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New Religious Freedom Bills Legitimize Discrimination

New Religious Freedom Bills Legitimize Discrimination

You’d think history might serve as a guide for the politicians and preachers — good Christians all, of course — who have chosen to use the Bible to bolster their bigotry against people they’ve placed outside the magic circle. We’ve seen this before, and it didn’t turn out well for those who claimed a mantle of righteousness. Yet onward they march.

Mississippi recently passed a “religious freedom” law designed to provide legal cover for those who wish to discriminate against gays and lesbians. The law is quite specific, allowing government clerks to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and protecting businesses that refuse to serve them.

Does this ring any bells? Do any of these people remember Jim Crow, a system of legalized oppression that stunted Mississippi for generations and whose legacy the state is still struggling to overcome?

They can’t have forgotten — not all of them.

Gov. Phil Bryant, who signed the odious bill, is certainly old enough to remember. He’d remember, too, that, during his childhood, many of the leading church folk declared that God was on the side of discrimination.

And history should have taught the governor about Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple who dared to marry in 1958. The Virginia judge who sentenced them to prison for their crime wrote: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. … The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Indeed, this practice of using the Bible as a prop for prejudice has a long and ignominious tradition, spanning centuries and continents. In the United States, slave owners conveniently saw in the Bible a heaven-sent sanction for their brutal greed. Throughout the 19th century, preachers delivered sermons claiming that “the Old Testament did sanction slavery,” as the Rev. Richard Fuller put it in 1847. Others saw a validation of white supremacy in a Bible verse about the descendants of Ham.

Proponents of “religious freedom” statutes point to the First Amendment, which enshrines as a central value the protection of religious views, even those that are outside the mainstream. Congress reiterated its fidelity to that founding principle as recently as 1993, when a bipartisan majority passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It was designed for such cases as the Sikh firefighter who wants to keep his beard, or the Orthodox Jew who needs an exemption from a Sabbath work requirement.

But the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage set off a spate of proposals that serve no purpose except bigotry — laws that prop up prejudice with Scripture. The giveaway in several of those bills is this: They allow for-profit businesses to claim to have religious beliefs and to refuse service on that basis.

(The Supreme Court opened the door for that with its unfortunate 2014 ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, which assigned religious beliefs to corporations. That involved a company’s “religious freedom” to refuse to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives.)

Churches, by the way, don’t need any extra legal protections. The First Amendment has always given religious institutions wide latitude to practice their beliefs as they see fit, even if that means making invidious distinctions. Catholic priests have long reserved the right to refuse to marry those who are divorced; many conservative churches refuse to ordain women. So clerics may decline to perform the marriage rite for same-sex couples without fear of legal sanctions.

Given that, there is no need for laws that legitimize discrimination, and some states, either through revision or veto, have stepped back from such mean-spirited laws. North Carolina, however, has forged ahead with its “bathroom bill,” passed to nullify a Charlotte law that would have allowed transgendered individuals to use public restrooms of their choosing. And other state legislators are still debating proposals meant to show their disapproval of same-sex marriage.

Onward they march — toward their heterosexual heaven.

Cynthia Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Republicans’ Anti-LGBT Laws Have Been Months In The Making

Republicans’ Anti-LGBT Laws Have Been Months In The Making

LGBT rights have faced ongoing attack this week, as bills passed in both North Carolina and Indiana that limited discriminatory protections against marginalized groups.

North Carolina and Indiana’s governors both signed into law bills effectively opening the door for sexual discrimination. In North Carolina, House Bill 2 restricted washroom use by transgender people by legislating they must use facilities corresponding to the stated gender on their birth certificates, in response to Charlotte’s expansion of its non-discrimination ordinance to protect transgender rights in late February. It also rolled back protections against employment discrimination.

In Indiana, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act allowed companies to cite religious beliefs as a defense in lawsuits alleging discrimination. The bill’s opponents claimed its phrasing would open the door to widespread discrimination, especially in light of the religious beliefs defense used by some bakers to deny same-sex couples service. The law, which Indiana Governor Mike Pence counted as a major achievement, was signed in a closed ceremony in the state capitol and was portrayed as a reaction to Indianans’ feelings that their religious freedoms were being infringed upon by things like marriage equality.

Republican-held legislatures’ anti-LGBT efforts are the first sustained conservative response to last year’s Supreme Court ruling, which effectively legalized gay marriage across the country. “As the leftist agenda pushers charge ‘forward’ and courts rule against the will of citizens and states’ rights,” Breitbart told its readers, “Constitutional conservatives are mounting up with plans to defend the rights and power granted them under the United States Constitution.”

Key to the post-ruling battle was framing the debate as a states’ rights issue. “States’ rights on marriage is effectively dead, and along with it, much of what was once marriage in America,” wrote John-Henry Westen for The Daily Caller shortly after the verdict. Before dropping out of the Republican presidential race, Marco Rubio echoed similar arguments in an interview with Chuck Todd last December. “If you want to change the definition of marriage, then you need to go to state legislatures and get them to change it, because states have always defined marriage,” he said.

Social conservatives are at an advantage on the state level: the party holds 31 governorships across the country and 68 of 98 state legislatures. In 23 states, Republicans control the governor’s mansion and both legislative chambers. Democrats have similar “trifectas” in just seven states.

That power differential has made it easier for a host of conservative legislation to pass on a state level. Gender, sexuality, and abortion protections have long been (and still remain) under threat from Republican controlled legislatures, including most recently in one of the most restrictive abortion laws in history, in Indiana.

Opponents of North Carolina’s new law have staged protests outside the state capitol, and corporations including Apple, Google, Dow Chemical, the NBA and others have announced their opposition as well. The ACLU, meanwhile, announced today that it was suing the state for the unconstitutional restrictions put in place by HB-2.

Laws that restrict LGBT rights are often incubated by conservative Christian groups like the Christian Action League and the North Carolina Values Coalition. The #keepNCsafe campaign, an invention of the NCVC, rallied support in favor of passing of HB-2, and both organizations sent representatives to speak before senate committees.

The state-level civil rights grab is a long conservative tradition, but not all recent efforts have been successful. The turnaround of Georgia’s governor Nathan Deal, who promised to veto a similar bill awaiting his signature, was largely the result of corporate pressure. Without boycott threats that would have deprived Georgia of billions of dollars, Deal likely wouldn’t have vetoed a bill that sailed through both the Republican-controlled house and senate.

Georgia Governor To Veto Religious Freedom Bill Seen As Anti-Gay

Georgia Governor To Veto Religious Freedom Bill Seen As Anti-Gay

By Rich McKay

ATLANTA (Reuters) – Georgia Governor Nathan Deal said on Monday he will veto a religious freedom bill passed by the state legislature that has drawn national criticism for discriminating against same-sex couples.

The bill, which states that no pastor can be forced to perform a same-sex wedding, was recently passed by the Republican-controlled legislature.

Under the bill, faith-based groups could not be forced to hire or retain an employee whose beliefs run counter to the organization’s, while churches and religious schools would have the right to reject holding events for people or groups to whom they object.

Deal, a Republican, said he could not support legislation that drew wide criticism from corporations and had triggered threats of a state boycott by the entertainment industry, including movie and TV studios and prominent actors.

“I do not think that we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith-based community in Georgia,” Deal said at news conference on the legislation, noting his religious faith.

Deal’s decision was immediately celebrated by gay rights advocates, including the national Human Rights Campaign.

“Our message to Governor Nathan Deal was loud and clear: this deplorable legislation was bad for his constituents, bad for business, and bad for Georgia’s future,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in a statement.

He added that Deal had “set an example for other elected officials to follow.”

 

(Reporting by Letitia Stein; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Dan Grebler)

Photo: Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, center, speaks to the media at the State Capitol in Atlanta, Georgia, January 30, 2014. REUTERS/Tami Chappell

5 Things Donald Trump Is Teaching Us About The GOP Base

5 Things Donald Trump Is Teaching Us About The GOP Base

The Republican Party insists — despite its backing of the Wall Street bailouts, immunity for corporate polluters, and willingness to let billionaires live tax-free — that it’s the party of personal responsibility.

So even though the media has been an invaluable enabler, the responsibility for Donald Trump’s rise falls squarely on Republican voters. This was a tougher case to make when Trump’s support was still theoretical and could be ascribed to his name recognition. But now that he’s won three states easily and leads in every other primary, except Ohio and perhaps Texas, it’s clear: Republican voters want what Trump is selling.

Trump’s rise reveals trends in American politics that have been latent for years but not discussed in polite company, for fear of offending the supposed experts who believe that “blaming both sides” proves their objectivity. But the party’s attraction to the personification of its worst instincts shows that a large percentage of Republicans — possibly even a majority — is proudly embracing qualities that would have been considered smears just a few months ago.

So what has Trump revealed about a large chunk of the GOP base?

  1. They’re scared and infuriated.
    Republican leaders have fundamentally misunderstood the Trump phenomenon from the beginning. To this day, adults in the party are still accusing Obama of being responsible for the rise of a birther. But the anger that’s coming from the white working class is clearly an existential rage targeted at both parties and themselves, as the numbers of middle-aged white Americans who are drinking, drugging, and eating themselves to death continue to grow. For half a century, the GOP has provided its base with villains to focus their hate, as it’s drained the economy of the regulations, tax base, and strong unions that built the middle class. “But the fact that lots of voters hated the Clintons, Sean Penn, the Dixie Chicks and whomever else, did not, ever, mean that they believed in the principle of Detroit carmakers being able to costlessly move American jobs overseas by the thousands,” Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi explains in his terrifying exploration of the Trump campaign “How America Made Trump Unstoppable.”
  2. They want a tyrant.
    One moment Trump is decrying “political correctness,” a slur that’s supposed to suggest that Americans have become intolerant of their neighbors’ intolerance. The next moment, they’re cheering him for wanting to punch a protester. Trump is a 69-year old Putin fanboy with a history of cheerleading fascism. Republicans decried Obama’s delay of the employer mandate in Obamacare or temporary delay of deportations as “tyranny.” Now they’re backing a guy who is vowing to roll back freedom of the press. “Limited government” has always been a code for “limiting government for everyone else,” but when you trust the government enough to back a “deportation force” that will round up millions — knowing that when America rounded up undocumented people during the Depression up to 60 percent of those deported were citizens — you want a government that’s more powerful than any liberal would dare imagine.
  3. Racial resentment drives them.
    How did the religious right go from backing the first “born again” president Jimmy Carter to the GOP? It wasn’t abortion, or not just abortion; it was the attempt to desegregate private schools set up to avoid integration in the South. Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy merged conservative philosophy with opposing the advance of civil rights, but it wasn’t till the late 70s that fundamentalists rose up with an army of foot soldiers willing to counter the left’s army of union workers. Using “dog whistles,” conservatives have mastered the art of focusing their base on drug testing welfare recipients, demanding photo IDs for voters, and imagining undocumented immigration is rampant when it’s really way down.
    blog_net_illegal_immigration_mexico_2006_2014In the South, Birther Trump’s faux prosperity gospel has caught on with “evangelicals,” not because they respect his collection of three “traditional marriages” — but because they’re inspired by his appeal to racial resentment.
  4. “Religious freedom” is another term for “religious domination.”
    Probably the most hilarious moment of the last GOP debate — besides when Trump told conservative AM radio host Hugh Hewitt that no one listens to his show — is when Hewitt asked whether Trump would use “religious liberty” as a litmus test when appointing a Supreme Court Justice. Hewitt might as well have asked, “Besides banning Muslims, how do you feel about religious liberty?” Republicans have gone from pretending that a woman’s access to birth control and being paid to bake a cake for a gay wedding represent tyranny, to backing a guy who has said he would register American Muslims and ban 1.6 billion people from traveling to this country. Conservatives have always been fierce defenders of your right to practice their religion. But this election has shown that devotion to “religious freedom” is just a half step on the slide to religious domination.
  5. There’s no escape hatch.
    When Trump says Obamacare is going to destroy the economy, Republicans believe him because they’ve heard it a million times before. Since they’ve effectively insulated themselves from facts, the have no idea that we’ve been gaining jobs from the moment Obamacare became law. In the years since the law’s exchanges opened in 2014, 17 million people have gained coverage and we’ve had the best two years of job creation this century.
    CYtCSeoWAAABnq2Republicans have spent decades immunizing their base against factual discourse. And when Trump contradicts himself — often within the same sentence — it doesn’t matter. His lies sound like their lies. He’s affecting the blustering leadership, Obama-hatred, and disgust for objective sources that have become staples of the GOP base. For months, America expected the GOP to fight off this infection, as Trump humiliated himself and the party that had taken him seriously after decades of watching him pretend to run for president. But now we realize that was giving conservatives too much credit — they’ve been building a system that’s coded to fail. If America stops Trump, it will be despite the Republican Party.