Thursday, April 25, 2024

Trump Can Destroy Hillary Tonight By Exposing Her Radical Beliefs on Religious Freedom

Donald Trump (photo credit: Disney | ABC Television Group via Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0)
Donald Trump (photo credit: Disney | ABC Television Group via Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0)

Donald Trump has an incredible opportunity tonight. With momentum on his side, and with critical swing states shifting in his direction, he has the ability to convince millions of undecided voters to support him. The best way he can do that is by exposing Hillary Clinton’s extreme positions.

Voters are generally aware of her corruption and her involvement in dozens of scandals. They understand intuitively that she is not trustworthy. But do they know about her support for radical leftist policies that would make Che Guevara blush?

In a speech in April 2015, Clinton told a feminist audience, “Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed” in order to allow for more abortion.

This anti-American idea that “religious beliefs have to be changed” is not new. Like most progressives, Hillary Clinton finds religion to be an annoying pest that gets in the way of promoting progressive orthodoxy. When the Clinton campaign says “Love Trumps Hate” on their bumper stickers, what they really mean is that modern progressive beliefs about gay marriage and gender ideology should trump anything written in a book written thousands of years ago.

That’s their attitude. Faith should submit to political ideology. It’s completely antithetical to what people with sincerely held religious beliefs actually believe — that political principles are born out of faith.

Understandably, given this attitude, Clinton sees the First Amendment — and really, religion itself — as a roadblock to progressive utopia. It has to go.

Clinton opposes the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), important legislation that would protect people of faith from government persecution. FADA strengthens protections for conscientious objectors who want to avoid materially participating in wedding ceremonies with which they morally disagree.

Clinton argues that this amounts to discrimination and has little to do with religious freedom. This again gets to the root of a fundamental disagreement — progressives don’t want the First Amendment to apply in the public square; instead, they want it limited to houses of worship. This, of course, completely violates both the spirit and the letter of the law in the First Amendment, but suppressing religious beliefs has become the modern position of the Democratic Party.

Photo credit: Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Photo credit: Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

On her website, Clinton promises to work with Congress to pass the so-called “Equality Act” into law. Ryan T. Anderson has a fantastic primer on the Equality Act over at The Daily Signal, but in short, this legislation would force all public entities to submit to progressive sexual orthodoxy or face the full force of government legal action. The Equality Act would result in the shutdown of every Christian school that refused to let biological males shower with young girls, every Christian adoption agency that believed marriage was a holy sacrament given by God celebrating the life-creating unity of one man and one woman, and every Christian health care organization that refused to materially participate in abortion — Catholic hospitals, crisis pregnancy centers, you name it. It could even lead to the elimination of tax-exempt statuses for churches, forcing houses of worship to shut their doors as well.

In other words, the Equality Act is a backdoor way to repeal the First Amendment. And Hillary Clinton supports it enthusiastically.

Trump needs to vocalize this contrast tonight. He supports religious freedom. He believes churches should be protected. He wants to keep Christian schools and hospitals open.

Most Americans agree with Trump on this issue. Few agree with Clinton. That’s why it is so important to make this distinction clear.

Terry Schilling is the executive director of American Principles Project.

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