Orthodox rabbis slam Biden for naming lesbian rabbi to religious freedom coalition

Orthodox rabbis slam President Biden for naming a lesbian rabbi to USCIRF, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

"A person's sexual preferences should be a private matter, and certainly irrelevant to prayer. Kleinbaum, by contrast, leads a congregation that insists ‘LGBTQ’ is a matter of identity," Rabbi Yaakov Menken, the managing director at the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), told Fox News on Thursday, ahead of Biden's Friday announcement. "At a time when religious people are persecuted worldwide for their personal, sincere beliefs that marriage is between a man and a woman, and gender is permanent, biological, and determined at conception, placing Kleinbaum on a commission devoted to ensuring religious freedom sends precisely the wrong message and could hardly be more counter-productive." Critics have said Biden's championing of LGBTQ issues has come at the expense of religious freedom concerns. Under Biden, the Department of Health and Human Services fought to resurrect a federal mandate forcing Roman Catholic hospitals and doctors to perform transgender surgery after a court ruled in favor of the Catholic health providers.