This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold confirmation hearings for Attorney General nominee William Barr. Barr is a proven extremist who has and will weaponize religious liberty, continuing former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ legacy of using religious beliefs as a defense for bigotry and discrimination.
BACKGROUND
After Barr became attorney general in 1991 during a previous stint, he delivered speeches in which he blamed secularism for a “moral decline” and called for American law to be based on “God’s law.” He repeatedly attacked Americans who value a secular government, such as those who work for and support the Freedom From Religion Foundation, as “clearly fanatics.” He even argued that preventing public schools from organizing and imposing prayers on children, which is required by the Constitution, moves the nation away from Judeo-Christianity, causing “soaring juvenile crime, widespread drug addiction, skyrocketing rates of venereal disease, [and] 1.5 million children aborted each year.”
These were not isolated statements, but themes and accusations that Barr, while using the podium of his office, repeated constantly, going so far as to claim that “extremist notions of separation of state and church” had inflicted a “moral lobotomy” on the country.
Barr has praised Sessions’ decision to offer Department of Justice support to discriminatory businesses in cases like the Masterpiece Cakeshop. He also presents a serious danger to Roe v. Wade, which he thinks “was wrongly decided and should be overruled.”
Click here to read FFRF’s full statement.
It is clear that William Barr’s views are wildly out of touch with an increasingly secular America and that he is unfit to serve as attorney general. Please click on the red “Take Action!” link below, and use our automated system to tell your senators to vote no on William Barr’s confirmation as attorney general.