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One of the real concerns with Democrats in control of Congress and the White House has been their efforts to elevate “equality” above religious liberties.

For example, you probably remember their so-called Equality Act. Among other things, that legislation would require churches and other religious organizations to make their gathering places open & available to gender-altering celebrations that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs. (See my posts on Feb. 25^th of this year and May 17, 2019 for details.)

Many liberal efforts against religious freedoms are more subtle than sweeping legislation like this. Which leads me to a letter that Sen. Tim Scott and I sent earlier today to Secretary Xavier Becerra of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

This letter concerns the negative impact his department’s recent actions could have on religious liberties. Recently, HHS revoked a waiver for South Carolina (and a couple other states) that enabled our religious-based adoption & foster agencies to focus on serving families of faith, without being derailed by claims of discrimination against people who hold different beliefs!

They just flat-out revoked it!

They also stripped away the HHS Office for Civil Rights’ authority to investigate & review possible violations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which helps protect religious liberties. Why on earth would they do that?!

This could be devastating to faith-based foster agencies like Miracle Hill ministries, right here in South Carolina and others across the nation.  After all, these agencies exist to serve families who share their spiritual beliefs, so forcing them to violate their religious values for the sake of “gender equality” or “sexual orientation equality” or “LGBTQ equality”, etc. is a MAJOR overreach, especially considering the fact that other agencies are more than capable of serving those communities.

In total, our letter was co-signed by 102 members of the Senate and House. This is just another example of misguided judgement by the Biden Administration and needs to be exposed for what it is: another attack on religious liberties. I appreciate Sen. Scott’s leadership in the Senate on this.