Early this year, the St. Louis city council passed an ordinance “to prohibit discrimination based on a person’s reproductive-health decisions or pregnancy.” The law applies to discrimination related to employment or housing and includes no ministerial exemptions or exceptions for religious institutions. To Nathanael Blake, the law constitutes a major assault on religious liberty:

[U]nder this law, Catholic leaders in St. Louis can be fined and imprisoned for punishing a rogue priest who got a woman pregnant and then paid for her to get an abortion. . . . The elders of a Baptist church can be fined and imprisoned for firing a minister who, in order to preserve his image as the father of a perfect family, pressured his unmarried teenaged daughter to get an abortion. The leaders of pro-life groups can be fined and imprisoned for refusing to hire pro-abortion activists, or for even suggesting a preference for pro-life employees.

Megan Green, the original sponsor of the ordinance, has confirmed these consequences, declaring that, “We’re not saying the [Catholic] archdiocese and [other religious groups] can’t have their views. . . . We’re saying they can’t impose them on others in housing or employment.” This ordinance is intended to punish Christian ministries and organizations that require employees to adhere to Christian standards of behavior. This is further confirmed by the absence of any actual injustices for the law to remedy. . . .

Churches and religious institutions that can’t enforce standards of belief and behavior, even for ministers, do not have religious liberty. . . . The St. Louis law is one manifestation of a broader effort to pervert the purpose of anti-discrimination law, changing it from a tool used to protect minority groups from material harm (i.e., being locked out of essential goods and services) into a weapon used to destroy religious liberty. . . . [P]roponents of a similar measure in California are open about their desire to attack Christian organizations. . . . In St. Louis and elsewhere, anti-discrimination law is being hijacked to persecute religious nonconformists, rather than protecting their rights to live authentically by their faith.

Established in 2012 and maintaining branches in Europe, North America, and Iran, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Network claims its goal is merely to show “solidarity” for imprisoned Palestinians. The organization’s leader, however, has admitted to being a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a notorious terrorist group whose most recent accomplishments include murdering a seventeen-year-old girl. As Arsen Ostrovsky and Patricia Teitelbaum point out, Samidoun is just one example of how the European Union allows Iran-backed terrorists to operate in its midst:

The PFLP is a proxy of the Iranian regime, which provides the terror group with money, training, and weapons. Samidoun . . . has a branch in Tehran. It has even held events there, under the pretext of “cultural activity,” to elicit support for operations in Europe. Its leader, Khaled Barakat, is a regular on Iran’s state [channel] PressTV, calling for violence and lauding Iran’s involvement in the region. It is utterly incomprehensible, therefore, that the EU has not yet designated Samidoun a terror group.

According to the Council of the European Union, groups and/or individuals can be added to the EU terror list on the basis of “proposals submitted by member states based on a decision by a competent authority of a member state or a third country.” In this regard, there is already a standing designation by Israel of Samidoun as a terror group and a decision of a German court finding Barakat to be a senior PFLP operative.

Given the irrefutable axis-of-terror between Samidoun, PFLP, and the Iranian regime, the EU has a duty to put Samidoun and senior Samidoun leaders on the EU terror list. It should do this not as some favor to Israel, but because otherwise it continues to turn a blind eye to a group that presents a clear and present security threat to the European Union and EU citizens.