This is the article that appeared in the September 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.
Democratic candidate for president, Vice President Kamala Harris, has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her vice presidential pick. His policies on religious liberty and sexual issues mirror hers.
In 2024, Walz approved legislation that would protect religious liberty in Minnesota’s Human Rights Law. However, this was done after a 2023 bill that he signed into law that stripped them of their protections. The 2023 law caused an uproar across the state and forced Walz and the Democrats to retreat. The Catholic Conference of Minnesota was heavily invested in passing the 2024 law.
In 2023, Walz signed a bill into law that specifically excluded Christian universities with statements of faith from Minnesota’s Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program. This program allows high school students to enroll at local colleges at no cost to them; they can receive both high school and college credits. This law was struck down in the courts after a Christian family sued Walz. The case was Loe v. Walz. No friend of religious liberty would ever have banned Christians from this program.
During the Covid-19 lockdowns, Walz banned houses of worship from having gatherings of larger than 10 people. After the heads of Minnesota’s Catholic and Lutheran churches said they would reopen May 26, 2020, Walz quickly changed his position and allowed the churches to reopen. He had previously allowed retail stores, casinos, bars and restaurants to open at 50 percent capacity, and he okayed the opening of the Mall of America. The hard line he took for houses of worship smacked of an anti-religious bias.
Walz’s position on abortion is consistent with that of Harris’. He not only has no record of opposing an abortion for any reason—or at any time during pregnancy—he is so radical that in May 2023 he signed a funding bill that repealed Minnesota’s protection for babies born following a botched abortion. In other words, he legalized selective infanticide.
On January 31, 2023, Walz enshrined the “right” to abortion and other reproductive health care measures into Minnesota statutes. This law was designed to protect abortion in the state from future Supreme Court decisions.
When it comes to transgenderism—the anti-science movement that promotes the right of males and females (including minors) to switch their sex—the Biden-Harris team is the most radical administration in American history. Walz is on board, 100 percent.
On April 27, 2023, he signed a law that banned “conversion therapy.” House File 16 “prohibits mental health practitioners or mental health professionals from providing conversion therapy to vulnerable adults and clients under age 18.”
In other words, Walz wants to stop teenage girls (80 percent of those who “transition” to the other sex are females) from having the right to correct the mistake they made—often aided and abetted by corrupt therapists and medical professionals—in attempting to change their sex. These exploited young people want to “detransition” back to their father-determined sex, but Walz wants to take this right away from them.
On April 27, 2023, Walz signed a law that turned Minnesota into a transgender sanctuary state. House File 146 “prevents state courts or officials from complying with child removal requests, extraditions, arrests, or subpoenas related to gender-affirming health care that a person receives in Minnesota.”
In other words, this law gives state courts temporary emergency jurisdiction over any child in Minnesota who has “been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care.” If a child runs away, and moves to a state to receive “gender-affirming care,” Minnesota would not return the child to his parents under this law. Similarly, in a custody battle, a parent could take the child to Minnesota for “gender-affirming care” and the out-of-state parent would have no recourse in Minnesota’s courts.
Tim Walz is no friend of religious liberty, the rights of the unborn, and the welfare of young people. There will be no tension between him and Harris on any of these issues.
