Faced with demographic and generational changes that are eroding the power and control of the Christofascists and the far right over other people's lives, these toxic individuals are seeking to establish a category of special rights for themselves to the detriment of the civil rights of others. Sadly, Republicans are only too happy to jump on this band wagon as they continue to stack the GOP's future on the dwindling ranks of angry white far right Christians, A piece in The Daily Beast looks at how this trend - which is still alive in many states - threatens the rights of the rest of us. Here are highlights:
Religion has been and continues to be used for great evil. The Christofascists are free to worship how they want and to believe what they want, but they do not get to inflict their views on others through the civil laws or special rights granted to them.
It’s not clear that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer looked much beyond the vociferous objections of the business community when she vetoed a law that would have permitted commercial enterprises to scorn gay and lesbian customers on the basis of their owners’ professed religious convictions. It was a prudent veto, endorsed by the state’s Republican establishment—by Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, and even by several legislators who suddenly urged Brewer to block the very law they had just voted for. Marriott Hotels joined the opposition—and so did a once and again member of its board named Mitt Romney.
In fact, far more was at stake here than whether Apple would continue to build its new sapphire glass plant in Mesa or whether the next Super Bowl would be played as scheduled in Arizona. The dangers were real: The NFL had shifted the 1993 Super Bowl to the Rose Bowl when the state refused to observe the Martin Luther King Holiday. The reaction of the league, major corporations, and the Arizona Chamber of Commerce was commendable as well as understandable: Their position was good for business, and companies like Apple have been in the forefront of equal treatment for gay and lesbian employees.
But the Arizona bill represented something more—the continuation of an overreaching campaign waged in the name of “religious freedom” that has profound implications for the future and fate of a pluralistic America. As E.J. Dionne observed in Commonweal, “the promiscuous resort to conscience objections” threatens “the ongoing effort to balance robust protections for faith groups on the one hand with the need for laws of general application on the other.”
That’s also exactly what’s happened with the Catholic bishops’ misguided assault on Obamacare. . . . “Ninety-eight percent of sexually active American Catholic women practice birth control and 78 percent of Catholics think a ‘good Catholic’ can reject the bishops’ teaching…” Thus the official church—except for those pesky nuns at the Catholic Hospital Association—insists on imposing a doctrine on countless non-Catholic employees that most of its own members disdain, and even though the church-affiliated institutions in question don’t have to finance a scintilla of coverage for birth-control services.
This “promiscuous” invocation of religious freedom would deny equal rights to those with different religious convictions—or none. The Arizona law, and similar statutes proposed in other states, would extend the claim to an extreme that logically could sanction discrimination far beyond the LGBT community.
[S]hould a fundamentalist hotelkeeper be able to refuse a room to an unmarried couple? And what if the couple is mixed-race? A conscience exemption could offer cover for the oldest and most odious form of discrimination in America.
[T]here is the long history of “a religious and biblical case for segregation.” Indeed the trial judge who ruled in favor of Virginia’s antimiscegenation law in 1967 called on God as his validator: The Almighty had put distinct races on different continents because “he did not intend the races to mix.” The Supreme Court reversed the ruling and invalidated the Virginia law—and federal law generally prohibits racial discrimination.
State statutes can’t alter that, even if cloaked in sacerdotal rationalization. But if the Arizona law had been signed, or if its ilk proliferates, there will be predictable calls for the same kind of conscience exemption at the federal level. Wary advocates could settle for just going after gays; but that would run afoul of the Supreme Court’s DOMA decision by singling out a suspect class in the absence of any compelling governmental interest. To have any chance to survive a court challenge, the exemption would have to be general.
Conscience clauses have their place: Ministers, rabbis, and priests should not be required to officiate at a same-sex marriage in violation of their faith. Miscarrying this into the commercial sector is another matter altogether. A commercial transaction does not confer ethical approbation on a customer. And nondiscrimination is, or should be, a seamless garment—and discrimination a seamless evil.
The great question here is whether we can learn to live together as a country in all our increasing diversity. A clear majority of Americans already favor marriage equality—or soon will. Churches don’t have to. They can teach and preach their doctrines without trying to write them into law—as the Catholic Church has by declining, at least in this country, any attempt to turn the “sin” of divorce into an illegal act.
[P]luralism, respect for one another, a will even against the will of many and settled patterns of prejudice to bring down barriers and open up freedom are the only ways America can work and live up to its defining principles.
Religious freedom is not in peril in this country today; the specter that can imperil our future is a misuse of religion that could menace our freedom.
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