created many of these problems in the first place.
We must restore our first freedom: the free exercise of religion.
Donald Trump promised that he would make America great again. If he is to make good on that promise, he'll need to start by robustly restoring our first freedom: the free exercise of religion.
[Yesterday], the D.C. City Council voted to allow physician-assisted suicide. But the debate isn't over. The Washington Post reports that "the council must still hold a final vote on the bill, possibly as early as Nov. 15," and that the mayor, Muriel Bowser, must decide if she'll sign or veto the bill.
A major new report, published today in the journal The New Atlantis, challenges the leading narratives that the media has pushed regarding sexual orientation and gender identity. Co-authored by two of the nation's leading scholars on mental health and sexuality, the 143-page report discusses over 200 peer-reviewed studies in the biological, psychological, and social sciences, painstakingly documenting what scientific research shows *and does not show* about sexuality and gender. The major takeaway, as the editor of the journal explains, is that "some of the most frequently heard claims about sexuality and gender are not supported by scientific evidence."
You know gender-identity issues are getting lots of attention when it prompts one gay-rights activist to start a campaign called "Drop the T." Its goal: to kick *transgender* out of the standard LGBT acronym for being "ultimately regressive and actually hostile to the goals of women and gay men."
Two weeks ago 42 Republicans voted to endorse President Barack Obama's transgender agenda. They did it by voting for the Maloney amendment, which affirmed Obama's 2014 executive order barring "discrimination" on the basis of "sexual orientation and gender identity" in the private employment policies of federal contractors.
On Wednesday, 43 Republican members of Congress joined the Democrats to vote for President Barack Obama's transgender agenda. Now they're trying to spin their vote. These 43 Republicans voted for the Maloney amendment, which ratified Obama's 2014 executive order barring private businesses who do contract work for the government from engaging in what the government considers to be "discrimination" on the basis of "sexual orientation and gender identity" in their private employment policies.
On Wednesday night, 43 Republican members of Congress joined the Democrats to vote for President Barack Obama's transgender agenda. Whereas last week Congress voted to reject this proposal — known as the Maloney amendment — last night they voted to ratify Obama's 2014 executive order barring federal contractors from what it describes as "discrimination" on the basis of "sexual orientation and gender identity" in their private employment policies.
On May 13th, the Obama administration issued "guidance" to school districts across the nation purporting to require them to allow biological boys unfettered access to girls' lockers, showers, and bathrooms or risk losing federal education funds.
On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted to reject the Maloney Amendment. The Maloney Amendment would have ratified President Barack Obama's executive order barring federal contractors from what it describes as "discrimination" on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in their private employment policies. And, of course, "discrimination" on the basis of gender identity can be something as simple as having a bathroom policy based on biological sex, not gender identity, as we learned last week from Obama's transgender directives. And "discrimination" on the basis of sexual orientation can be something as reasonable as an adoption agency preferring married moms and dads for orphans than other arrangements.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized new transgender regulations for Obamacare on Friday. These regulations threaten the religious liberty, freedom of conscience, and independent medical judgment of health care professionals. And, just as they did in the transgender school policy the Obama administration announced [Friday] morning, the administration has created these new Obamacare regulations by redefining "sex" to mean "gender identity."
