President Trump Signs Executive Order Protecting Religious Liberty

The order promises relief for the Little Sisters of the Poor, but fails to protect Christian business people who are compelled to participate in same-sex weddings.

By The Stream Published on May 4, 2017

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to protect religious freedom while hosting faith leaders at the White House for the National Day of Prayer. (James Robison, publisher of The Stream, was among those present.)

“No one should be censoring sermons,” Trump said as he fulfilled his campaign pledge with a ceremony at the Rose Garden Thursday. “We will not allow people of faith to be targeted, bullied or silenced again, and we will never stand for religious discrimination.”

The Executive Order on Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty opens with a general statement that religious freedoms will be protected and “vigorously promote[d]” in this administration.

The order loosens a provision of the tax code that prohibits groups such as churches from directly supporting or opposing candidates for public office. (To repeal the rule will require Congress’s action.)

In addition, the order directs the heads of Labor, Treasury and HHS to change their rules concerning the contraception mandate, in order to address religious objections.

This is the word that the Little Sisters of the Poor were waiting for.

“Today we are grateful for the President’s order and look forward to the agencies giving us an exemption so that we can continue caring for the elderly poor and dying as if they were Christ himself without the fear of government punishment,” said Mother Loraine, Mother Provincial of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is celebrating the relief Trump’s order will bring their clients.

“The President’s order makes clear that all federal agencies and lawyers must obey the law and respect religious liberty,” said Mark Rienzi, Senior Counsel at Becket. “As the Supreme Court’s orders show, it was unnecessary and illegal to impose this mandate on the Little Sisters and other religious organizations.”

“President Trump deserves credit for his order,” Rienzi said in a statement.

The order also directs the Attorney General to issue guidance on protecting religious freedom.

An earlier draft of the president’s order included language to protect religious artists and business-owners from being forced to take part in activities that violate their beliefs. This language would have protected florists and bakers who have been punished for refusing to serve same-sex weddings. That language is missing from this order. LGBT groups are protesting the protection for religious liberty regardless.

“President Trump’s efforts to promote religious freedom are thinly-veiled efforts to unleash his conservative religious base into the political arena while also using religion to discriminate,” ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero said in a statement. “It’s a dual dose of pandering to a base and denying reproductive care. We will see Trump in court, again.”

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 04: U.S. President Donald Trump is flanked by clergy members after signing an Executive Order on Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty, during a National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden at the White House, on May 4, 2017 in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 04: U.S. President Donald Trump is flanked by clergy members after signing an Executive Order on Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty, during a National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden at the White House, on May 4, 2017 in Washington, D.C.

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