Religious freedom: Will Trump snatch defeat from jaws of victory?

Please tell me I’m wrong about what I’m about to write. Please. Anyone.

Because when it comes to the executive order on religious freedom that President Trump just issued today in commemoration of the National Day of Prayer, we’ve seen this movie before.

Several versions of it, in fact – and the outcome is never good.

The most recent telling of this story is only months old. Just as the Left found some federal judge in lefty land to go after the president’s previous orders on immigration, why on earth would you not expect the very same thing to happen in this case? As a corollary, why would you then think that Trump would do anything in response that was different from the shoulder shrug he gave after the black-robed usurpers bullied him then?

And no, another round of whiny Trump mean-tweets isn’t doing anything.

But it gets worse still, and this part doesn’t have anything to do with Trump. Judges are probably lining up as we speak within their not-so-secret society for the chance to be the one to slash and burn the Constitution in the name of – wink, wink – the Constitution. And that’s because Republicans handed them the playbook back in 1996 when they fought for passage of the Defense of Marriage Act – a well-intentioned piece of legislation that ended up making marriage defenseless.

That was by no means clear at the time or even for years afterward. Except now we know DOMA was the means by which the Rainbow Jihad was given standing to overthrow 31 state marriage amendments in federal court. It federalized the issue of marriage at a statutory level, not a constitutional one, which opened the door for the progressive courts to get as pagan as they wanna be.

If we couldn’t protect marriage by a constitutional amendment, we were better off not federalizing the issue at all. We were winning at the state level, where we had a record of 31-4. Undoing all those state marriage amendments would’ve taken the Rainbow Jihad years of time and treasure, even if they could have pulled it off. But once marriage was federalized, it became weaponized, and now they could undo it – and thus threaten religious freedom – in one fell swoop.

Enter the nefarious opinions of Windsor and Obergefell, about which the late, great Antonin Scalia said the following:

Just as with the well-intentioned misfire called DOMA, if President Trump is not willing to truly fight for religious freedom, then he’s better off not touching the issue at all. As we reported here at Conservative Review, the Left is already preparing to challenge this executive order in court as a means to further shred whatever’s left of the First Amendment. If Trump is going to surrender to judicial tyranny on this issue, as he previously did with his immigration executive orders, then the road the Hell once more becomes paved with good intentions.

John Adams, a Founding Father of no small importance, said the Constitution was “written for a moral and religious people and no other.” But Judge Skippy from the 666^th District Court of Babylon begs to differ. He says that the original intent breathed into the First Amendment, as a safeguard against government intrusions into religion, is literally a violation of the Establishment Clause itself.

Trump has set himself up to be stabbed by the judiciary again, and history shows that he won't fight back. Thus, he risks federalizing the issue in a way that will allow the courts to have the final say — setting the stage to lose on religious liberty, just as we lost on marriage and are losing on immigration.

If Trump isn’t the really fighter he claimed to be, then we’re all better off if he just jets off to Mara-A-Lago for another 18 holes and leaves well enough alone.

Then again, this whole conversation may be rendered moot by the fact that the order is all hat and no cattle anyway. It’s like much of Trump’s presidency so far: full of sound and fury while signifying nothing.

The order doesn’t even substantively address the Johnson Amendment, as Trump promised to do during the campaign. And even that issue is the “waste, fraud, and abuse” empty talking point of religious freedom. It’s not the real threat—the Rainbow Jihad is. The Johnson Amendment rarely targeted churches and never targeted private businesses and citizens. The Rainbow Jihad does.

And just like he backed down on Mexico funding the wall, China being a currency manipulator, and repealing Obamacare, our “but he fights” president has walked away from the fight here, too — effectively betraying the devout, who were the most loyal voting bloc he had in the last election.

Trump is just another Republican after all.