Trump will enact 'morally sound' policy protecting religious freedoms, says transition adviser

Ken Blackwell, a key member of President Donald Trump's transition team, has said that it is only a matter of time before the present administration enacts a new policy that would protect religious freedoms.

In February, a four-page draft of a potential executive order that would protect religious liberty was leaked to The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute and was also widely reported by news media. But the White House said that the leaked draft was one of hundreds of proposals that are circulating through the administration.

Many have been pressuring the president in the past few months to sign an executive order to protect Christians and other organizations who believe in traditional marriage and who are against LGBT nondiscrimination laws.

Earlier this month, Several Republican members of Congress sent a letter to Trump asking him to sign the order.

"Because religious liberty is of such importance and under such threat, we believe that the draft executive order should be signed without delay and that all the protections discussed in this letter should be enshrined permanently in our laws," the letter read in part.

Blackwell, who served as the chief domestic policy advisor to the Trump transition team, noted that the current administration is working on a policy to protect religious liberty, but they are expecting it to be "aggressively challenged."

"I am confident that those of us who have the ear of the president and who have engaged with folks who don't necessarily hold our point of view, I think we will win the day," Blackwell told The Christian Post when asked about the order.

"Folks who are framing this are not novices. They know that it is going to be immediately and aggressively challenged. I think what we are seeing now is the desire to make sure it is as tight and as sound as it possibly can be," he continued.

Blackwell said that it is not a matter of "if" but "when" the Trump administration will enact such a policy.

Last month, a senior White House official told USA Today that the administration is working on a policy to protect religious freedoms, but the president is still trying to find a middle ground between protecting the LGBT community from discrimination and protecting the rights of people to freely express their religious beliefs.

Laura Durso of the progressive Center for American Progress argued that the First Amendment already protects the freedom of religion. She warned that any efforts to provide additional protection could create "a license to discriminate across a wide range of federal programs."

In late March, Trump rescinded the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces order, issued by President Obama in 2014, which required federal contractors to prove that they are in compliance with other laws that prohibited discrimination against workers on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.