Sadly it is no exaggeration, no hyperbole, to say that Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared a holy war on LGBT people, LGBT equality, and LGBT rights on Monday.
He declared war on anything that could be perceived to trespass on the “religious freedom” or “religious liberty” of Christians—which is loosely defined enough to be construed as trespassing on pretty much anything he and his allies choose it to mean.
Sessions said this was because there was a “dangerous movement” to erode the Christian right to worship.
There isn’t, of course; it’s an invented bogeyman for a ravenously-pursued ideological crusade. Women, religious minorities, LGBT people: Prepare to fight for your bodies, your rights to worship, your wedding cakes.
Sessions’ announcement of a “Religious Liberty Task Force” at a “Religious Liberty Summit” follows President Trump’s religious liberty executive orderof May. It also follows the Department of Health and Human Services’ announcement in January of a new “Conscience and Religious Freedom Division” to be housed within the agency’s Office for Civil Rights.
The “Religious Liberty Task Force”—which summons up images of a pirate ship filled with the staffs of the ADF, Liberty Counsel, and Family Research Council, sallying forth and liberating prejudiced bakers everywhere—will apparently ensure that everything Sessions laid out in his “religious liberty” memo of last October is pursued to the letter. That memo outlined how multiple government agencies should seek to uphold “religious liberty” even if it conflicts with existing anti-discrimination policies.
The “task force” will be co-chaired by Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio and Beth Williams, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy.
However, as evidenced in his speech today, it is clearly Sessions who is behind it, and he appears intent to use the Department of Justice to advance this holy war, and he wants to wage it against trespassers of ‘religious liberty’ across government departments. Church and State have never appeared so poisonously intertwined.
The Trump administration is already winning in its battle to erode the few civil rights that LGBT people have. The Supreme Court, if the Trump administration has its way, soon will be replete with justices to rubberstamp whatever kind of discrimination it chooses to pursue. Loading the dice in this fundamental way apparently isn’t enough for Jeff Sessions.
Today, at the “Religious Affairs Summit” held at the Department of Justice, he was not really talking about “religious freedom” or “religious liberty,” or any of the other soft-sounding codewords he and his ilk use. Sessions wastalking about how the government will support you as a Christian if you choose to discriminate against someone based on your religious beliefs.
If you are opposed to marriage equality or just dislike or disapprove of LGBT people generally, the Trump administration just gave you the green light to go ahead and refuse to serve them in your businesses, or help them with their medical care. If an LGBT person wants or needs to use your service, no problem—tell them to shove off. The attorney general is right behind you.
Read the full story at The Daily Beast
