Civil rights groups and LGBTQ advocates on Tuesday tore into the Department of Justice’s newly formed “religious liberty task force,” slamming the move as a discriminatory affront to civil liberties masquerading as protections for people of faith.
“This task force’s agenda isn’t consistent with religious freedom. Religious freedom protects our right to our beliefs, not a right to discriminate or harm others,” Louise Melling, a deputy legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union, told NBC News in a statement. “Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice is again turning that understanding of religious freedom on its head.”
Melling added that the agency’s guidance “encourages private groups to discriminate with government funds.”
Following a speech Monday in which Attorney General Jeff Sessions said a special Justice Department detail was necessary to confront a growing cultural and political threat to the free practice of religion, supporters praised the effort as evidence that the Trump White House was making good on campaign promises to protect Christians. But detractors, including the ACLU, maintained that women, religious minorities and members of the LGBTQ community are the ones whose freedoms are under attack.
The task force will implement and enforce legal guidance the DOJ had previously provided regarding how to best apply religious liberty protections in federal law, Sessions said Monday at a religious freedom forum that the DOJ had convened. He painted a picture of a country suffering amid a “changing cultural climate,” with religious people of all faiths under fire from the federal government.
“A dangerous movement, undetected by many, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom,” he said. “There can be no doubt. This is no little matter. It must be confronted and defeated.”
Citing 20 points of guidance his department had released in October(which were put together after Trump issued an executive order in May 2017 ordering the federal government to protect religious liberty), Sessions said his task force would “ensure all Justice Department components are upholding that guidance in the cases they bring and defend, the arguments they make in court, the policies and regulations they adopt, and how we conduct our operations.”
Read the full story at NBC News
