Nearly 40 evangelical organizations are demanding answers from Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump about his positions on a host of social issues, including abortion, same-sex marriage and religious freedom.
Paul Weber, who serves as chief executive of CitizenLink, an alliance of state-based religious policy councils across the nation, penned an open letter Wednesday to the brash New York billionaire that contains eight questions about his record and some of the controversial statements he’s made.
“With the recent passing of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the issues of marriage, life, religious liberty and the centrality of the family require even more focus,” Weber said in a statement, adding that Trump’s “public comments about nominating judges with the same temperament as his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, who overturned the New Jersey Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, are particularly concerning to Christians and should be to all Americans.”
Weber’s first question address Trump’s evolution from being “pro-choice in every respect” — a phrase he used to describe himself during an interview in 1999 — to a committed pro-life candidate.
“Your explanation for this change of position — that a baby who was nearly aborted ended up being a ‘superstar’ — is confusing, particularly since you acknowledged that if the child had been ‘a loser,’ your pro-abortion position probably wouldn’t have changed,” he writes, before asking Trump to “explain this utilitarian view of the sanctity of human life.”
From there, the letter addresses Trump’s suggestion that someone like his sister, senior Third Circuit Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, should fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s vacancy on the bench. The recommendation has drawn scrutiny from conservatives who note that Trump’s sister previously struck down New Jersey’s partial-birth abortion ban.
Weber also asks Trump to “reconcile” his support for religious freedom with the praise he earned for his “stand-out position” on anti-discrimination legislation from a group of gay conservatives known as the Log Cabin Republicans.
“[Trump] is one of the best, if not the best, pro-gay Republican candidates to ever run for the presidency,” Gregory Angelo, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, said in December.
The letter continued, pressing Trump on his alleged record of running “businesses associated with crime, bankruptcies, broken marriages and suicides” and on what kind of message the strip club at his Atlantic City casino sends to “young girls and women who are concerned about a president who is directly connected with the exploitation of women.”
“One of your favorite campaign themes is that you are going to ‘run America’ if elected,” Weber writes. “Considering our system of checks and balances, and especially in light of the last seven years of government by fiat, how will you demonstrate your respect for the U.S. Constitution and the limited power the Founding Fathers intended for the federal government in general, and the executive branch in particular?”
According to CitizenLink, Trump must “clear up his contradictory record on issues americans care about.” The group has invited him to do so by answering the questions in its letter during its Presidential Candidate Teleconference Series.
However, Trump has not yet responded to the invitation and Weber says his “several attempts” to interview the GOP candidate have never come to fruition.
