Twenty-five years after President Bill Clinton signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, most Americans don’t know about current aggressive efforts to amend RFRA into oblivion. In the last two months before the election, 50 House Democrats became new cosponsors on a bill gutting the 25-year-old Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That brought the total to 172 House Democrats, a solid majority of their party, who now support H.R. 3222. They are ready to undo RFRA as a prominent part of the agenda as their party takes control of the House. H.R. 3222 would declare that religious freedoms must yield when they run counter to the LGBTQ agenda or to other progressive causes such as abortion rights. Pushing this are progressive groups which claim that religious beliefs are just a cover for discrimination, bigotry, and hate. It’s all an about-face from Nov. 16, 1993, when President Bill Clinton signed RFRA after almost-unanimous approval by Congress. Only three nay votes had been cast. The turnaround dramatizes how culture and politics have changed in 25 years. Secular values have been given priority and religious freedoms have been narrowed. RFRA states that no federal law or policy can be allowed to substantially burden anyone’s […]

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