If it were up to the Democrats, religion would be a one-day-a-week kind of thing: you can attend your service on Sunday, get all that faith stuff out of your system, and then leave it on the church doorstep.
Presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke has become this sentiment’s most vocal advocate, threatening to remove religious organizations’ tax exemptions if they refuse to endorse same-sex marriage. Many of the other Democratic candidates disavowed O’Rourke’s statement, which he also tried to walk back, with little success.
O’Rourke is, at the very least, honest about his intentions. But the evidence of the party’s growing hostility toward religion is everywhere. Look at Colorado baker Jack Phillips, Minnesota videographers Carl and Angel Larsen, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. They’ve seen firsthand what the “militant secularists,” as Attorney General Bill Barr dubbed them, can do if given the chance.
Let’s not forget the Democratic National Committee’s recent resolution endorsing the “religiously unaffiliated Americans” who “overwhelmingly share the Democratic Party’s values.” There’s nothing wrong with welcoming secular Americans into the fold, but the DNC did so at the expense of religious Americans who, the party claims, attempt to use “religious liberty” as a “weapon against progressive reforms.”
The problem is not just that Democrats want to drive religion out of the public square, as Tim Carney writes today; it’s that they want to replace it with their own kind of god: the government. That’s why demagogues like O’Rourke don’t need to think twice before threatening to use the IRS as a weapon against churches, mosques, and temples that don’t conform to social justice dogma. To the secular Left, that’s the entire purpose of government, to enforce conformity.
This is why it’s more important than ever for the government to issue a strong rebuke to the leftists who would use it as a weapon against liberty. Sen. Ben Sasse has given Congress the perfect opportunity to do so with a resolution that would force the Democratic-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate to go on record about whether the government does or does not have the right to violate the freedom of religion and conscience.
“This isn’t a Republican or Democratic premise, it is an American idea that we condemn politicians who say they’re going to police other people’s religious beliefs,” Sasse said on the Senate floor. “Government doesn’t rifle through your pastor’s or your rabbi’s sermon notes, government doesn’t tell your clerics what they can or can’t say, government doesn’t tell your religious leaders how they will perform their services, government doesn’t tell you where or when you will worship … Government doesn’t get to do any of that in this country because we recognize that government is not God.”
The Democratic Party will likely ignore Sasse’s resolution in the same way it ignored his Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Religious discrimination is already illegal, they’ll argue, therefore a resolution condemning it is redundant and unnecessary.
But it is necessary, as so many Democrats’ public actions demonstrate. Soon enough, radical proposals like O’Rourke’s will become the Democratic status quo in the same way Medicare for All went from being a fringe position to a trademark policy featured in just about every 2020 Democrat’s platform.
Congressional Democrats who say otherwise should stop and take a hard look at the direction in which their party is moving. Soon, they’ll have to decide for themselves which god to worship.
