JEFF SESSIONS/LGBTQ/RELIGION: “Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued government-wide legal guidance Friday [10-6-17] that urges sweeping protection for religious freedom and could impact a series of pending policy decisions involving health care, LGBT rights and even disaster relief.
Sessions billed the 25-page memo directed to all federal agencies as a response to an executive order President Donald Trump signed in May, promoting efforts to promote ‘religious liberty.’
That order triggered a major showdown within the administration as religious and social conservatives pressed for treatment that could essentially allow them to ignore anti-discrimination requirements, particularly in the area of sexual orientation, while more moderate forces warned that upending existing protections would trigger an uproar that could derail other administration priorities.
The new Justice Department guidance takes a muscular view of religious freedom rights, but officials insisted that the document is a neutral description of existing law and not an effort to weigh in on particular policy issues…
A Justice Department official who briefed reporters on the new legal guidance insisted that it does not amount to a license to discriminate.”
-Josh Gerstein, “Sessions outlines broad exemptions for religious freedom,” Politico, Oct. 6, 2017 01:23pm