On Friday, Rep. John Fleming, R-La., joined Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” to discuss the bogus Christian persecution case of a Navy chaplain who claims he is the victim of employment discrimination for his religious beliefs.
“What has happened in recent years, particularly since Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House…and President Obama became president, is there’s been a systematic attempt to really take down religious liberty and to target specifically Christians more than anyone,” Fleming said.
After hailing Congress for having “expanded the First Amendment religious conscience rights” in the military “to say that it’s not just your beliefs but the expression thereof that are allowed within the limits of good order and discipline,” Fleming said that officials must hold military leaders accountable for alleged acts of anti-Christian discrimination.
Fleming then brought up the myth that Obama refuses to denounce violence against Christians in the Middle East, despite doing just that many times and citing anti-Christian violence as a reason for launching a military campaign against ISIS.
“Our president has done little and said little particularly in defense of the genocide that is occurring, the ethnic cleansing, of Christians in the Middle East,” Fleming said. “In fact, we know that many of the human rights organizations which function under the UN have really done a lot to do just the opposite of that, that in fact they tend to propagate liberal ideas and climate change and these kind of things in the absence of what is really happening around the world where we see sex trafficking, we see Christian women enslaved, Christians in general beheaded or crucified. So human rights has become really a functioning mechanism to push political agendas around the world, I see very little activity that is happening and certainly no leadership from this administration to actually focus it where it should be and that should be the protection of individuals, particularly women and children, and certainly those that are most targeted, which are Christians.”
Fleming said Obama administration officials are in “denial,” adding that when “one incident that may happen on a street in the United States with regard to police action against an individual gets quickly responded to by Eric Holder and President Obama but when hundreds if not thousands of Christians, as you point out, in the Middle East get treated extremely badly, tortured and then murdered, he seems to remain silent on this.”
“There definitely seems to be a double standard coming from this executive branch and really from the world as a whole, it just seems like there is some level of acceptance to persecution of Christians and ethnic cleansing as well as just outright murder,” Fleming said.
