Former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, now U.S. Ambassador at large for International Religious Freedom, has started to expand his terrifying agenda on a global scale. At a State Department summit on religious freedom last week he gave the opening speech, heralding the start of a global religious rights movement.
We should be clear — the religious rights that Brownback proposes to protect are not our rights. As governor of Kansas, Brownback revoked former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’s executive order protecting state workers from being fired on the basis of sexual orientation. He consistently signed legislation that would limit a woman’s federally-protected right to access appropriate reproductive health care, including comprehensive sex education and contraception.
Sam Brownback — and his co-conspirator Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — are seeking to promulgate an evangelical religious right agenda under the seemingly benign term “religious rights.” This agenda seeks to limit equal rights for people in the LGBT community, limit women’s access to information and health care, and create a society — here in America and abroad — that is modelled after the evangelical Christian view of religion and morality.
As Jews, we must recognize that this agenda will start by infringing on the rights of women and the LGBT community. Next will be Muslims. Then us. We should not be fooled.
Martha Gershun
Fairway, Kansas
