During remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Trump said he wanted to ‘totally destroy the Johnson Amendment’. The amendment is a rule that prohibits churches from giving money or endorsing candidates as part of the deal for federal tax exemption. Trump’s statement puts religious freedom in danger and opens the churches up to dark money that has ruined our election process.
It doesn’t take much research or ‘soul searching’ to know that any Supreme Court nominee by President Trump would NOT be friendly to issues of concern to secular people. You don’t even need to do any Internet searching because the major freethought groups already have the goods on Neil Gorsuch. Obviously, any ‘little Scalia’ is no friend of ours.
Religious conservative and FOX news contributor Todd Starnes wrote on June 29th that the recently released US House Republican’s Benghazi report noted that members of President Obama’s administration bullied a Christian pastor about a film he promoted that insulted Islam. Starnes claims that breeched the church and state wall. For a ‘reporter’ with a history of ethics problems, Starnes unsurprisingly gets this so-called ‘violation’ wrong.
Starnes writes on his FOX news website column:
On Wednesday (2/3/2016), President Obama visited a mosque for the first time while in office. I applaud his visit and his remarks against bigotry toward Muslims, but when he talked about religious freedom, people who don’t subscribe to any religion seemed not to be included.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) sees the problem with religious freedom after the Hobby Lobby court decision in 2014. Religious freedom is being used as a weapon to discriminate. CAP has some ideas on how to restore the religious freedom balance. They all sound good.
Pope Francis gave a speech about religious freedom in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. While he made some good points about the importance of religious freedom, any mention of the non-religious was missing. Religious freedom is just as important to secular people as it is to the religious.
Popepalooza hit Philadelphia on Saturday and Pope Francis gave a speech in front of iconic Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were both signed. The topic was religious freedom. I was interested to hear what he had to say about it.