Category: Published

Originally published in The Federalist

Not just foster care providers, but religious groups of all kinds are closely following the case of Fulton v. the City of Philadelphia. Indeed, all those who care about our nation’s children should be.

While this case before the U.S. Supreme Court to be decided in 2021 directly concerns the provision of foster care, by placing hypothetical arguments about non-discrimination ahead of the religious freedoms ensconced in the First Amendment — and ahead of children’s actual needs — the broader ramifications of the case threaten to force religion further from the public sphere.

In his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2012, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote:

The majority offers a cursory assurance that it does not intend to disparage people who, as a matter of conscience, cannot accept same-sex marriage. That disclaimer is hard to square with the very next sentence, in which the majority explains that ‘the necessary consequence’ of laws codifying the traditional definition of marriage is to ‘demean or stigmatize’ same-sex couples.

Fulton v. Philadelphia demonstrates how right Roberts was to be concerned. The attorney for the city, Neal Katyal, claimed during oral arguments that a religious foster care agency, by following the prescriptions of the religion which it represents, would “stigmatize” LGBTQ individuals, especially children. Having asserted that traditional religious beliefs are bigoted and damaging, he thus argues that they must be prohibited in practice.

In particular, the city’s claim that the stigma is associated with Catholic Social Services’s provision of foster care cannot withstand even a cursory examination. Whatever feeling of harm or stigma might be involved, it would emerge from the biblical belief — which is supposed to be protected by the First Amendment — that same-sex relationships are forbidden; whether or not this teaching was applied to foster care would be essentially irrelevant. Yet the city, knowing that it can’t directly attack religion, claims that the damage occurs when a religious foster care agency conforms to those beliefs.

Taking the attack on religion a step further, Philadelphia equated religious diversity with mutual hostility: its lawyer claimed that foster care would be “balkanized” if various religious groups were each allowed to serve children in need consistent with their religious beliefs, working with supportive families seeking to partner with those agencies. Frankly, it’s quite scary to see such open hostility to free, diverse religious practice from a city government — and one could hardly seek more decisive proof that freedom of religion is, in fact, on trial in this case.

The threat here is clear, and not limited to Catholics. In Judaism, we believe it essential to raise a Jewish child to learn both our books and our observances. If applied consistently, the city’s argument would prohibit a Jewish agency from insisting upon placing a Jewish child in a Jewish home. Rather than demonstrating the First Amendment’s respect for different traditions and beliefs, Philadelphia is demanding universal conformity to state doctrine.

What is most troubling in all of this is that the city has lost sight of the ultimate goal: to serve children in need of foster care. There is a grave shortage of families willing to open their homes to foster children, and religious agencies, by working specifically within their faith communities, can expand that pool.

Plaintiff Sharonell Fulton is but one of many who are certified by Catholic Social Services and have room in their homes to care for children. The city is keeping these foster care providers on the sidelines because of CSS’s religious beliefs, offering only theoretical arguments about hypothetical harms to justify callous denial of homes to children in need.

As was clear at oral argument, no same-sex couple has been prevented from fostering or adopting by Catholic Social Services, or ever would be. Were such a couple to ever present itself to CSS, attorney Lori Windham told the court, CSS would help the couple to find one of the many other agencies that can assist them and better attend to their needs.

Based solely upon a far-fetched, theoretical claim of “stigma” that reflects hostility towards biblical beliefs, the city’s actions are therefore forcing dozens if not hundreds of actual (very non-theoretical) children to languish in group homes and institutional settings rather than being placed with loving foster parents.

The city has made its disregard for children’s actual needs quite obvious. Responding to the fact that Catholic Social Services has provided foster care to needy Philadelphia children for more than two centuries, long before the government was involved, Katyal argued that “whatever these [private] entities did before, like CSS, they never selected who cares for kids in city custody, applying state criteria.” In other words, the city claimed that whether these children are wards of the state is a more central consideration than whether they need foster care.

This is heartless, and even more fundamentally flawed. To be sure, the city has not argued that CSS provides an inferior service. It even acknowledged that CSS has been a “point of light” in the child welfare system. Yet the city also claims that closing down such an agency and preventing it from helping the more than 250 children in need of a foster home today would somehow be a net benefit for society.

So it is not merely true that Philadelphia wishes to squelch free religious practice — it is also clear that the city is far more anxious to punish the free exercise of religion than it is to serve the city’s most vulnerable children. The shocking part is that it was necessary to go all the way to the Supreme Court to ask for the obvious: that the city of Philadelphia should both respect different religious beliefs, and put the needs of children first.

Originally published in Newsweek

There was a time not long ago when America united around a core of common values. They were not partisan, but foundational beliefs shared by Whigs, Federalists, Democratic-Republicans, Democrats and Republicans.

Americans believed that justice should be universal, not dictatorial, and that the role of judges was to decide the law, not determine it. Peaceful articulation of opposing views was appropriate; repression of unpopular opinion, much less violence, rioting or open warfare, was not. Those who placed their lives on the line to defend our lives, homes and property were acknowledged as America’s finest, and the goal of internal affairs was to root out bad actors, not to punish officers for defending themselves against violent assailants.

None of these values were first promoted by modern thinkers. Neither did we acquire them from Romans, Greeks, Vikings or Visigoths. The Founding Fathers found them in the teachings given to Moses in the Bible. No one can deny that these and other values common to first-world civilizations—such as life, education, family and social responsibility—are ancient.

Yet none of the aforementioned can be assumed today, and the blame for that can be summed up in one word: progressivism. The American experiment with that philosophy has proven to be a dangerous failure—and the more it is promoted, the more it is incumbent upon decent Americans to condemn it. It is not a step forward, but a regression to more primitive times.

Some of us realized this when leftists decided that sentient human beings, able to recognize and be comforted by the sound of their parents’ voices and mothers’ heartbeats, were merely collections of cells, which women were free to discard without calling it murder.

For others, it was when marriage was ripped from its biblical definition, and redefined to include any pair of individuals who wish to union. For others still, it was when doctors stopped providing psychological care, and instead encouraged the introduction of drugs and outright mutilation of the body as methods of solving unresolved dysphoria—even in prepubescent children.

To oppose these things is not to harbor a phobia. To want to protect and care for those affected by these phenomena is anything but hate. Yet those who promote these “progressive” ideas happily denounce anyone who clings to traditional values as homophobic, transphobic or even racist.

All of this is nonsense. The partisan environment in Washington is not a bipartisan problem; rather, it results from one side claiming that the same ideas they themselves backed a generation or two ago are today forms of hate speech. This makes civil discourse impossible.

In 2000, Senator Joe Lieberman was the Democrats’ nominee to be the vice president. By 2006, the leftists in the Democratic Party primaried him out—and he was re-elected because supporters created “Connecticut for Lieberman,” and members of both parties rallied behind him. So there is hope.

But also in 2000, Senate candidate Hillary Clinton declared that marriage was between a man and a woman. In 2016, had she not reversed herself, she would have lost the Democrats’ presidential nomination. And that is a problem.

Where do you draw the line? When is your Rubicon crossed?

Do you believe children should be denied foster care, and be left in group homes, because any provider who requires prospective parents be in a traditional marital union must be denied a license? Progressives claim to believe this—see Fulton v. Philadelphia, to be argued at the Supreme Court this Wednesday.

Do you believe that a person who believes that G-d is watching over him or her and expecting a higher standard of behavior should be disqualified from high office, such as a seat on the Supreme Court? The Constitution expressly prohibits a religious test, yet progressives unabashedly employed one anyway against now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Do you believe that women in a women’s shelter should be forced to share rooms with biological males who claim to be women—and that if a woman refuses to do so, she should be the one expelled to go sleep on the streets? Yes, this really happened—see Downtown Hope Center v. Anchorage.

Do you believe that police must stop policing, enabling shootings that primarily kill young people of color, prevent firefighters and EMTs from reaching their homes, and open the doors for looting and arson of their businesses? I live in Baltimore, where the murder rate has skyrocketed ever since police were prosecuted for doing their job—and the victims, needless to say, are overwhelmingly of color. To progressives, those are apparently not the Black Lives that Matter.

Oh, and one more: Do you have a more favorable opinion of Cuba than Israel? According to a recent YouGov poll, this is now true of the average member of the Democratic Party.

The most important issue facing us on Tuesday is not whether the effort to fight COVID has been botched or brilliant. It’s not about the unprecedented pace of economic recovery, or even the achievements for peace in the Middle East—much less about either candidates’ character flaws. It is about whether America’s moral foundation will be strengthened or further damaged, possibly beyond repair. This, too, has happened before.

Originally published in JNS

The Internet is alight with the accusation made by reporter Greg Miller in The Washington Post that U.S. President Donald Trump declared that Jews “stick together” and are “only in it for themselves.” Indeed, such statements represent a classically anti-Semitic ideology, so if I thought the president actually said them (at least about Jews, rather than a group of political opponents), I would be seriously troubled.

The problem with this claim, along with the larger narrative accusing Trump of racism and anti-Semitism, is that it is contradicted by his known statements and actions since before his taking office.

Remember last year’s brouhaha over the president saying that Jews who vote Democrat are insufficiently loyal to Jewish and Israeli interests? While it may not have been his place to say that, those sentiments were diametrically opposed to the dual-loyalty trope that accuses Jews of being disloyal to their countries of citizenship. Either Trump believes Jews are too loyal to Jewish interests or insufficiently so. Both cannot be true, and it’s not difficult to discern which is correct.

Perhaps the most obvious “tell” in Miller’s piece is the ludicrous claim—made in the name of a “former senior White House official”—that if the president weren’t bigoted, he “wouldn’t need to say it,” that he could “let [his] actions speak.” This insults our intelligence. It is obvious both that people bristle when slandered, and that if his actions were permitted to speak for themselves, the matter would be long since settled.

Trump and his organization forced integration upon Palm Beach country clubs and cultivated black advancement; as president, he allocated unprecedented, consistent funding to enlarge Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs); and celebrated the lowest black unemployment in history prior to the pandemic.

That he removed “white privilege” from federal sensitivity training does not contradict this history. Among other things, “white privilege” posits that Arabs, being “of color,” suffered persecution, but Jews who came to America fleeing bigotry in Arab countries, being Jews and therefore “white” (despite European history), are privileged. It is both fact-free and morally execrable; the problem here lies with Miller, not Trump.

With regard to Jews, indeed, we should let Trump’s actions speak. He recognized historic Jewish ties to Jerusalem and inspired other countries to follow suit. He took an unprecedented, aggressive posture to combat anti-Semitism on college campuses and overseas, appointing Kenneth Marcus as assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education, and Elan Carr as special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism at the U.S. State Department.

Alan Dershowitz described Trump’s Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism as the single most important thing done on behalf of Jewish students in his six decades in academia. The administration is acutely aware of the hateful bigotry displayed against Jews in Brooklyn, N.Y., on campus and now even in Congress. This is why the visibly Orthodox community—by far the most frequent victims of anti-Semitic violence—preferred the president and Republicans over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrats to fight anti-Semitism by a 60-1 margin in a recent survey.

Trump appointed a cadre of committed Jews—David Friedman, Jason Greenblatt, Jared Kushner, Avi Berkowitz and Ari Einhorn—to negotiate between Israel and Arab states. They delivered a Mideast peace plan that fully recognizes the legitimacy of Jewish life in Judea and Samaria, and more recently, brokered normalization agreements between Israel and the UAE, and Israel and Bahrain, with more countries on the horizon.

The Americans also brokered normalization of economic relations between the formerly warring nations of Serbia and Kosovo, with the inexplicable proviso that both parties improve relations with Israel.

These historic achievements benefit Israel and all Jews. The UAE announced that hotels in its capital city of Abu Dhabi will be expected to provide a kosher option for guests, making it likely the only city in the world outside the Jewish state with such a regulation. The UAE could theoretically have contracted with the Orthodox Union, based in New York, at any time, but did so on the heels of the Abraham Accords.

Similarly, Kosovo, following its peace agreement with Serbia, announced that it will be the first Muslim-majority nation to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism. The embrace of peace with Israel in the Muslim world is coming hand in hand with a commitment to reduce bias against all Jews.

To those who permit his deeds to speak for themselves, and to those equipped with real knowledge of historic anti-Semitism and its nature, the assertion that Trump is biased against Jews is ludicrous, plainly stupid and profoundly dangerous.

The problem is precisely that his deeds are not permitted to speak for themselves, and his statements are deliberately misconstrued for partisan purposes. This was true most recently when the president concluded his recent High Holiday greeting call by saying, among other things, that “we love your country.”

Immediately, leftist Jewish leaders who fly the Israeli flag alongside that of the United States in their synagogues, sing “Hatikvah” (with its reference to “our land”) along with “The Star-Spangled Banner” at events, promote Israel bonds that American Jews buy to the tune of more than $1 billion each year, encourage tourism and aliyah—and, of course, intervene not only in Israel’s religious affairs, but its basic security posture, defense against terrorism and pursuit of peace with hostile neighbors—all because they, too, are Jews tied to Israel, rushed to condemn the president for recognizing that Israel, as it says in its Declaration of Independence, is the Jewish state and is tied to all Jews.

It is worth remembering that the same leftist Jewish leaders refused to participate in the president’s High Holiday call from the outset—never mind that this is in glaring opposition to Jewish interests and was initially based upon the false accusation that he called white supremacists “fine people” after the violence in Charlottesville, Va. They have and continue to reject his gestures of friendship.

We can—and must—do better. Trump has shown tremendous concern for Israel and the Jewish community, and we should express honest and nonpartisan appreciation when leaders in both parties express love for both Israel and Jews.