Can Gary Johnson Win Over Evangelical Voters Disappointed With Trump?

I. “Gary Johnson seems to have a problem…”

“I have to admit to praying once in a while, and, yes, I do believe in God,” Johnson told a questioner at a June CNN town hall. He continued, “I was raised a Christian. I do not attend church. And if there’s one thing that I’ve taken away from Christianity, do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

When asked why he didn’t attend church, Johnson said, “The God that I speak to is not — doesn’t have a particular religion.”

Johnson was raised a Lutheran, but in sharp contrast to many Republican candidates for president, he never given his religious faith prominence in his presidential ambitions. His stances on abortion, gay rights, and more recently religious liberty put him at odds with the majority of socially conservative voters.

Even four years ago — before the Obergefell decision enshrined marriage equality and before anti-abortion activists released edited videos that unleashed a fresh wave of conservative antipathy for Planned Parenthood — Johnson was supportive of legal abortion and “non-standard marriage,” as the Libertarian magazine Reason put it in 2012.

“Gov. Johnson recognizes that the right of a woman to choose is the law of the land, and has been for several decades. That right must be respected and despite his personal aversion to abortion, he believes that such a very personal and individual decision is best left to women and families, not the government,” according to his campaign website.

Johnson is not as keen as Republicans are to cut Planned Parenthood off from federal funding, a move he said resulted in alienating a lot of people from the GOP. “Planned Parenthood does a lot of good, and that starts with women’s health,” he said at the same CNN town hall. (Trump, too, has spoken of the good work Planned Parenthood does, but he also said women needed to be given “some form of punishment” for abortions.)

Lately, Johnson has invited the ire of social conservatives with multiple comments indicating his skepticism of “religious liberty” laws, such as the one signed into law last year by Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

During a Libertarian Party debate in Las Vegas hosted by TheBlaze in May, Johnson was blunt: “[T]hese religious freedom laws are really just a way to discriminate against gay individuals, the LGBT community,” he said. “That’s what they are about. I don’t think that the Libertarian Party should be engaged in any way in endorsing discrimination.”

Speaking to the Washington Examiner in July, Johnson said that the bills were too broadly defined and opened up the possibility for legally sanctioned discrimination. “Under the guise of religious freedom, anybody can do anything,” he said. “I just see religious freedom, as a category, as just being a black hole.”

In an op-ed published in the Salt Lake City daily Deseret News, he wrote, “My concerns lie with the possible consequences of politically-driven legislation which claims to promote religious liberty but instead rolls back the legal protections held by LGBT Americans.”

Few could miss that Johnson’s arguments against religious liberty legislation echoed those advanced by the bills’ detractors — namely, progressives and pro-LGBT advocates. Johnson’s remarks on the issue supplied fresh ammunition to his conservative critics.

“Gary Johnson seems to have a problem with religious liberty,” Nate Madden wrote in Conservative Review, appraising Johnson’s debate performance in May. “On questions of religious liberty, Johnson’s instinct is often to take a position more like that of a secular Democrat than a Republican,” wrote Kyle Sammin in the Federalist after his June CNN town hall.

Even conservatives who support Johnson and oppose Trump found his stance on religious liberty troubling. Brandon Morse, writing in RedState, reviewed Johnson’s remarks about religious freedom laws at the second CNN town hall on Aug. 3. He wrote: “For a Libertarian, Johnson’s stance on religious liberty is remarkably un-Libertarian.”

If Johnson was making an effort to pick off evangelical voters disillusioned with Trump, he had an odd way of doing it.

Continue reading: “Law was destroying grace…”

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[image: Gage Skidmore]