[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 9 (Tuesday, January 16, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H398-H399]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 OUR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS UNDER ASSAULT

  (Mr. LaMALFA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, it is important to point out that religious 
freedom is indeed a cornerstone of the founding and the fiber of the 
United States. What started out in the Virginia General Assembly on 
this date in

[[Page H399]]

1786, which grew into the First Amendment in our Constitution and other 
Bill of Rights, that freedom is under assault.
  Courts, time and again, try to strike down the ability for people to 
peaceably assemble, peaceably speak their religious views, whether it 
is on a football field after a game or even extending so much to people 
objecting to what they are going to do in their bakery with what kind 
of products they are going to put out. We have folks that seem to think 
that religion is some kind of a plague in this country.
  Yes, maybe it is an inconvenience if your neighbor worships in a way 
that is different from you; but that is something that we have always, 
in the term ``tolerance,'' worked to get along with.
  Indeed, this House Chamber, every day, opens with an invocation; and 
right above the podium here, it says: ``In God we trust.''

  Are we going to trust ourselves as a nation to allow each other to 
worship freely? Or are we going to have an oppressive shutdown of that 
by out-of-control courts?
  We need to hold on to religious freedom.

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