With the 2016 presidential election approaching, Baptist Press has compiled a listing of the two major party candidates’ positions on a range of issues regarded as important by many pro-family voters. Positions are drawn from the candidates’ websites, speeches, writings, media interviews and statements in primary and general election debates.
Abortion
Hillary Clinton: “Women’s personal health decisions should be made by a woman, her family, and her faith, with the counsel of her doctor. Hillary will fight back against Republican attempts to restrict access to quality, affordable reproductive health care. She will defend access to affordable contraception, preventive care, and safe and legal abortion — not just in principle, but in practice” (HillaryClinton.com).
Donald Trump: “Let me be clear — I am pro-life. I support that position with exceptions allowed for rape, incest or the life of the mother being at risk. I did not always hold this position, but I had a significant personal experience that brought the precious gift of life into perspective for me” (DonaldJTrump.com, Feb. 15, 2016).
Criminal justice system
Hillary Clinton: “Too many young African American and Latino men,” Clinton said in a Sept. 26, 2016, debate, have “ended up in jail for nonviolent offenses. And it’s just a fact that if you’re a young African American man and you do the same thing as a young white man, you are more likely to be arrested, charged, convicted and incarcerated.” She advocated reducing mandatory minimum sentences, “which have put too many people away for too long for doing too little,” and increasing the number of “second chance programs” in America’s criminal justice system.
Donald Trump: I An aspect of maintaining law and order should be the use of “stop-and-frisk” procedures, under which police may question pedestrians then search them for weapons and other contraband, Trump said in the same debate. “We need law and order in the inner cities,” Trump said, “because the people that are most affected by [urban violence and unrest] are African American and Hispanic people. And it’s very unfair to them what our politicians are allowing to happen.” He cited Charlotte, N.C., and Ferguson, Mo., as examples.
Immigration
Hillary Clinton: “Hillary will introduce comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to full and equal citizenship within her first 100 days in office. It will treat every person with dignity, fix the family visa backlog, uphold the rule of law, protect our borders and national security, and bring millions of hardworking people into the formal economy” (HillaryClinton.com).
Donald Trump: Trump has proposed construction of a physical barrier between the United States and Mexico as well as increased border security. In addition, his immigration policies aimed specifically at terrorism prevention appear to have shifted somewhat over the past year. On Dec. 7, 2015, Trump issued a press release which stated, “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
On June 25, 2016, Trump’s campaign said he would only ban immigration of Muslims from “terror states,” CNN reported. “I want terrorists out,” Trump said June 25, according to CNN. “I want people that have bad thoughts out. I would limit specific terrorist countries and we know who those terrorist countries are.” Currently, Trump’s campaign website states his intention to “suspend the issuance of visas to any place where adequate screening cannot occur, until proven and effective vetting mechanisms can be put into place.”
Terrorism
Hillary Clinton: In a Nov. 14, 2015, debate, Clinton was asked whether she believed the West was at war with “radical Islam.” She responded “that you can talk about Islamists who are clearly jihadists” but said using the term radical Islam is “not particularly helpful” in the quest to build a coalition of Muslim nations to oppose the Islamic State terrorist group. “We are at war with violent extremism,” Clinton said. “We are at war with people who use their religion for purposes of power and oppression. And, yes, we are at war with those people. But I don’t want us to be painting with too broad a brush.”
Donald Trump: “We cannot let this evil [acts perpetrated by terrorists] continue. Nor can we let the hateful ideology of radical Islam — its oppression of women, gays, children and nonbelievers — be allowed to reside or spread within our own countries. We will defeat radical Islamic terrorism, just as we have defeated every threat we have faced in every age before” (DonaldJTrump.com, Aug. 15, 2016).
Marijuana legalization
Hillary Clinton: “I do support the use of medical marijuana, and I think even there we need to do a lot more research so that we know exactly how we’re going to help people for whom medical marijuana provides relief,” Clinton said in an Oct. 13, 2015, debate. She added she was not ready to take a position on recreational marijuana legalization.
Donald Trump: “In some ways I think [recreational marijuana legalization is] good and in other ways it’s bad. I do want to see what the medical effects are. I have to see what the medical effects are and, by the way — medical marijuana, medical: I’m in favor of it a hundred percent. But what you are talking about [recreational marijuana legalization], perhaps not” (Fox News, “The O’Reilly Factor,” Feb. 11, 2016).
Religious liberty
Hillary Clinton: “As Americans, we hold fast to the belief that everyone has the right to worship however he or she sees fit. I’ve been fighting to defend religious freedom for years. As secretary of state, I made it a cornerstone of our foreign policy to protect the rights of religious minorities around the world — from Coptic Christians in Egypt to Buddhists in Tibet. And along with Jon Huntsman, our then-ambassador in Beijing, I stood in solidarity with Chinese Christians facing persecution from their government. We stood up for these oppressed communities because Americans know that democracy ceases to exist when a leader or ruling faction can impose a particular faith on everyone else” (Deseret News op-ed, Aug. 10, 2016).
Donald Trump: “Religious liberty is enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution. It is our first liberty and provides the most important protection in that it protects our right of conscience. Activist judges and executive orders issued by presidents who have no regard for the Constitution have put these protections in jeopardy. If I am elected president and Congress passes the First Amendment Defense Act, I will sign it to protect the deeply held religious beliefs of … Americans of all faiths. The Little Sisters of the Poor, or any religious order for that matter, will always have their religious liberty protected on my watch and will not have to face bullying from the government because of their religious beliefs” (DonaldJTrump.com, Sept. 22, 2016).
Same-sex marriage
Hillary Clinton: “Thanks to the hard work of generations of LGBT advocates and activists who fought to make it possible, our country won a landmark victory last June when the Supreme Court recognized that in America, LGBT couples — like everyone else — have the right to marry the person they love. We’ve come so far, but we still have work to do” (HillaryClinton.com).
Donald Trump: “I’m for traditional marriage,” Trump said June 28, 2015, on CNN’s “State of the Union.” In a Jan. 31, 2016, interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace, Trump said same-sex marriage “should be a states’ rights issue” and that he would “strongly consider” nominating Supreme Court justices who would overturn the high court’s nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage.
Supreme Court justices
Hillary Clinton: “Regardless of who wins in the fall, the balance of the court hangs on this election. So, if you care about a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion; protecting voting rights; marriage equality; getting the outsized influence of money out of politics; giving more people access to health care; keeping families together; or preserving any other fundamental right, it’s time to register to vote” (HillaryClinton.com, Sept. 14, 2016).
Donald Trump: On Sept. 23, 2016, Trump released a list of 21 people he “would consider” as Supreme Court nominees along with the following statement:
“We have a very clear choice in this election. The freedoms we cherish and the constitutional values and principles our country was founded on are in jeopardy. The responsibility is greater than ever to protect and uphold these freedoms and I will appoint justices, who like Justice Scalia, will protect our liberty with the highest regard for the Constitution. This list is definitive and I will choose only from it in picking future Justices of the United States Supreme Court. I would like to thank the Federalist Society, The Heritage Foundation and the many other individuals who helped in composing this list of twenty-one highly respected people who are the kind of scholars that we need to preserve the very core of our country, and make it greater than ever before.”
Transgenderism
Hillary Clinton: “Hillary will work to protect transgender individuals from violence, make it easier for transgender Americans to change their gender marker on identification documents, and invest in law enforcement training focused on fair and impartial policing, including in interactions with LGBT people” (HillaryClinton.com).
Donald Trump: Transgender individuals should “use the bathroom they feel is appropriate,” Trump said on NBC’s “Today” show April 21, 2016. He added that “a big move to create new bathrooms” for transgender people “would be discriminatory in a certain way.”
Later the same day, Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity, “I think that local communities and states should make the decision” of whether to include protection for transgender persons in nondiscrimination laws. “And I feel very strongly about that. The federal government should not be involved.”
David Roach is chief national correspondent for Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention’s news service.