Are the policies Joe Biden plans to pursue as president good or evil?
As the nation's second Catholic president, will he act in a way that is consistent with the teachings of his faith?
Will he follow the natural law and protect the God-given rights to life and liberty?
At least five things candidate Biden promised to do as president can fairly be described as evil.
The first is to enact a federal law to "codify" a "right" to kill unborn children.
The Catholic Church has correctly called such killing murder.
"The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth if we recognize that we are dealing with murder," Pope John Paul II wrote in his encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae.
"Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception," says the Catholic Catechism.
"As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child's rights," says the Catechism.
Not according to Joe Biden.
"Biden will work to codify Roe v. Wade," says his campaign website.
"Biden will ... protect the constitutional right to an abortion," it says.
Biden will not only seek to codify this "right" to kill an unborn child that the Supreme Court manufactured in Roe; he will also make taxpayers pay for that killing.
That is the second evil item on Biden's agenda.
"Biden supports repealing the Hyde Amendment because health care is a right that should not be dependent on one's zip code or income," says his campaign website. "And, the public option will cover contraception and a woman's constitutional right under Roe v. Wade."
The Hyde Amendment, according to the Congressional Research Service, "generally restricts Medicaid abortions under annual appropriations for the Department of Health and Human Services." The "public option," Biden's website explains, is "a public health insurance option like Medicare."
Thus, under Biden's plan, repealing the Hyde Amendment will allow the federal government to fund abortion through Medicaid, while creating a Medicare-like "public option" will establish a federally funded and operated health insurance plan that covers abortions.
The third evil item on Biden's agenda calls for forcing family-owned businesses to provide health insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs and devices.
Biden's campaign website says he will "restore the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate in place before the U.S. Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision."
The question in Hobby Lobby was whether the federal government could issue a regulation under the Affordable Care Act that required family-owned businesses to provide insurance plans that cover all Food and Drug Administration-approved "contraceptives," some of which act as abortifacients.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops filed an amicus brief in Hobby Lobby objecting to the regulation.
"During the promulgation of the regulations at issue in this litigation, the conference has steadily voiced its opposition to any rule that would require faithful Catholics and other religiously motivated business owners to choose between providing coverage for products and speech that violate their religious beliefs, and exposing their business to devastating penalties," said the bishops.
Biden would do just that.
The fourth evil act Biden has planned is to force public schools to treat biological males as females and biological females as males.
"By creating the human being man and woman, God gives personal dignity equally to the one and the other," says the Catholic Catechism. "Each of them, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity."
Rather than accept the God-given "sexual identity" of human beings, Biden plans to advance something he calls "gender identity."
"Biden believes every transgender or non-binary person should have the option of changing their gender marker to 'M,' 'F,' or 'X' on government identifications, passports, and other documentation," says his website.
He will also guarantee that "transgender students have access to facilities based on their gender identity."
"On his first day in office," says Biden's campaign website, "Biden will reinstate the Obama-Biden guidance revoked by the Trump-Pence administration, which will restore transgender students' access to sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms in accordance with their gender identity."
Under Biden's plan, an 18-year-old boy who says he is a girl can play on the girls' field hockey team and use the girls' locker room.
The fifth evil item on Biden's agenda is what he would force insurance companies and health care providers to do to such a boy.
"Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law," says the Catholic Catechism.
"As president," says his website, "Biden ... will also ensure coverage for comprehensive care, including covering care related to transitioning such as gender confirmation surgery."
"I am going to protect and build on Obamacare ... and make sure insurance companies treat gender confirmation surgery as a medical necessity, which it is," Biden said in a May 6 interview with the Human Rights Campaign.
What is "gender confirmation surgery"? The American Society of Plastic Surgeons explains it on its website, describing -- among other examples -- what it calls "transfeminine bottom surgery."
"The goal of transfeminine bottom surgery," says the society, "is to transform the male genitalia and reconstruct it into that of a female."
Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor in chief of CNSnews.com.