What 'Politico' Didn’t Print

I was interviewed by Politico writer Josh Gerstein on Friday. He wanted to know why Focus on the Family Action was concerned about the following events: 1) President Barack Obama’s speech to the Human Rights Campaign; 2) President Obama’s nomination of Professor Chai Feldblum to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; and 3) Kevin Jennings’ appointment to the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools.

While I appreciate his effort to include our perspective in the article, I was disappointed to see that he left out the main point: For us, this is all about religious freedom.

I told Gerstein our top concern is the erosion of religious liberty. Through these recent appointments — and through pledges made to the largest homosexual-advocacy group in the nation — President Obama is pandering to activists who want to silence Christians, not only at work, but in public education and political life, in general.

This is very frightening to people of faith.

Let’s coinsider the three events one at a time:

President Obama’s speech to the Human Rights Campaign:  

Among other things, he pledged to eradicate a federal law defending marriage. We need only look to Massachusetts, the first state to legalize full-fledged gay “marriage,” to understand the threat this poses to both parental rights and religious freedoms. Parents in that state are now being told they can’t exempt their second graders from lessons about same-sex “marriage” — even if it conflicts with their deeply held religious convictions.

The intolerance of same-sex “marriage” advocates was on display during the debate over California’s Prop. 8, which defined marriage in the state constitution as the union of one man and one woman. Prop. 8 supporters were subjected to vehement blackballing and even physical attacks. Church buildings were defaced, and some people lost their jobs.

Nomination of Chai Feldblum:

The president nominated Georgetown law professor Chai Feldblum to serve on a commission that enforces the nation’s federal employment laws. This is disturbing considering that Feldblum has repeatedly stated that when it comes to a conflict between religious liberty and homosexual activists’ goals (or “sexual liberty” as she terms it), homosexual activists should win most of the time. This is not comforting to many faith-based business owners, such as Christian daycare operators who receive federal grants and don’t want to be forced to promote gay “marriage” to preschoolers.

Appointment of Kevin Jennings as "safe-schools” czar:

Jennings has publicly attacked a mainstream, Christian student group — Young Life – not to mention his 17-year track record of twisting “safe schools” into a tool for pushing a one-sided agenda into public schools that displays no tolerance for a Christian or socially conservative point of view.

The Politico article failed to mention these religious-freedom concerns, focusing instead on a litany of “civil rights” demands by homosexual-activist groups.

The untold story is the very real threat these policies pose to religious freedoms.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Read more from Candi Cushman and our other analysts.

Learn more about the agenda of Feldblum and Jennings.

Read the full Politico interview with Candi Cushman.

(NOTE: Referral to Web sites not produced by Focus on the Family Action is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of the sites' content.)