Task Farce!

So when you think of persecuted people in America, whom do you think of? Black people? Women? All the letters of LGBTQ? Well? Wrong! Whatever you said, you're wrong, because the single most persecuted group in America right now is Christians.

Man, you feed a couple of them to lions and they never get over it.

Obviously he wasn't Muslim, but most
Trump supporters think he is, and there's
really no point in arguing with them.

Now, I know that you're thinking, 'hey, hasn't Christianity basically been the official religion of America since the founding fathers made it like super clear that we would absolutely not have an official religion?' And you'd be right, so it's weird then that Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a special Justice Department Religious Liberty Task Force. And you wouldn't need a task force unless religious liberty, specifically that of Christians, was under threat and the last president was a Muslim so, here we are. I guess...

Oh, and cakes. Gay cakes. Remember Jack Phillips, the baker from Colorado who was asked to make a wedding cake for a gay couple? Something specifically forbidden by Jesus Himself? What's that? Where in the Bible does Jesus say anything about gays or wedding cakes? Why Chapter: <cough> Verse: Shut up. That's where.

Above: Baker and American Goddamn hero, Jack Phillips took a
stand to make sure no one would ever have to treat gay people like
regular paying customers again. It's what Jesus would have wanted.

According to Sessions who spoke at the Department of Justice's Religious Liberty Summit-huh? Oh yeah, again, you don't have summits for things unless there's a crisis. Anyway, the Task Force will:

Jeff Sessions will be sort of like
Nick Fury if the Avengers were tasked
with defending homophobes in court.

...fully implement our religious liberty guidance ensuing that all Justice Department components are upholding that guidance in the cases they bring and defend, the arguments they make in court, the policies and regulations they adopt, and how we conduct our operations."

-Jeff Sessions, Task Master

So it's a task force within the Justice Department tasked with telling the Justice Department how to do Justice Department things. 

Oh...right...

Specifically how to make sure that DOJ employees 'know their duties to accommodate people of faith.' Um, am I paranoid or is he saying that the task force's job is to tell everyone at the DOJ to side with religious people in cases where religious liberty is being invoked? Because not only is that pandering to the religious right, it also seems like it would undermine the integrity of the DOJ. How could the Attorney General compromise his department is such a transparently political move?

As for the 'guidance,' he's referring to, he put out some guidelines back in October that lay out how the First Amendment says that 'freedom of religion is a fundamental right of paramount importance...' and that it 'includes the right to abstain from action in accordance to one's religious views.' Which, no it doesn't.

"Should we clarify that 'free exercise thereof part'? Like, a couple hundred years
from now, you don't think someone's going to think that gives them a pass to a dick
and then call it religious liberty, do you? I mean, you'd have to be an asshole, right?"

-Ben Franklin

"That's fake news, I'm the most tolerant
person you're ever going to meet. So
tolerant you won't even believe."

-The President (actual quote*)

So if that sounds like what he's saying is counter to America's anti-discrimination laws that protect say gay people from being turned away at say, bakeries or auto repair shops, or pizza shops, or, I don't know, being asked to change seats so that a straight couple can sit next to each other-huh? Yeah, that one was today. Anyway, if it sounds like the Trump administration, which again most of us didn't vote for, is doubling down on protecting the right of intolerant people to be intolerant, that's because that's exactly what it's doing.

Super diverse! From Catholics and
Southern Baptists all the way to
Lutherans and even Mormons!

Sessions went on in his super-Jesus-y remarks on Monday to explain how the founding fathers:

"...clearly recognized that an individual's relationship to God is a natural right and precedes the existence of the state, and is not subject to state control. These concepts were placed into our Constitution...and [have] helped us to this day to be one of the world's most diverse religious people."

-Jeff Session Republi'splaining 

the Constitution to us

First of all, we're like 68th on the list of most religiously diverse countries in the world. Second of all, that's the Attorney General of the United States explaining how the Constitution says you can do whatever crazy bullshit you want and the state can't do anything because religion. Cool. I'm sure that's never turned out badly.

"Ok, so it's going to feel like I'm crushing your skull
with a mace, but just think of it of God's love."

-Some Crusader

*ok, not an actual quote, but c'mon, it sounds like something he'd say.