Category Archives: Freedom

WASHINGTON The former U.S. religious freedom ambassador told a congressional subcommittee that leaked language of a proposed presidential executive order on religious liberty could cause constitutional problems.

I think it raises very serious equal protection issues, said Rabbi David Saperstein, who recently ended his tenure at the U.S. State Department.

According to The Nation, a leaked draft of a proposed executive order titled Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom shows that on issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion, gender identity and premarital sex, the Trump administration would allow exemptions for people with religious objections that are so broad it would legalize discrimination.

The language in that document says, Americans and their religious organizations will not be coerced by the Federal Government into participating in activities that violate their conscience.

Answering a question from Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., at a hearing Thursday, Saperstein said he was concerned the order could give government contractors discretion to refuse services based on their religious beliefs.

I think it raises significant constitutional problems, Saperstein told members of a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.

Nadler, who along with Saperstein has been instrumental in the passage of religious liberty legislation, said laws such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act are designed to shield people from government imposition of religious beliefs.

However, it should not be used as a sword to enable you to impose your religious belief on someone else, said the congressman, who raised examples of interracial or same-sex couples being refused at a restaurant by proprietors with religious objections.

Kim Colby, director of the Christian Legal Societys Center for Law and Religious Freedom, said after the hearing that Nadlers examples are misguided because civil rights laws regarding restaurant discrimination were set more than 50 years ago.

An executive order cant change a law that Congress has passed, said Colby, who also testified before the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice. So a lot of those hypotheticals just cant happen.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter to President Trump urging him to sign the draft executive order, calling it a positive step toward allowing all Americans to be able to practice their faith without severe penalties from the federal government.

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Constitutionality of leaked executive order on religious freedom called into question - Deseret News

American flag and old church steeple reflect separation of church and state Photo Credit: Bobkeenan Photography

To read press coverage about it, one might think that religious freedom is a concern only for religious and political conservatives, and not one of the most liberatory ideas in history. One would also think religious freedom and civil rights are at odds with one another. Indeed, U.S. history is filled with examples of such competing claims, as resistance to everything from African American civil rights to marriage equality have been cast as matters of religious freedom. But stepping back from the heat of our political moment, there is a different, more fully accurate, story to be told, one I think that as progressives, we need to know and be able to tell.

Religious freedom is a powerful ideathe stuff from which revolutions are sometimes made. It includes the right of individual conscienceto believe or not believe as we choose, without undue influence from government or powerful religious institutions, and to practice our beliefs free from the same constraints. Its no surprise that the first part of the First Amendment guarantees freedom of belief. The right to believe differently from the rich and powerful is a prerequisite for free speech and a free press. Grounding our politics, journalism, and scholarship in a clear understanding of what it means and where it came from could serve as both an inoculation and an answer to the distorted, self-serving claims of the Christian Right.

It was religious freedom that allowed for Quakers, evangelicals and Unitarians to lead the way in opposition to slavery in the 19th Century. Religious freedom also allowed Catholics and mainline Protestants to guide society in creating child labor laws early in the 20th Century, and later made it possible for religious groups and leaders to help forge wide and evolving coalitions to advance African American Civil Rights and womens equality, to oppose the Vietnam war, and eventually fight for LGBTQ civil and religious rights.

Such coalitions arent always easy. When North Carolina Disciples of Christ minister Rev. Dr. William Barber, a leader in the progressive Moral Mondays movement, was asked about squaring religious freedom and marriage equality, he looked to the lessons of history and the wisdom of his own religious tradition. Working within a coalition that had long included LGBTQ advocates, Barber noted that the Christian Right was trying to divide our ranks by casting doubt either among the LGBTQ community or among the African American community about whether our moral movement truly represented them.

In the last century the NAACP had faced a similar challenge over the question of restrictions on interracial marriage. They ultimately opposed the bans, he wrote, as a matter of upholding the moral and constitutional principle of equal protection under the law. Faced with yet another fear-based tactic today, Barber wrote, our movements response had to be the same. He found his response in the First Amendment, which guarantees the right of churches, synagogues, and mosques to discern for themselves what God says about marriage, free from governmental attempts to enforce its preferred religious doctrines.

The Revolutionary era Virginians who created our approach to religious freedom, understood religious freedom to be synonymous with the idea of the right of individual conscience. James Madison wrote that when the Virginia Convention of 1776 issued the Virginia Declaration of Rights (three weeks before the Declaration of Independence), the delegates removed any language about religious toleration and declared instead the freedom of conscience to be a natural and absolute right. Madison was joined in supporting the rights of conscience by evangelical Presbyterians and Baptists who also insisted on a separation of church and state for fear that mixing would corrupt both.

Invoking the words of the Founders may seem hokey or sound archaic to some. But they knew that the freedom they were seeking to establish was fragile, and likely to be opposed in the future. Understanding the thru-line that connects the struggles for religious freedom at the founding of the country to todays helps us fight to defend the principle from redefinition and cooptation.

Such an understanding helped the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 2016 when it issued a major report on issues involving religious exemptions from the law. "Religious liberty was never intended to give one religion dominion over other religions or a veto power over the civil rights and civil liberties of others," said Commission Chair Martin R. Castro, who also further denounced the use of religious liberty as a "code word" for "Christian supremacy."

The Commission found that overly broad religious exemptions from federal labor and civil rights laws undermine the purposes of these laws and urged that courts, legislatures, or executive agencies narrowly tailor any exemptions to address the need without diminishing the efficacy of the law.

Religious freedom advocates of the colonial era faced powerful entrenched interests who actively suppressed religious deviance and dissent that might upset their privileges. In the Virginia colony attendance was required at the Sunday services of the Church of England, and failure to attend was the most prosecuted crime in the colony for many years. Members of church vestries were also empowered to report religious crimes like heresy and blasphemy to local grand juries. Unsurprisingly, the wealthy planters and business owners who comprised the Anglican vestries were able to limit access to this pipeline to political power. Dissenters from these theocratic dictates were dealt with harshly. In the years running up to the Revolution, Baptists and other religious dissidents in Virginia were victims of vigilante violence. Men on horseback would often ride through crowds gathered to witness a baptism, historian John Ragosta reports. Preachers were horsewhipped and dunked in rivers and ponds in a rude parody of their baptism ritual Black attendees at meetings whether free or slave were subject to particularly savage beatings.

This was the context in which Jefferson drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1777, which took nearly a decade to become law. The statute effectively disestablished the Anglican Church as the state church of Virginia, curtailing its extraordinary powers and privileges. It also decreed that citizens are free to believe as they will and that this shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. The statute was the first in history to self-impose complete religious freedom and equality, and historians as well as Supreme Court justices widely regard it as the root of how the framers of the Constitution (and later the First Amendment) approached matters of religion and government.

The principle of religious equality under the law was a profoundly progressive stance against the advantages enjoyed and enforced by the ruling political and economic elites of the 18th Century. Then, for example, as John Ragosta writes in Religious Freedom: Jeffersons Legacy, Americas Creed, Marriages had to be consecrated by an Anglican minister, making children of dissenters who failed to marry within the Church of England (or pay the local Anglican priest for his cooperation) subject to claims of bastardy, with potentially serious legal consequences.

Such abuses may seem like a relic of the past, but in recent years some Christians have tried to outlaw the religious marriages of others. In 2012 Christian Right advocates in North Carolina sought to build on existing laws limiting marriages to heterosexual couples by amending the state constitution, using language that would effectively criminalize the performance of marriage ceremonies without a license. This meant that clergy from varied religious traditions, from Judaism to Christianity to Buddhism, would be breaking the law if they solemnized religious marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples. And the motive was explicitly religious. State Senator Wesley Meredith, for example, cited the Bible in explaining, We need to regulate marriage because I believe that marriage is between a man and woman.

This issue was part of the 2014 case General Synod of the United Church of Christ vs. Resinger, wherein a federal judge declared that laws that deny same-sex couples the right to marry in the state, prohibit recognition of legal same-sex marriages from elsewhere in the United States, or threatens clergy or other officiants who solemnize the union of same-sex couples with civil or criminal penalties were unconstitutional. It was an historic victory for a progressive version of religious liberty but one soundly rooted in the history of religious freedom. Clergy could now perform same-sex marriage ceremonies without fear of prosecution," said Heather Kimmel, an attorney for the UCC.

Jefferson and his contemporaries saw religious freedom as the key to disentangling ancient, mutually reinforcing relationships between the economic and political interests of aristocrats and the institutional imperatives of the church: what Jefferson called an unholy alliance of kings, nobles, and priestsmeaning clergy of any religionthat divided people in order to rule them. His Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was intended to put down the aristocracy of the clergy and restored to the citizens the freedom of the mind.

A quarter-millennium later, we are still struggling to defend religious freedom against erosion and assaults by powerful religious institutions and their agents inside and outside of government. Aspiring clerical aristocrats debase the idea of religious freedom when they use it as tool to seek exemptions from the generally applicable laws of the United Statesparticularly those that prohibit discrimination.

Religious freedom and civil rights are complementary values and legal principles necessary to sustain and advance equality for all. Like Rev. Barber, we must not fall for the ancient tactic of allowing the kings, nobles and priests of our time to divide and set us against one another.

We have come a long way since the revolutionaries who founded our country introduced one of the most powerfully democratic ideas in the history of the world. The struggle for religious freedom may never be complete, but it remains among our highest aspirations. And yet the kinds of forces that struggled both for and against religious freedom in the 18th Century are similar to those camps today. We are the rightful heirs of the constitutional legacy of religious freedom; the way is clear for us to find our voices and to reclaim our role.

This article will appear in the Winter issue of The Public Eye magazine.

Frederick Clarkson is a senior fellow at Political Research Associates and a member of the Public Eye editorial board. He is the editor of Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America, and the author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.

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Religious Freedom Is a Progressive Value - AlterNet

Hundreds of migrants are being given food and first aid by Spanish authorities and charities after storming and climbing over a six-meter barbed-wire fence to enter Ceuta, Spains enclave in North Africa, bordering Morocco.

Early on Friday morning, Ruptly news agency captured footage groups of ebullient males of apparent sub-Saharan origin, hugging and dancing, and encouraging fellow migrants stuck on the other side of the barrier. Many wrapped themselves in Spanish and EU flags, and chanted Freedom! Victory! and Viva Espaa!

Hours earlier, the same men used shears and clubs in a mass raid on the reinforced border fence. Local media reports suggest that the breach was organized well in advance, and occurred at four different points. As many as 300 were pushed back, but border guards were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, and police said that security cameras showed up to 600 men entering Ceuta, though emergency services put the number at 500. Eleven officers were injured, and three had to be taken to the medical emergency ward in serious condition. No one has been arrested.

As the sun rose over the enclave, which is home to about 80,000 people, most of the migrants camped in a group by the roadside, where the Red Cross said it was treating 400 men, many of whom suffered gashes and cuts during the storm. Twenty-five have been transferred to Ceutas hospital.

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All newcomers will be housed by CETI, a 512-capacity temporary migrant center, which was already home to 620 people who had mostly arrived in the city without documents, either by climbing over the fence, hiding inside a vehicle, or swimming into the port.

The migrants will now be given regular meals, a bed, counselling, and Spanish lessons, as they file their applications for asylum. Many will be relocated to other similar centers on the mainland.

This is the third such attack since December, when the multiple entry-point tactic was first used by migrants. On January 1, 1,100 people attempted to breach the walls, overfilling CETI, which had to borrow army tents to accommodate the newcomers.

Spains State Security Secretary promised to develop a new protocol against the evidently successful tactic, but Frontex, the European border service, said that overall, only 1,000 people breached Ceuta, and Melilla, another enclave, in 2016, the lowest number in several years.

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'Freedom! Victory!' 500 African migrants celebrate after breaking through EU border fence (VIDEO) - RT

Oklahoma Christian University will bring a civil rights hero to the Oklahoma City community for the fourth year in a row.

Diane Nash, who co-founded the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and led one of the early Freedom Rides to protest segregation, will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the school, 2501 E Memorial Road.

Nash's visit is part of OC's fourth-annual History Speaks program. Past guests have included Carlotta Walls LaNier and Dr. Terrence Roberts of the Little Rock Nine; bus desegregation activist Claudette Colvin; civil rights attorney Fred Gray; and Olympic heroes John Carlos and Tommie Smith.

Nash's involvement in the nonviolent movement began in 1959 while she was a student at Fisk University. In 1960, she chaired the student sit-in movement in Nashville, Tennessee the first southern city to desegregate its lunch counters and helped found SNCC.

In 1961, she coordinated the Freedom Ride from Birmingham, Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, a story documented in the recent PBS American Experience film, Freedom Riders. Late civil rights activist Julian Bond once said the decision to march in Selma came from Nash rather than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

We are extremely excited to have Diane Nash coming to our campus, said Gary Jones, OC's multicultural and service learning coordinator. "As someone who worked very closely with Dr. King, John Lewis and several other important civil rights figures, Diane Nash is a historical gem that comes along once in a lifetime.

Nash's History Speaks keynote, part of OC's McGaw Lecture Series, will be in Hardeman Auditorium.

Admission is free, but tickets must be reserved online at http://www.oc.edu/historyspeaks. For more information, call 425-5900 or email gary.jones@oc.edu.

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Fourth annual 'History Speaks' event brings Freedom Rider to metro - NewsOK.com

To see how little is left of one of our most important rights, the freedom of association, look no further than to todays unanimous decision by the Washington State Supreme Court upholding a lower courts ruling that florist Baronelle Stutzman was guilty of violating the Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD) when she declined, on religious grounds, to provide floral arrangements for one of her regular customers same-sex wedding. The lower court had found Stutzman personally liable and had awarded the plaintiffs permanent injunctive relief, actual monetary damages, attorneys fees, and costs.

This breathtaking part of the Supreme Courts conclusion is worth quoting in full:

We also hold that the WLAD may be enforced against Stutzman because it does not infringe any constitutional protection. As applied in this case, the WLAD does not compel speech or association. And assuming that it substantially burdens Stutzmans religious free exercise, the WLAD does not violate her right to religious free exercise under either the First Amendment or article I, section 11 because it is a neutral, generally applicable law that serves our state governments compelling interest in eradicating discrimination in public accommodations.

We have here yet another striking example of how modern state statutory anti-discrimination law has come to trump a host of federal constitutional rights, including speech, association, and religious free exercise. Its not too much to say that the Constitutions Faustian accommodation of slavery is today consuming the Constitution itself.

Consider simply the freedom of association right. That liberty in a free society ensures the right of private parties to associate, as against third parties, and the right not to associate as wellthat is, the right to discriminate for any reason, good or bad, or no reason at all. The exceptions at common law were for monopolies and common carriers. And if you held your business as open to the public you generally had to honor that, though you still could negotiate over services.

Slavery, of course, was a flat-out violation of freedom of associationindeed, it was the very essence of forced association. But Jim Crow was little better since it amounted to forced dis-association. It was finally ended, legally, by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But that Act prohibited not simply public but private discrimination as well in a range of contexts and on a range of grounds, both of which have expanded over the years. The prohibition of private discrimination was probably necessary at the time to break the back of institutionalized racism in the South, but its legacy has brought us to todays decision, where florists, bakers, caterers, and even religious organizations can be forced to participate in events that offend their religious beliefs.

Courts havent yet compelled pastors to officiate at ceremonies that are inconsistent with their beliefs, but we have heard calls for eliminating the tax-exempt status of their institutions. Such is the wrath of the crowd that wants our every act to be circumscribed by lawtheir law, of course. And theyre prepared, as here, to force their association on unwilling parties even when there are plenty of other businesses anxious to serve them. As I concluded a Wall Street Journal piece on this subject a while ago:

No one enjoys the sting of discrimination or rejection. But neither does anyone like to be forced into uncomfortable situations, especially those that offend deeply held religious beliefs. In the end, who here is forcing whom? A society that cannot tolerate differing viewsand respect the live-and-let-live principlewill not long be free.

Amen.

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Freedom of Association Takes Another Hit - Cato Institute (blog)

(WTNH) For slaves seeking freedom, it was a race against time.

Canada ended slavery in 1833 so Canada was kind of like the promised land for a fugitive, said Todd Levine, the Connecticut Freedom Trail.

The home of Uriel Tuttle in Torrington was a welcome safe haven on that journey of the Underground Railroad. The house was built around 1800. Tuttle opened his doors to escaped slaves and was dedicated to the abolitionist cause. At that time, helping slaves was illegal.

It became very dangerous for a family to become an underground railroad station, said Levine.

You could face up to six months in jail and up to $1,000 fine, which was a fortune back then. Hiding away runaway slaves wasnt always as covert and secretive as many people may think.

Another misconception is things like hidden tunnels, secret compartmentsthey do exist in some places, but generally the way the traveling slaves got to safe houses was traveling by night either by foot, wagon, horse or boat, said Levine.

They would likely walk right through the front door and then hide in the attic during the day.

Fugitive slaves were generally young men alone, not families. Generally, one single guy trying to make his way, said Levine.

Some slaves fought for their freedom in a different way hand to hand combat. Slaves on the ship, Amistad, used this technique.

South Africans were kidnapped and taken from their home and sold into slavery. They were on their way to a Cuban plantation when they rose up and took control of their vessel and tried to make their way back home, said Levine.

The ship ended up in New London, but the trial made it all the way to the Supreme Court, with many heroes stepping up along the way.

John Quincy Adams, former president, who came out of retirement to argue successfully that all men are created equal, said Levine.

Other heroes like Samuel and Catherine Deming who lived in Farmington in a house that is now part of Miss Porters School, were a beacon of hope for the Mendis and all slaves seeking freedom.

For the Underground Railroad, Farmington became Grand Central Station, said Levine.

After the Mendi slaves won their freedom, the Demings provided a place to stay.

What Deming did was building dormitories for them on his land in one of his buildings so that the Mendis could have a place to stay and learn, said Levine.

Other residents of Farmington rose up in support as well.

The whole town of Farmington came together including the municipality, in order to send these guys back home, said Levine.

Along the Freedom Trail to Norwich was the birthplace of David Ruggles. He was a free black man who is said to have helped over 600 slaves.

We do know a little bit about some of the folks he helped to rescue from slavery. One of them was Frederick Douglass, said Dale Plummer, City of Norwich Historian.

What we have learned is that folks in this community and others across the state really took a stand. Doing so back then was considered controversial.

Some very powerful people in the anti-slavery movement came from Connecticut, said Plummer.

They took courageous action toward protecting freedom and human dignity.

These are the stories of the freedom trail. These are the stories of overcoming impossible odds to gain their freedom, said Levine.

Click here for information on the number of Underground Railroad sites all around the state.

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Hidden History: Connecticut Freedom Trail - WTNH Connecticut News (press release)

Deborah Drennan, Executive Director, Freedom House, speaks of the center on Tuesday February 14, 2017 and it's mission to help clients from around the world.(Photo: Max Ortiz / The Detroit News)Buy Photo

The first knock came two Sundays ago at Freedom House, and the second on Tuesday night. The desperate refugees standing on the porch heard something no one ever had before:

Sorry. Theres no money to help you.

Freedom House has been helping the helpless since 1983 asylum-seekers whove been beaten or tortured or raped or threatened in their home countries, or knew they were next in line.

Now Freedom House itself is in jeopardy. A change in priorities in recent years at the Department of Housing and Urban Development will cut more than half of the one-of-a-kind shelters annual budget as of March 31.

Pending an appeal to HUD, said executive director Deborah Drennan and pending an increasingly urgent appeal for help locally Freedom House will have to start shedding staff and eliminating some of the services that make it a one-stop portal to the American way.

Worst case, said Drennan, no funds come in and we have to close. Corollary to the worst case: The job is farmed out piecemeal to less specific and encompassing agencies, and the moral and social compass of the city of Detroit shifts.

In a contentious time for anything related to immigration and refugees, the 42 current residents of the former convent in Southwest Detroit are increasingly wary, she said. In halting English, a West African resident names and nations are blurred for the sake of security said hes worried about his future, where six months ago when he arrived he was only hopeful.

But the threat to Freedom House stems from the previous administration, not the current one, and from the nature of its mission.

Founded by Roman Catholic activists, Freedom House first assisted Central Americans who had fled death squads during El Salvadors civil war. Now most in search of asylum come from sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East.

Unlike refugees hoping to emigrate to the U.S., asylum seekers have already obtained visas. Having found their way to the big brick residence near the Ambassador Bridge, they are offered room and board, legal help, counseling, language classes, job training and anything else that smooths the path to asylum status, productivity and potential citizenship.

Freedom House, represented here by Deborah Drennan, has been helping asylum-seekers since 1983.(Photo: Max Ortiz / The Detroit News)

Ultimately, Drennan said, 86 percent of them are granted political asylum and 93 percent of them wind up in permanent independent housing. But by definition, Freedom House is transitional and transitional housing, said executive director Tasha Gray of the Homeless Action Network of Detroit (HAND), is not a priority nationwide.

HAND is the supervising agency in Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park for Continuum of Care funds from HUD. In short, it helps coordinate the local efforts that help the homeless, and manages a single, comprehensive collection of grant applications that most recently requested $24.6 million for 53 projects.

In its campaign to end homelessness, Gray said, HUD favors the approaches that are the most statistically successful permanent supportive housing for the disabled or mentally ill, and swift re-housing for those whose homelessness is caused by a hardship or calamity.

The priorities to HUD are families, youth, and chronic homeless individuals, she said. I would say asylum seekers are not fitting in those categories.

Freedom House requested $390,841, similar to what its been awarded before and substantial in a budget of about $750,000.

Along with three other pitches for transitional programs, including one from COTS for victims of domestic abuse, it was rejected.

Freedom House appealed the decision, and if theres a ray of hope, its that no word has come back from HUD. Appeals from the other three local agencies, Gray said, were swiftly denied.

Cass Community Social Services of Detroit had four projects approved, but lost out on its safe haven program for the chronic mentally ill. Numbers dont always tell the full story, said executive director Faith Fowler, either for her effort or for Freedom House.

Its in the right area with good, compassionate people. Its a good program, Fowler said. Theyve been doing good work with a shoestring budget for a long time.

Drennan, 61, set out to be a nun and wound up building a career in hands-on nonprofits. Shes in her 11th year in a building with resident-crafted artworks of maps and peace signs.

In the past decade, said program director T.J. Rogers, Freedom House has helped 1,394 people from 74 countries. All of them come with a story and none of the stories are joyous.

When youre tortured, Drennan said, thats a very intimate thing to share. Can you imagine?

But the residents tend to bond, and sometimes Drennan likes to stop halfway down the stairs and just listen to the happiness the laughter, the songs, the shrieks of the 2-year-old twins who arent even the youngest residents this month.

Many of the residents hold college degrees or even doctorates, she said; the educated are often the greatest threats to repressive governments. Some have left Freedom House and become nurses. Others are now employers.

Drennan has seen fresh scars and heard the midnight wails from internal ones. She has helped people who knew about Freedom House before they left Cameroon or Chad, and had others referred by strangers at distant airports who had compassion and Google.

One woman was simply dropped at the door by a Metro Airport custodian whod seen her sitting at a boarding gate in the late hours, sipping water from her plastic bottle. He wouldnt give his name or take money.

Im just doing what anybody would do, he said and what Drennan hopes to keep doing, as long as she can keep the doors open.

Freedom House accepts donations at freedomhousedetroit.org. The woman residents call Mom Deb has been conferring with city council members and spreading the word as best she can.

To this point, the collection plate holds about $16,000. Theres a long way to go, she conceded, but shes surrounded by people who came a long way already.

nrubin@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @nealrubin_dn

Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/2lRsmwA

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Rubin: Detroit's Freedom House may close - The Detroit News

RICHMOND, Va. Democratic officials and the American Civil Liberties Union blasted Republican senators after they passed a religious freedom bill that would protect people who refuse to marry same-gender couples.

HB 2025, sponsored by Del. Nicholas Freitas, R-Culpeper, cleared the Senate on Thursday on a party-line vote of 21-19. The bill protects organizations and their employees who refuse to participate in the solemnization of marriage based on a sincerely held religious belief.

Freitas said the legislation was a response to Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffes executive order that prohibits state contractors from discriminating based on sexual orientation.

This is simply about preventing the government from punishing a religious organization because it doesnt fit with a current governor or anyone elses interpretation of social standards, Freitas said when introducing the bill in committee.

The bill would protect a religious organization from losing a state contract or its tax-exempt status because of the groups beliefs regarding marriage. It also would protect individuals from losing state employment, grants or acceptance into a public university if they refuse to participate in the marriage of a same-sex couple.

Democrats, who unanimously voted against the measure, contended it would sanction discrimination against gay and lesbian couples. On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam celebrated the third anniversary of a federal court ruling in the Bostic v. Rainey case legalizing same-sex marriage.

On Thursday, Northam, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, criticized the Senate for approving HB 2025.

We cannot go backwards. We need to continue to be open and welcoming to all, no matter who you are or who you love, Northam said in a press release.

Claire Gastanaga, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia, urged her groups supporters to oppose HB 2025 and SB 1324, an identical bill that passed the Senate last week and is now before the House Committee on General Laws.

If these bills are signed into law, same-sex couples could be denied services at church-run facilities, hotels or resorts affiliated with religious organizations, or at hospitals owned by religious groups, even if the services are funded by taxpayers, Gastanaga said.

Del. Marcus Simon, D-Falls Church, argued on the House floor that HB 2025 is unnecessary because the Religious Freedom Restoration Act already makes it illegal for public bodies to discriminate against faith-based organizations on the basis of their religious beliefs.

A similar bill was introduced last year and failed in part because of the argument articulated by Simon.

However, Republicans said they fear that McAuliffes executive order could lead to discrimination against faith-based organizations that object to same-sex marriage.

We had the governors executive order, which I believe does just that, or at least creates a mechanism where that can be accomplished, Freitas said.

Democrats expressed concerns over the bills potential economic consequences. North Carolina experienced economic losses after its government passed a similar law last year.

At the beginning of the legislative session, McAuliffe vowed to veto any bill he considered discriminatory. Northam said the governor would veto HB 2025.

At his news conference Tuesday, Northam vowed to protect gay and lesbian Virginians from discrimination.

Just before the holidays, I completed a seven-city tour that ended in Salem, Virginia, where I was pleased to welcome the NCAA soccer tournament, Northam said. That championship was relocated from North Carolina after the state passed anti-LGBT legislation, as was the NBA All-Star game and major businesses. As long as Im here, as long as Gov. McAuliffe and Attorney General (Mark) Herring are here, Virginia will be inclusive. We will not be like North Carolina.

Carol Schall, one of the plaintiffs in the Bostic v. Rainey case, also spoke at the news conference. She discussed HB 1395, which would have repealed language in state law that bans same-sex marriage. Even though the language is no longer valid, the bill, sponsored by Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax County, died in a House committee.

Names matter. Names like mom and wife make all the difference in the world, Schall said. In past years such as this year, Del. Sickles proposed to repeal outdated constitutional amendment encoding discrimination in our great Constitution.

Sickles called for a full House vote on the issue. He also discussed HJ 538, his proposal to repeal a constitutional amendment adopted by voters adopted in 2006 that defines marriage as being between one man and one woman. Sickles resolution died in a House committee on an unrecorded vote.

Constitutional amendments require approval in two legislative sessions before they can be presented to voters on a November ballot.

If this constitutional were passed and it passed again next winter, by the time it got to the voters in November of 18, 1.2 million people in our state will have come of age, Sickles said. They want to speak to this. They do not want the people of the 2006 cultural and societal milieu to speak forever.

By Julie Rothey with Capital News Service

CNS reporter Tyler Hammel contributed to this report.

Capital News Service is a flagship program of VCUs Robertson School of Media and Culture. Students participating in the program provide state government coverage for Virginias community newspapers and other media outlets, under the supervision of Associate Professor Jeff South.

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Over Democrats' objections, Senate OKs 'religious freedom' bill - wtvr.com

Detroit's Freedom House has lost its federal funding for the first time in more than 20 years. And it may have to shut down or substantially reduce its services.

Freedom House provides transitional housing and comprehensive services under one roof to asylum seekers who are fleeing persecution, rape and torture in their home countries.

Executive Director Deborah Drennansaid the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development denied Freedom House's grant application in December, and Freedom House has appealed the decision.

She said the amount requested, around $392,000, represents about 60% of Freedom House's total budget.

"The decision came to us as quite a shock with only three months notice," said Brennan.

Brennan said HUD has shifted priorities from transitional housing to permanent housing, but that shouldn't have counted against Freedom House's application.

"We meet HUD's criteria in outcomes," said Brennan. "Freedom House this past year had 94% of our residents who exited into permanent, stable housing without subsidies."

Drennan said the possibility of Freedom House's closing is causing great stress to its residents.

"Human life is at stake here," said Drennan. "People who don't have access to legal aid or housing, they become at risk for homelessness. They become at risk for being victims of human trafficking."

Drennansaid if asylum seekers are homeless, it is more likely they may be deported back to the countries they fled where they likely will be persecuted or even killed.

Freedom House has been helping asylum seekers since 1983. In the 1980s many of its residents were from El Salvador. Now the vast majority are from sub-Saharan Africa.

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Detroit's Freedom House may have to close - Michigan Radio

Next week Nonesuch Records will issue Freedom Highway, the second solo album from Rhiannon Giddens. NPR Musics First Listen series has made the entire 12 song LP available to stream in advance of its official release on February 24.

Giddens co-produced Freedom Highway with Dirk Powell and recorded the follow-up to 2015s Tomorrow Is My Turn at his studio in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana that has wooden rooms that predate the Civil War. The record takes its name from the classic song by The Staples Singers, one of two covers on the LP that also includes Birmingham Sunday. Giddens, who last year was awarded the Steve Martin Prize For Excellence In Banjo & Bluegrass, wrote or co-wrote the remaining album tracks.

The bulk of Freedom Highway was recorded over an eight day period with Giddens joined by members of her touring band, local musicians, a horn section and others. Giddens shared the following regarding the title track:

Stream Freedom Highway via NPR Musics First Listen below:

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Rhiannon Giddens Shares New Album 'Freedom Highway' - JamBase