The Biden Administration’s Planned Executive Orders and Administrative Actions – Harmful for Religious Freedom, Families and Life

With Vice President Mike Pence officially confirming Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as president- and vice president-elect, we can start looking at what a Biden-Harris administration will do in the coming four years. Much of it is damaging for religious freedom, families and life.

So what is a Biden administration planning? The Biden-Harris campaign made their agenda very clear through their campaign website, debates, speeches and press releases. On their campaign website, the duo describes almost 50 different aspects of “Joe’s Vision.”

Among these are “The Biden Plan for the Latino Community,” “The Biden Plan to End the Opioid Crisis,” “The Biden Plan for Black America,” “The Biden Plan to Secure Environmental Justice,” and “The Biden Plan to Give Every American Affordable Health Care.”

Biden has an agenda for Indian Americans, Muslim Americans, Catholics, the African Diaspora, Young Americans, Older Americans and more, as if each of these were homogeneous, monolithic groups with the same needs, desires and political beliefs. Whether they want it or not, Biden and Harris have an agenda for them.

It’s almost comical to look at the list – because of its pandering to identity politics and its hubristic assumption that Biden, Harris and the federal government are all powerful, can micromanage our lives, and will fix every problem we face. But they’ll certainly try, and the incoming administration can do a great deal, much of which will be very damaging.

Here are a few of Biden’s plans for us, where the President can use executive orders (EOs) and direct agency actions to affect areas of deep concern to The Daily Citizen and Focus on the Family – religious freedom, families and life. (Quotes, and bold text within quotes, are taken directly from the Biden-Harris campaign website.)

Biden plans to enact policies and sign EOs that undermine religious freedom. He pledges to:

• “Restore the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate [that was] in place before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ” The Court upheld the religious freedom of the Green family, which did not want to provide possible abortion-causing contraceptives to employees.

Biden also opposed the Supreme Court decision in favor of The Little Sisters of the Poor, upholding their religious freedom to not offer contraceptives through their health insurance plans. Biden said he would provide an accommodation for churches and religious groups, but that accommodation was exactly what the Little Sisters of the Poor were fighting.

• “Stop employment discrimination in the federal government.” This promise comes from “The Biden Plan to Advance LGBTQ+ Equality in America and Around the World.” The President-elect wants to prohibit discrimination by federal contractors on the basis of “sexual orientation and gender identity” – even when this violates deeply held religious beliefs of those contractors.
• “Work with civil rights leaders to develop and institute implicit bias training programs for federal workers and contractors to address discrimination based on race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or disability.” “Implicit bias training” rests on the theory that we all have unconscious bias that affects our thinking and actions. The administration does not acknowledge that people of faith may have legitimate reasons for believing that there are two sexes and that marriage is a husband-wife institution. Biden’s plan does not mention training for discrimination based on religion.

The Biden-Harris administration plans harm families and children:

• On January 7, President Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a final rule that allows faith-based adoption agencies to place children in homes with a mother and father, in accordance with their religious beliefs. The Biden administration calls this “discrimination” and has pledged to repeal this rule, possibly shutting down these agencies.
• The incoming administration proposes: “Guaranteeing transgender students have access to facilities based on their gender identity. On his first day in office, Biden will reinstate the Obama-Biden guidance revoked by the Trump-Pence Administration, which will restore transgender students’ access to sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms in accordance with their gender identity. He will direct his Department of Education to vigorously enforce and investigate violations of transgender students’ civil rights.” This allows biological males into girls’ private spaces, and biological females into boys’ private spaces, threatening students’ privacy and safety. His plans also undermine the integrity of girls sports and activities.
• Biden and Harris will: “Reinstate protections for LGBTQ+ people experiencing homelessness. The Obama-Biden Administration ensured federally funded homeless shelters provide housing according to an individual’s gender identity and cannot refuse services based on gender identity or sexual orientation.” Faith-based homeless shelters and homes for abused women, who receive federal aid, will be forced to admit and house men who believe they are women with real, biological women. In addition to threatening religious freedom, this places women and children at risk.

Finally, As we’ve previously reported, a Biden administration could be the most pro-abortion in history. Here’s some of what Biden wants to do, through EOs and federal agency actions, as listed in “The Biden Agenda for Women”:

• “Restore federal funding for Planned Parenthood.” “As President, Biden will reissue guidancespecifying that states cannot refuse Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood and other providers and reverse the Trump Administration’s rule preventing these organizations from obtaining Title X funds.”
• “Rescind the Mexico City Policy,” which bars the U.S. federal government from funding international organizations that perform or promote abortions.
• “Stop state laws violating Roe v. Wade. Biden will work to codify Roe v. Wade, and his Justice Department will do everything in its power to stop the rash of state laws that so blatantly violate Roe v. Wade.” In “The Biden Plan to Give Every American Affordable Health Care,” the administration says that “his Justice Department will do everything in its power to stop the rash of state laws that so blatantly violate the constitutional right to an abortion,” like “parental notification requirements, mandatory waiting periods, and ultrasound requirements.”

I’ll admit, it’s a depressing list. And it’s not comprehensive, there’s much more destruction the executive branch can inflict.

But as I read through the myriad plans from Biden and Harris, I kept thinking of the lines from the Robert Burns poem, “To a Mouse”: “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley” (often go awry). Yes, things often go very differently from our plans and schemes – the year 2020 illustrates that so well.

This looks to be a difficult four years, given the one-party control of the legislative and executive branches of government. Christians must continue to work on behalf of religious freedom, families and life. In addition, we can pray, asking God to make Biden’s harmful plans “Gang aft agley.”

Photo from KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTTERS