This week: Understanding the First Amendment Defense Act

The First Amendment Defense Act, now pending in Congress, provides that “the federal government "shall not take any discriminatory action against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage."

Roger Severino

While its provisions protect the rights of Christians and people of faith not to participate in same-sex weddings, it has engendered a lot of debate and opposition.

Tuesday, Roger Severino, director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation, will be our guest to discuss the provisions of the act and the hurdles it may face in getting passed and signed into law. Roger has recently penned an article for the Daily Signal defending the act which you can find here.

Before joining Heritage in 2015, Roger was a trial attorney in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. He worked in the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section on dozens of district and appellate court matters, including issues involving the Fair Housing Act and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. He previously was chief operations officer and legal counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, where he argued for the rights of religious believers and houses of worship to be free from discrimination and unjustified government burdens. 

He has also contributed commentary on church and state issues to The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, and New Republic Online, and has been interviewed on news topics by CNN, PBS, and C-SPAN, among others.

In addition to Roger, we’ll have our usual news reports and movie review, so join Deacon Mike Manno and Gina Noll at 9 a.m. Tuesday (Central time) on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM and streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com. The program will be re-broadcast at 9 p.m. Pod casts of past programs may be found on the Faith On Trial page of IowaCatholicRadio.com.

Faith On Trial is sponsored by our underwriters Attorney Rick McConville, Coppola, McConville, Coppola, Carroll, Hockenberg & Scalise PC 2100 Westown Parkway, West Des Moines, 515-453-1055; Confluence Brewing Company – off the Bike Trail just south of Grey’s Lake, 1235 Thomas Beck Road where there is live entertainment in the tap room every Thursday, and Rob denHartog, Wealth Management Advisor at Northwestern Mutual Life, NW corner of 128^th Street and Hickman Rd, 515-210-4472.