Tulsi Gabbard encourages Americans to 'recognize each other as children of God'
A former Democratic presidential candidate condemned the party’s hostility toward religious people and encouraged Americans to view one another as “children of God.”
Tulsi Gabbard, a former member of the United States House of Representatives who has since left the party to become an Independent, addressed the crowd gathered on the final day of the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on Saturday. After outlining her disillusion with the present state of the Democratic Party, especially when it comes to foreign policy, she lamented that her former party is “openly hostile towards people of faith and spirituality.”
Democratic Party leaders are “actively trying to undermine our religious freedom and, therefore, the spiritual foundation of this country,” added Gabbard, who cited the treatment of Catholic United States Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett as an example of how party leaders “mock or openly discriminate against people of faith, especially Christians.”
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In 2017, as Barrett was nominated for a seat on a lower court, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., expressed concern that “the dogma lives loudly within you,” reflecting a fear that her religious beliefs would impact her ability to serve as an impartial jurist. Additionally, Gabbard took issue with the FBI's targeting of Americans it labeled as “radical traditional Catholics.”
The FBI’s Richmond Field Office circulated a document earlier this year labeling “the increasingly observed interest of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) in radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology” as a national security threat. The memo listed characteristics of “radical-traditionalist Catholics” as those who reject the “Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) as a valid church council” and have “disdain for most of the popes elected since Vatican II, particularly Pope Francis and Pope John Paul.”
It also listed “adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, and white supremacist ideology” as common attributes of “radical-traditionalist Catholics.” At the same time, the document attempted to clarify that “radical-traditionalist Catholics compose a small minority of overall Roman Catholic adherents and are separate and distinct from ‘traditionalist Catholics’ who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings and traditions, but without the more extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric.”
After facing criticism, the FBI later apologized for the document, which it insisted “does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI.” Critics decried the document’s use of the Southern Poverty Law Center as a source. The organization has repeatedly labeled Christians (including Dr. Ben Carson) and socially conservative groups as "hate groups" because of their support of traditional marriage, among other issues.
It's not only Christians who the SPLC has targeted. As part of a $3.3 million settlement in 2018, the SPLC issued a formal apology to Maajid Nawaz and his organization, the Quilliam Foundation, for including them in a report on anti-Muslim activity.
Gabbard quoted Thomas Jefferson, who said, “God who gave us life gave us liberty” before positing, “Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed the conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”
Gabbard, the first Hindu to ever serve in the U.S. Congress, stressed the importance that Americans “recognize each other as children of God.” She noted that doing so enables people to “appreciate that every one of us belongs to God and to no one else.”
She added, “No government, no person, no individual has the right to take away the freedom that God has given us” as the “foundation of the social construct that is the United States of America” and “the core of who we are as Americans.”
“We love and respect each other, recognizing that we are all children of God. We recognize that each of us has this intrinsic right within our own hearts to have a deeply personal relationship with God and the freedom to express and practice that faith without fear of any state-sponsored reprisal or censorship or discrimination.”
She also stated that Democrats want to “erase the presence of God from every facet of public life,” insisting that “they cannot be trusted to protect our inalienable God-given rights enshrined in the Constitution and should not be in power.”
Gabbard told the CPAC audience that “they refuse to recognize that we are all God’s children and therefore they reduce each of us to the color of our skin.”
The former congresswoman also raised concerns that “they reject things like objective truth,” specifically “the fact that there is such a thing as a woman.” Gabbard’s comment alluded to Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s refusal to define the word woman during her confirmation hearings, which was seen as an overture to the idea that men who identify as female are women.
The Biden administration, she added, was “spitting in the face of every one of us as women by rejecting the fact that we as women exist and are not just a construct of someone’s mind,” adding, “There is no greater expression of hatred and hostility towards women than trying to erase us as an entire category of people.”
Gabbard further ripped the characterization of not referring to someone by their chosen pronouns as sexual harassment before maintaining that “when those in power deny the existence of objective truth, we take away all boundaries in our society and the truth becomes whatever those in power say it is at any given time.”
She expressed particular concern about the embrace of pedophilia, so-called “minor-attracted persons,” the “mutilation of children through the use of puberty blockers and chemical castration and irreversible surgeries” and “the promotion of infanticide” by “advocating for abortion on demand without exception even up to and after birth.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
