Religious Freedom Is under Attack

N ot even the home is free from the assault on religious conviction.

Families of faith in Oregon will be denied the chance to foster or adopt children based on their objections to the demands of gender ideology in the absence of judicial intervention. And the Biden administration — which it’s now clear is pathetically subservient to that ideology — has proposed new rules that define “a safe and appropriate” placement for children in need of foster care as one that will “affirm” a child’s gender identity, categorically excluding many religious Americans from fostering children who struggle with gender dysphoria. It’s only a matter of time before these perverse standards are imposed on all parents.

On National Religious Freedom Day, we can look to courageous Americans who have stood up for their faith and freedom for inspiration to stay the course in the midst of the growing persecution facing religious Americans.

Let’s consider a few:

Twenty-first-century America seems to have a particular problem with Catholic women religious. But, as our secularist thought police have discovered, you must never underestimate the power of a determined nun. The Little Sisters of the Poor are a wonderful order of Catholic nuns dedicated to caring for the elderly poor, and they wouldn’t bow to the Obama administration’s demand that they cover abortion pills in their employee health-insurance plans. The Sisters, joined by a number of other faith-inspired organizations, have been repeated victors at the Supreme Court.

Another Catholic group — Catholic Social Services of Philadelphia — teamed up with long-time foster moms to keep the doors of their foster-care placement agency open; it’s part of a mission to help the poor that actually dates back 200 years. Doctrinaire bullies employed by the city of Philadelphia tried to put a stop to that. They demanded that the agency certify same-sex married couples as foster parents, something the Catholic agency could not do and still operate consistent with church teaching. And the agency won. The Supreme Court was unanimous in its decision in favor of the agency and the foster moms.

But today’s religious-freedom warriors aren’t just religious orders or church-run entities. Individual Americans — like a high-school football coach, a website designer, and a mailman — are also successfully standing up for the right to live consistent with their beliefs.

And yet we can see the continuing assault on religion in:

• Attacks on Catholic churches by pro-abortion vandals in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
• And antisemitic hatred and violence in the aftermath of the brutal killings in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

It’s also in government restrictions on:

• The right to worship during the pandemic — there was some really grotesque discrimination, for example favoring casinos but hammering churches.
• Efforts to keep religious schools from participating in government-sponsored scholarship programs and vouchers or school-choice programs.
• And increasing demands for ideological conformity in the workplace, in schools, and (as mentioned above) even at home.

Let’s look at what’s happening in the workplace. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has proposed enforcement guidance for private employers, insisting they parrot the “personal pronouns” of gender ideologues. If you have religious objections, you’re guilty of harassment.

We can see religious discrimination at work in public schools. Take, for example, Montgomery County, Md., where the county school board demands that very young children be exposed to storybooks promoting gender dysphoria and other highly sexualized material. Parents from a range of faith traditions — Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews — want to opt out their children from exposure to these materials. Their school board refuses. So these parents have courageously brought a federal lawsuit. They lost in the lower court but are appealing. Fingers crossed.

Are people of faith being singled out? It does appear that way sometimes. Look at how the FBI went after traditionalist Catholics — and it doesn’t help, frankly, that the Vatican is stigmatizing Catholics who prefer the older forms of worship.

I’ve heard people (whom I really respect) argue that rather than asserting claims to religious freedom, we should be making “truth arguments” to push back against progressive policy priorities that favor Big Abortion and gender ideology at the expense of rights of conscience and religious freedom. I understand their concern, but I’d like to remind them that people of faith who are unwilling to submit to these demands and reject religious teaching do so precisely because they believe the teaching is true.

Our robust defense of religious freedom — whether here at home or abroad — goes to the heart of what it means to be human. Many people of faith are facing unimaginable persecution in countries such as Nigeria, Nicaragua, and China, and our moral obligation is to defend the right to believe for everyone, everywhere.