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“While every section of the report shows an increase in the suppression of religious freedom, the area … dealing with human sexuality showed the greatest increase in the level of hostility to religious beliefs,” Travis Weber, Family Research Council’s director of the Center for Religious Liberty, said in a statement. “This trend was apparent in the last report [last year], and following the Supreme Court’s decision redefining marriage, is even clearer now.”

The report details many more cases similar to these in which Americans’ religious freedoms were apparently violated.

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“These numbers are also conservative estimates; some incidents contain more than one person or entity affected by the religious freedom violation, yet we only counted it as one incident,” the report noted. “Thus, the actual figures are likely much higher. In a society like ours, we must be the guardians of our own freedom.”

President Trump has vowed to protect Americans’ First Amendment rights. On May 4, the president issued an executive order to ensure the enforcement of protections already in place.

“The first step to recovery from any problem is to stop denying a problem exists,” Roger Severino — the head of the Health and Human Services Department’s office for civil rights — told The Daily Signal last year, addressing a similar “religious hostility” report put out by First Liberty Institute in 2016.

“First Liberty Institute’s report shatters the myth that the Left is on the side of tolerance by documenting countless examples of progressives using the power of government to target people of faith for hostility and exclusion because of their beliefs,” Severino said of that previous study. [lz_pagination]