Justice Dept. creates task force on ‘religious liberty’

The U.S. attorney general has established a task force that civil rights advocates say will be used to sanction and further discrimination against LGBTQ people and other minorities.

Jeff Sessions announced the task force July 30, during a summit attended by prominent opponents of equality.

The attorney general, from a transcript of his address, told attendees, “A dangerous movement, undetected by many, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom. There can be no doubt. This is no little matter. It must be confronted and defeated.”

He also said, “This president and this Department of Justice are determined to protect and even advance this magnificent heritage,” referring to religious liberty.

Sessions said he’s issued guidance on how government agencies can apply religious protections. He also vowed to prosecute people who threatened religious liberty, to keep going to court and to create the Religious Liberty Task Force, because “as the people in this room know, you have to practice what you preach.”

Outcry quickly followed, as “religious liberty” has been used to by the Trump administration and the Christian right to defend discrimination all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Though freedom of religion is a core American value, religious exemptions from adhering to nondiscrimination protections are not,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of GLAAD, a national LGBTQ group. 

Ellis called Sessions’ announcement “yet another example of the Trump administration’s anti-LGBTQ agenda as they seek to weave protections for those seeking anti-LGBTQ religious exemptions into the government.”

Jesse Panuccio — an attorney for the 2010 Proposition 8 campaign against same-sex marriage in California who is now acting associate attorney general — is to lead the task force. 

Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights group, said July 30, “Over the last 18 months, Donald Trump, Mike Pence and Jeff Sessions have engaged in a brazen campaign to erode and limit the rights of LGBTQ people in the name of religion. The attorney general standing shoulder-to-shoulder … with anti-LGBTQ extremists tells you everything you need to know about what today’s announcement was really all about.”