Executive Order 13798: Religious Liberty

What the Executive Order says

Executive Order (EO) 13798 is entitled "Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty" and has 6 sections.  Unfortunately it does not concretely answer who's free speech and who's religious liberty.

Section 1

This section defines the policy of the administration with regards to religious freedom and the freedom of speech regarding religion.  This is enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

Section 2

There is a long standing agreement from the 1960's that churches should not involve themselves in partisan politics.  This section of the EO kind of hints that if they were to do so, then the IRS and other agencies who might be inclined to apply penalties should look the other way.

Section 3

This section specifically refers to the mandatory requirement for health plans to cover contraception and the fact that certain religious groups are opposed to the use of contraception.  Essentially this directs various agency heads to look at the issue and certainly does not mandate a hardline position.

Section 4

This section directs the Attorney General to issue guidance on the application of religious liberty protections to Federal Law.

Section 5

This section has a severability clause.  In many cases, this is assumed, but only where there is anticipation of any kind of legal challenge would one want to put this explicitly.  In fact, if you look at previous EO's, there have been a few which have had it included and many others that did not.  To some extent this clause could be an indication as to the origin of the EO but of course, better sleuths than me would be needed to confirm that.

Section 6

This section has the usual fine print to assure that the EO is constitutional.

My Commentary

So where all of this starts to fall apart is the fact that in the Bill of Rights there is also mandated the separation of church and state.  It then further falls apart in that there is a pro-Christian undertone to all of this and in reality, every religion should be entitled to the same protections.  While some of the specifics such as Section 2 and 3 are issues that Christian groups specifically have lobbied for, the reality is that if further actions and documents that are issued do not adequately reflect the freedoms for all religions, then the administration opens themselves up to charges of religious based discrimination and hypocrisy.
The freedom of religious practice and freedom of religious belief are bound to conflict with the other rights and freedoms given in the constitution.  Religious beliefs, after all, are beliefs about what an ideally structured society should look like and how people should behave.  While any given church can mandate the structure within its organization, it can only try to affect the larger society through the political process.  And here, given the required separation of church and state in the constitution, there has to be clear limits to the extent of what political involvements a church can exercise lest it start to give an appearance of a preferred religion.
The behavior of members can to some extent be defined and even controlled, but with respect to non-members, do rights of conscience exist?  That is, if a member of a church (or religion) that holds a specific belief based on their faith have the right to intervene with non-members of the church or does that violate the rights of the non-members?  This question has been answered as "depends on how controversial the belief is".  If we go with "thou shalt not kill" as it might apply to the average person on the street, it is pretty much agreed that killing is wrong and punishable under the law and action on this belief is acceptable.  But take "thou shalt not kill" in the context of abortions or of capital punishment, you can start a bar fight in the right parts of the country and ultimately the justification of actions taken is unlikely to be considered defensible in a court of law.
This EO is much more of a political statement rather than anything change to law or regulation set in motion.  There are potential unintended consequences floating around in the background such as someone using this as a justification to promote Sharia law.  It should be reversed at the soonest opportunity.