SCOTUS gets it right on COVID restrictions for churches

 The Supreme Court decision invalidating portions of an Executive Order by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo earlier this week was a triumph for religious liberty. It is also a good example of why fears that pandemic restrictions will lead to broader tyranny are unfounded.

The ruling in the case of Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York v. Andrew M. Cuomo came the day before Thanksgiving and was a response to two requests for relief by the Roman Catholic Diocese and Agudath Israel of America. At issue was Gov. Cuomo’s Executive Order that established “red” and “orange” zones where attendance at religious services was limited to no more than 10 and 25 people respectively.

One problem with Cuomo’s Order was that businesses deemed “essential” had no limit on crowd sizes. Additionally, the definition of “essential” included “acupuncture facilities, campgrounds, garages, as well as many whose services are not limited to those that can be regarded as essential, such as all plants manufacturing chemicals and microelectronics and all transportation facilities.”

Further, both religious groups had complied with public health guidelines as well as implementing additional preventive measures. Both groups noted that they had conducted services at 25 to 33 percent capacity for months and had no outbreaks.

In a 5-4 decision, the majority concurred with the unsigned order that ruled in favor of the religious groups. Justices Neal Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice John Roberts wrote separate concurring opinions while Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan joined in a dissent.

The opinion is brief and strikes a balanced tone, first establishing the rules on which the relief was ordered. The ruling states that ” because the challenged restrictions are not ‘neutral’ and of ‘general applicability,’ they must satisfy ‘strict scrutiny,’ and this means that they must be ‘narrowly tailored’ to serve a ‘compelling’ state interest.”

The Court agreed that “stemming the spread of COVID–19 is unquestionably a compelling interest,” but noted that the Executive Order was “far more restrictive than any COVID–related regulations that have previously come before the Court, much tighter than those adopted by many other jurisdictions hard-hit by the pandemic, and far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus at the applicants’ services.”

The Court further noted that New York admitted that department stores, which were not subject to the crowd-size restrictions could “literally
have hundreds of people shopping there on any given day” and that “the Governor has stated that factories and schools have contributed to the spread of COVID–19 but they are treated less harshly” than religious organizations.

Unlike many churches around the country, the Court found that the Diocese and Agudath Israel had taken more stringent safety measures than were required by the state. These precautions gave both groups an admirable safety record and helped to sway the Court that Cuomo’s Order was too restrictive.

“Not only is there no evidence that the applicants have
contributed to the spread of COVID–19 but there are many
other less restrictive rules that could be adopted to minimize the risk to those attending religious services,” the decision stated.

The majority found that Cuomo’s restrictions on churches would result in irreparable harm to the First Amendment and were not in the public interest, quoting precedent that held, “The loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.”

However, the Court did not give religious groups carte blanche to claim persecution when their activities are restricted. The ruling pointed out that pandemic restrictions are not unconstitutional on their face, but rather that health and the public interest must be balanced with the Constitution.

“Members of this Court are not public health experts, and we should respect the judgment of those with special expertise and responsibility in this area,” the decision stated. “But even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten. The restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty. Before allowing this to occur, we have a duty to conduct a serious examination of the need for such a drastic measure.”

So what should we, as church members and constitutionalists take from this ruling? The most important takeaway is that temporary public health restrictions in a pandemic are not unconstitutional but they must be evenhanded and defensible based on the local situation. The Court will allow emergency orders to combat the spread of the virus but it will strike down broad overreach. This is good news for those who have worried for the past eight months that Coronavirus restrictions would usher in permanent tyranny.

Second, governments cannot single out religious organizations for stricter limitations than secular businesses and groups unless the rules are narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. The First Amendment offers protection for the exercise of religion, but this protection is not unlimited.

I believe that if the New York churches had been shown to be superspreaders in the community that the Court might have handed down a very different ruling. Unfortunately, many churches around the country are not able to meet the safety standards of the Brooklyn Diocese and Agudath Israel. Many religious organizations around the country have been shown to be hotspots for viral outbreaks. These churches might find that targeted restrictions on their services would be upheld by courts that look at the facts of the situation and find a compelling public interest in slowing the outbreak.

If you’re are a pastor or are on the governing body of your church, you should absolutely take the Coronavirus pandemic seriously. You should exercise caution to protect both your members and your community. If your local government places draconian restrictions on your church, you can challenge those restrictions in court and you’ll have a better chance of winning if your church has not been the source of a COVID cluster.

Originally published on The First TV

Today Was A Good Day For Religious Liberty At The Supreme Court

In a long-awaited decision, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Little Sisters of the Poor in a case that dates back to the Obama Administration’s controversial contraception mandate. The Court found that the Administrative Procedures Act did not conflict the with the Court’s previous ruling that established two interim rules for answering religious exemption questions.

The first rule held that church exemptions were expanded to include an employer who “objects . . . based on its sincerely held religious beliefs,” “to its establishing, maintaining, providing, offering, or arranging [for] overage or payments for some or all contraceptive services.” The second rule established a “similar ‘moral exemption’ for employers with sincerely held moral objections to providing some or all forms of contraceptive coverage.”

The 7-2 decision was authored by Clarence Thomas and joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. Justice Kagan authored a concurring opinion which, was joined by Justice Breyer. Justice Ginsburg’s dissent was joined by Sotomayor.

The ruling is a good one and was not unexpected. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act requires the government to use the least intrusive means when religious freedom must be limited for the public good. It is difficult to argue that the needs of the nation require that Catholic nuns, who take a vow of chastity, must buy health insurance with birth control, which is against their longstanding religious beliefs.

It turned out to be a really good day for religious liberty at the Supreme Court because the Little Sisters ruling was followed by another favorable decision in Our Lady of Guadalupe School. This case asked whether religious schools could terminate employees using the “ministerial exception” even if they did not hold a ministerial job title.

The Court ruled that religious school teachers are ministers even if they do not hold a job title that includes the word “minister.” The ruling, written by Justice Alito, noted that teachers at religious schools “performed vital religious duties, such as educating their students in the Catholic faith and guiding their students to live their lives in accordance with that faith” and that the “schools expressly saw them as playing a vital role in carrying out the church’s mission.”

Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Breyer, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh joined Alito in another 7-2 decision. Justices Thomas filed concurrences, which was joined by Justice Gorsuch. Justice Sotomayor was joined in her dissent by Justice Ginsburg.

The Guadalupe ruling was also a good one. It is axiomatic that religious institutions should be able to exercise control over who they employ in positions of leadership and instruction.

Other rulings are still to come. These include the eagerly-awaited decisions on President Trump’s tax returns.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump's Stealth Appointment of Radical Lesbian To EEOC

President Trump has garnered much praise for his judicial nominations, but another nomination made by the president has largely escaped notice until now. Last December, in the midst of the fight over the tax reform bill, Donald Trump quietly renominated a radical Obama appointee to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission.

Newsweek reported at the time that Trump's appointment of Chai Feldblum to a second term at the EEOC means that she will keep her job until 2023. Feldblum, a militant lesbian, was appointed to the agency that polices workplace discrimination by Barack Obama in 2010.

During her tenure so far, Feldblum has worked to expand homosexuality as a protected class at the expense of religious liberty. Bloomberg News once referred to her as “Washington’s strongest champion for the idea that anti-gay and anti-trans biases constitute discrimination ‘because of sex.’”

Ben Shapiro at Daily Wire compiled a list of quotes from Ms. Feldblum that should alarm anyone concerned about religious freedom:

• When sexual orientation and religious freedom come into conflict, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win… Sexual liberty should win in most cases. There can be a conflict between religious liberty and sexual liberty, but in almost all cases the sexual liberty should win because that’s the only way that the dignity of gay people can be affirmed in any realistic manner.”
  
• “Just as we do not tolerate private racial beliefs that adversely affect African-Americans in the commercial arena, even if such beliefs are based on religious views, we should similarly not tolerate private beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity that adversely affect the ability of LGBT people to live in the world.”
  
• “For all my sympathy for the evangelical Christian couple who may wish to run a bed and breakfast from which they can exclude unmarried straight couples and all gay couples, this is a point where I believe the ‘zero sum’ nature of the game inevitably comes into play. And in making the decision in this zero sum game, I am convinced society should come down on the side of protecting the liberty of LGBT people.”
  
• “I believe granting liberty to gay people advances a compelling government interest, that such an interest cannot be adequately advanced if ‘pockets of resistance’ to a societal statement of equality are permitted to flourish, and hence that a law that permits no individual exceptions based on religious beliefs will be the least restrictive means of achieving the goal of liberty for gay people.”
  

Feldblum clearly believes that sexual freedom, which is not mentioned in the Constitution, should trump religious freedom, which is clearly defined in the First Amendment. The obvious question is why President Trump, who claims to be a proponent of religious liberty, would make an appointment that would set up such a clear conflict between two competing freedoms.



So far, there are no obvious answers to President Trump's reasons for keeping Feldblum on the job. The White House had no comment on the appointment in December and seems to have had none since.




Originally published on The Resurgent

No Surprise That Evangelicals Are Standing By Roy Moore

In the wake of last week’s revelations about Alabama Republican Roy Moore, a new poll shows that more than 70 percent of evangelical voters in Alabama still support the man accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl. About half of the evangelicals who still support Moore say that the charges make them more likely to vote Republican, a statistic that shows how little regard Republican voters hold for the mainstream media.

The poll by JMC Analytics found that 37 percent of evangelicals are more likely to vote for Roy Moore in the wake of the sex scandal than before. An additional 34 percent said that the allegations made no difference in their vote. Only 28 percent of evangelicals were less likely to vote for Moore after the revelations. The same poll showed that 38 percent of voters at large were less likely to vote for Moore.

The poll’s findings will be assumed to show hypocrisy on the part of evangelical voters, but this isn’t necessarily true. CNN exit polls show that 56 percent of Protestant voters voted for Donald Trump. In contrast to Trump, Moore’s sex scandal is more easily explained away.

Roy Moore tacitly admitted to Sean Hannity that he dated girls “as young as 17.” At the same time, Moore called the more damaging allegation that he improperly touched a 14-year-old girl “completely false.” In contrast, evangelicals have already voted en masse for Donald Trump, who admitted to sexual assault in a taped conversation on “Access Hollywood.”

In Trump’s case, the tape was made in 2005 and other allegations of sexual misconduct were even more recent. The allegations against Roy Moore are almost 40 years old. Moore has been happily married (to the same woman, unlike Donald Trump) for the past 32 years. Moore’s wife, Kayla, told Breitbart that they met when she was 23.   

With no allegations of sexual misbehavior in more than three decades, it is easy to argue that Roy Moore is a changed man. Christians believe in in the power of God to change hearts and lives. They also believe in repentance and forgiveness. It is much easier to believe that Roy Moore is a changed man who has repented of his long-ago actions than Donald Trump.

The second reason that evangelicals have not abandoned Roy Moore is a simple one. They believe that Democrats are a bigger threat than someone who may have exercised bad – and, in at least one case, criminal – judgment four decades ago.

Democrats have worked painstakingly hard to convince the country that they are no friend to Bible-believing Christians. The list of attacks on Christians by liberal Democrats is long and includes a legal campaign against the Little Sisters of the Poor, political assaults on photographers and bakers who hold a traditional view of marriage, attacks on freedom of speech for pro-life activists and campaigns to remove Christian symbols from nearly aspect of public life. In a viral clip from the 2012 Democratic convention, Democrat delegates even booed the inclusion of God in their party platform.

Roy Moore was directly involved in two incidents which were perceived by Alabama evangelicals to be assaults on their religious liberty. In 2003, Moore was removed from his position as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for his refusal to remove a 10 Commandments monument. Moore worked his way back to the state high court, but was removed again in 2015 after refusing to order probate judges to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Critics might argue that Moore’s actions were self-serving and violated his oath to uphold the rule of law, but they also made him a hero to the state’s evangelical voters.  

Now, after decades of having their religious beliefs attacked by the left, Alabama Christians see their champion, Roy Moore, under assault from the same liberals who have celebrated as courts chipped away at their religious liberty. Moore’s habit of tilting at windmills may not have been successful, but, like Donald Trump, he is viewed as a man who fights back. Many evangelicals will even refuse to believe the charges, in spite of Moore’s admission, because they view the Washington Post and other mainstream media as fake news.

Ultimately, Alabama evangelicals will have to decide between an accused child molester and Democrat. Many of them openly admit that they consider the Democrat to be worse. Considering how Democrats have treated evangelicals, this should not be a surprise.  

Originally published On the Resurgent

Trump Administration to End Obama's Contraception Mandate

One of the most egregious examples of a federal attack on religious liberty in recent years may be about to come to an end. There are reports that the Trump Administration is preparing new regulations that will end the birth control mandate established by the Obama Administration as part of the Affordable Care Act.

The New York Times reports that new rules, which could be issued on Friday, would offer exemptions to certain employers who have moral objections to providing insurance that includes contraceptives to their employees. The new rules would reportedly cover employers and insurers who hold “sincerely held religious beliefs” or “moral convictions” against providing contraception.

The mandate was not part of the ACA, but was the product of regulations by the Department of Health and Human Services. While the Obama Administration did provide a religious exemption from the rules, Cardinal Daniel Dinardo noted in 2011, “Jesus himself, or the Good Samaritan of his famous parable, would not qualify as ‘religious enough’ for the exemption….”

Many private employers also objected to the fact that the regulation required them to purchase insurance for their employees that included not only contraceptives, but drugs that induce abortions. Others, such as employers who are Catholic, objected to contraception in general.

The mandate prompted several lawsuits. The Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic religious charity made of nuns who practice celibacy, went to the Supreme Court to seek relief from the mandate. In 2015, Hobby Lobby won its lawsuit and the government was forced to amend its rule to provide religious exemptions. In the final rule, insurers were still forced to provide coverage for these employees, but the employers were not billed for the contraceptive coverage.

President Trump promised to end the revised mandate during the campaign, but so far has not taken steps to do so. In August, Daniel Dinardo, now the Catholic Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, wrote an op-ed in The Hill asking why the Obama-era policy was still in place.

It is important to note that changing the contraception mandate will not ban contraception in any way. It would merely mean that employers would not be forced to pay for drugs that they find morally objectionable. Their employees will still be able to get birth control and abortifacient prescriptions, they would just have to bear the cost, about $50 per month, on their own.

If President Trump does decide to roll back the Obama-era mandate, he will have fulfilled an important part of his promise to protect religious liberty and freedom of conscience. The big question is why he waited so long to do so.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Why do Christians (still) rally around Trump?

As Donald Trump plummets in the polls like a brick dropped from the Trump Tower, I have to wonder why Christians are rallying to his defense while Mormons are willing to stand up to him. After the release of Trump’s sex tape last Friday, Utah’s Republican delegation to Congress was quick to denounce the party nominee and withdraw their endorsements. As a Southern Baptist, I expected many evangelical Christians to follow suit. I was wrong.

According to Christianity Today, only one Christian leader repudiated Trump. Instead, many evangelicals have rallied to defend Trump. Dr. James Dobson denounced Trump’s comments and then quickly pivoted to attack Hillary Clinton on abortion and religious liberty, as did Ralph Reed. Franklin Graham said that Trump’s comments “cannot be defended” and does not endorse any candidate, but said that “the most important issue of this election is the Supreme Court.” Sam Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference said that God uses “broken people to accomplish great things.”

Many Christians choose to emphasize God’s forgiveness. What they forget in their rush to forgive Trump is that forgiveness requires repentance (Luke 17:3). Has Donald Trump repented? There is no sign that he has. Last year, Trump was unclear on whether he had ever asked for forgiveness and said that he tried “not to make mistakes where I have to ask for forgiveness” according to the Christian Post. The Bible says that all, including Trump, have sinned (Romans 3:23). When asked about repentance, he said, “I think repenting is terrific.”

I shouldn’t be surprised that Christians are excusing Trump’s behavior. They’ve been doing it for the past year. Most of the discussions about Trump’s sex tape discuss it in a vacuum, as if it is the one blemish on an otherwise spotless record. In reality, I realized long before the revelations of the “Access Hollywood” tape that Trump’s career had been a long history of corruption and lies. He had bragged about cheating on his wife. He had allegedly committed fraud with Trump University. He had boasted in the Republican primary about paying elected officials for favors. Trump was vulgar, insulting and a fountain of false statements. Christians loved him.

Franklin Graham reportedly compared Trump to Moses and David and said that he was better than the alternative. Jerry Falwell, Jr. endorsed Trump over all other Republican candidates last January. Christians compared Trump to the Biblical king, Nebuchadnezzar and pointed out that God used ungodly men to accomplish his will. Eric Metaxas, the author of a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Christian martyr who died resisting Hitler, said in Christian Post that “sometimes you have to hold your nose and vote for the person who is going to do the least damage or who is going to pull you back from the brink.”

My neighbor, Carter, had a large “Veterans for Trump” sign in his living room and gushed, “I think we need a successful businessman.” Jay, one of my coworkers and a devout Christian, would watch Trump press conferences and chortle, “I love this guy.”

To be fair, not all Christians loved Trump. There were a few who stood on principle and told the truth about the “truth-teller.” Two Southern Baptists, Russell Moore and Albert Mohler, were among the few who spoke out against Trump early on. The Religion News Service lists more, such as Max Lucado and Erick Erickson. Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wisc.) penned “the Evangelical Case Against Donald Trump” last February.

In a supremely ironic incident, Mark DeMoss, a board member at Liberty University, was forced to resign after criticizing Donald Trump’s speech there. I had thought that religious liberty and the freedom to speak your mind were major reasons that Christians supported Trump. Those liberties apparently do not extend to opponents of Trump, at least at Liberty University.

Most of my Christian friends who support Trump seem to do so for three reasons. First, is the Supreme Court. Never mind that Trump backed away from the list of conservative jurists that he promised to use to fill court vacancies. Second, is his purported pro-life platform. Never mind that Trump was the only Republican candidate who supported Planned Parenthood throughout most of the primary, only changing his mind last month. Third, is religious liberty. Never mind that Trump refused to support the First Amendment Defense Act and that he seems disagree with Christians on gay rights. Trump’s commitment to religious liberty seems to not extend past allowing churches to be politically active. Fourth, when all other defenses fail, Trump is “not Hillary.”

In fact, Trump is so “not Hillary” that his supporters seem willing to excuse any sin on that basis. I have watched friends and colleagues that I knew and respected reluctantly board “the Trump Train.” Often, when they do, it’s like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Once they commit to Trump, all moral concerns fail. No matter what Trump does, it’s all about defeating Hillary because no one is worse than Hillary.

They quickly fall into the moral equivalence trap. They criticize Hillary’s lies, but never mention Trump’s. The condemn Bill Clinton’s behavior, but make excuses for Trump’s. They argue against Hillary’s liberalism, but dismiss Trump’s. One friend, Martin, dismisses Trump’s outlandish and insulting comments as saying “silly things.” Any criticism of Trump leads to the accusation that I must be a closet Hillary supporter and a liberal. They are no longer the people that I had known and respected, using logical fallacies in an attempt to defend the indefensible.

But I still wonder why Mormons, who share many moral beliefs with Christians, are much more outspoken against Donald Trump. It may be because Trump poisoned the well against Mormons during the primary. The socially conservative sect is at odds with Trump’s crude, profane, materialistic lifestyle. As Religion News Service points out, most Mormons are also not anti-immigrant, their forebears having been forced to flee other parts of the country for their religious beliefs. When Trump proposed his Muslim ban, the politically neutral LDS Church responded with a statement on religious freedom. Trump also has made statements that Mormons consider insulting.

While Trump was alienating Mormons, he was pandering to Christians. Early on, he made the promise that people could say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” if he was elected. But haven’t we always? Buzzfeed revealed in August that Trump needed prepping from his handlers to know how to answer questions about Christianity and social conservatism. An early tipoff of his insincerity was his “Two Corinthians” flub. Trump blamed Family Research Council Tony Perkins for his gaffe according to CNN.

If Donald Trump is biblically illiterate so are most Americans. That is another reason Christians have been slow to offer opposition. A recent survey by Lifeway found that most Americans believe the Bible, they just don’t know what it says. The survey found that, as a whole, evangelical Christians actually knew less about Christian beliefs than Americans at large.

If Christians were reading their Bibles, they might know that Paul commanded them “not to associate with sexually immoral people” (1 Corinthians 5:9) and that “bad company corrupts good character” (1 Corinthians 15:33). As Donald Trump bellowed, “I alone can fix it” at the Republican National Convention, they might have thought about Jesus’ warning that “false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect” (Matthew 24:24).

One bright spot is that evangelical women seem to be waking up. The Christian Post reports that author Beth Moore and Chelsen Vicari, Evangelical Action Director at the Institute of Religion, have both condemned Trump’s lewd remarks.

In another Christian Post piece, Julie Roys, a host for the Moody Radio Network, says, “I honestly don't know what makes me more sick. Listening to Trump brag about groping women or listening to my fellow evangelicals defend him.” She also calls the prospect of Hillary Clinton “a disaster of historic proportions.”

“Donald Trump may do less damage to the country than Hillary,” Roys wrote, “but he's done far worse damage to the evangelical church than anyone in recent history. And let's remember, the church — not politics — is the only real hope of reforming the character of this nation and saving it from destruction. That's why the witness of the church is simply not worth trading for a political victory.”

Roys is right. Trump has revealed many Christians to be moral hypocrites. This has hurt their standing in their communities. On a business trip to Atlantic City last spring, my friend Rob, who is an atheist, gleefully snapped pictures of the Trump Taj Mahal. He said that he wanted to use the photos to show Christians who they were campaigning for. The character of many Christians will remain tarnished long after the election is over.

Roys acknowledges the difference between a reluctant vote for Trump and actively making excuses for him. “If you feel you must vote for him to prevent a Clinton presidency, then go ahead, plug your nose and vote,” she writes. “But please, don't argue like Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition that ‘a 10-year-old tape of a private conversation’ should ‘rank low’ on our "hierarchy of concerns.”

After the election, when the smoke clears and the Trump supporters wake up to the hangover of four years of Hillary Clinton, elected because of their unfaltering support for an extremely flawed, dishonest candidate, maybe Christian Trumpers will realize what they have wrought. Their defense of Trump’s immoral behavior has degraded the whole culture and done serious damage to American Christianity. The church has become hot for politics and “lukewarm” on Jesus and morality. It may be time for a rebuke.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Evan McMullin on the issues

EvanMcMullin.com

This is the second of a two-part series in which we present Evan McMullin's platform in his own words, drawn from a series of interviews. The interview sources are linked in part one, which we published yesterday. Today we present Evan McMullin on the issues and focus on domestic policy.

On the Second Amendment: On Now This, McMullin said, “I am a supporter of the Second Amendment. I think it is important to our freedoms and liberties here in the United States. I am a gun owner. I believe in responsible gun ownership. I think to own a weapon is to assume some very serious responsibilities I believe that we have to have a better, more constructive dialogue on this issue. I’m a supporter of the Second Amendment. I would like to decrease gun violence. I think there are many ways to do that while we still protect our rights.”

On judicial appointments: Louise Mensch of Heat Street asked whether McMullin would appoint Ted Cruz to the Supreme Court. “I’m not making any commitments about who I would or would not appoint,” McMullin replied, “but I will tell you that I will appoint originalists. In the question that involves what I think about Roe v. Wade, I will appoint pro-life justices.

On entitlements: “Entitlements are pushing us further and further into debt,” he said on Bloomberg. “Our debts are larger and larger. Our deficits are larger and larger. We have to do something to get them on a sustainable path. We have to keep our commitments to our elderly, our seniors today, but we have to phase in some reforms for future retirees.”

On religious freedom: “I believe in libertarian ideas in a sense that individuals need to be more empowered in our country. The power needs to be shifted back closer to the people. Those are consistent with libertarian ideas, but part of that is religious liberty. Our country was founded in part on that and we can’t have a president who doesn’t understand that, especially in this time when we really need to, I think, ensure that religious liberties are protected.”

When asked about his stance against religious persecution, McMullin said, “This is a driving principle for me. We’re a nation of 330 million people and geographically we are also very large. A lot of people have different ideas, they come from different countries, themselves or past generations. We are a diverse, pluralistic country and you must have tolerance as a result of that. E pluribus Unum. This was our original, unofficial motto until, I think, the ‘50s, that conveyed the idea that there are many of us with many differences among us, [but] that we are together still as one country. We need to go back to that and realize that we are not going to agree on everything, all of us on the right and left and center, but we need to respect everybody’s ability to live the way they want to live and to be one, united, in defense of those freedoms.”

On why people should vote for him: “I’ve spent my life avoiding the limelight and seeking opportunities to serve. Donald Trump has spent his life avoiding opportunities to serve and seeking the limelight.”