Kindle Notes & Highlights
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July 16 - November 29, 2018
Religious liberty is not unlimited. The state can rightly limit it when justice and the common good so require. In such cases, the limitation of religious liberty is an incidental but unavoidable (and thus justified) effect of the government’s action to secure justice.
Religious liberty is important because the search for truth about ultimate things and the effort to live according to that truth are valuable only if they are freely undertaken. The state, therefore, should protect religious freedom. The quest for religious truth, adherence to religious faith and morals, and the pursuit of a relationship with the divine must be free from coercion.
Use for religious liberty presentation.
“noxious measures to give businesses and individuals the broad right to deny services to same-sex couples in the name of protecting religious liberty.”
The bill has been egregiously misrepresented by many of its critics. .
It would provide that people are covered when state or local government requires them to violate their religion in the conduct of their business, and it would provide that people are covered when sued by a private citizen invoking state or local law to demand that they violate their religion.
The rhetoric about giving bigots a license not to serve gays and lesbians was simply nonsensical. Indeed, religious liberty claims in connection with same-sex marriage have never been about turning away certain persons or groups, but about not endorsing certain actions or ceremonies.
“the bill is modeled on the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act . . . and nothing remotely like what CBS News alleges has ever happened anywhere.”
I know of no American religious group that teaches discrimination against gays as such, and few judges would be persuaded of the sincerity of such a claim. The religious liberty issue with respect to gays and lesbians is about directly facilitating the marriage, as with wedding services and marital counseling.
He failed to mention that Illinois has a state RFRA—which Barack Obama voted for as a state senator.
“Pro-Discrimination ‘Religious Freedom’ Laws Are Dangerous.”
It is Tim Cook who favors laws that discriminate against people who simply ask to be left alone to run their businesses and their schools and their charities in accordance with their reasonable belief that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. It is Tim Cook who would have the state coerce these people into celebrating a same-sex wedding.
That charge is false to its core. The question in Indiana and around the country is whether Americans should be free to live in accordance with the truth about marriage in their public lives.
But should a seventy-year-old grandmother like the florist Barronelle Stutzman, if she wants to make a living, really have to violate her beliefs by participating in a same-sex wedding?
The hypocrisy in the Indiana debate was amazing. By threatening to boycott Indiana over its religious liberty law, people like Mark Benioff were exercising their right to run their businesses in accordance with their beliefs. Yet they failed to recognize that the baker, the photographer, and the florist are simply asking for the same liberty.
No one has suggested that Apple’s discrimination, however deplorable, should be illegal. The company should be free to decide its own values and live according to them.
“Our message, to people around the country and around the world, is this: Apple is open. Open to everyone, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, how they worship or who they love.”
“Apple is closed. Closed to those with beliefs we disapprove of.”
“Schumer’s claim that the comparison [of the Indiana RFRA to the federal RFRA] is ‘completely false’ is itself ‘completely false.’”28
“These two provisions are virtually identical.” The
Under 1 U.S.C. § 1, also known as the federal Dictionary Act, the word “person” when used in an “Act of Congress” includes “corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnership, societies and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.” It has been this way since the first dictionary act back in 1947. So Schumer’s claim about the federal law only covering individuals is “completely false.” He knew what he voted for back in 1993.29
Indiana law now says that, with certain narrow exceptions, sexual liberty always trumps religious liberty. The “fix,” that is, leaves religious liberty in Indiana weaker than it was before RFRA.
State RFRAs are quite unlikely to affect discrimination claims. I hope they do affect discrimination claims in certain very narrow contexts: very small businesses providing wedding services or marital counseling services. But I am not optimistic. So far, the religious claimants have lost all of those cases, including the wedding photographer under the New Mexico RFRA, and the florist in Washington under a RFRA-like interpretation of the state constitution.
If a citizen concludes that he cannot in good conscience participate in a same-sex ceremony, the government should not force him to choose between his religious beliefs and his livelihood. Competitive markets can harmonize Americans’ range of values without government interference.
When he “evolved” on the issue in 2012, President Barack Obama insisted that there were reasonable people of goodwill on both sides of the marriage debate. Supporters of marriage as the union of a man and a woman “are not coming at it from a mean-spirited perspective,” he insisted. “They’re coming at it because they care about families.” He added that “a bunch of ’em are friends of mine . . . you know, people who I deeply respect.”32 The stories recounted in the last chapter, however, reveal that there are considerable grounds to worry about the government’s respect for the beliefs of all
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Respecting religious liberty in the marketplace is particularly important. After all, as the first lady, Michelle Obama, put it, religion “isn’t just about showing up on Sunday for a good sermon and good music and a good meal. It’s about what we do Monday through Saturday as well.”33 And that’s precisely why religious liberty protections in the economy are so essential.
Powerful. Should be used in religious liberty presentations.
Not every private provider needs to perform every service, and state-run agencies can provide a complete array of services. Protecting the diversity of private providers, each serving families that share its values, will increase the number of children who are connected with permanent, loving families.
Indeed, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires the government to accommodate conscientious objectors as best it can.
“A common refrain is that religious objectors in government service should do all of their job or resign. This stance conflates the public receipt of a service offered by the state with the receipt of that service from each and every employee in the office who is available to do it.”
“services from the state, but they do not necessarily have a claim to receive the service from a particular public servant.”
Religious objection is not a trump card, but employees’ religious objections should be accommodated when possible. Our law demands a careful—and possibly subtle—balancing of interests.
If we’re going to disagree over the nature and purpose of marriage, then protecting the religious liberty rights to dissent—to speak that dissent and to act on that dissent—is essential.
The recently proposed First Amendment Defense Act would prevent the federal government from engaging in such coercion. It would enact a bright-line rule that government can never penalize someone just for acting on his belief that marriage is the union of husband and wife.
America is in a time of transition. The court has redefined marriage, and beliefs about human sexuality are changing. Will the right to dissent be protected? Will our right to speak and act in accord with what Americans had always believed about marriage—that it’s a union of husband and wife—be tolerated?
Religious liberty is one of the natural rights that governments are instituted to secure. While Americans are free to live as they wish, they should not use the force of government to impose their sexual values on others.
But new laws that bestow special privileges on some persons based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) are undermining those same fundamental civil liberties, especially freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion.
But the damage of SOGI laws is not only economic. They threaten the freedom of citizens, individually and in associations, to affirm their religious or moral convictions—convictions such as that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
Their refrain for the past decade has been that laws designating marriage as the union of male and female are no more defensible than bans on interracial marriage. And some argue further that laws protecting the freedom of conscience with respect to marriage are indistinguishable from the laws that enforced race-based segregation. These arguments are wrong on several counts.
After all, it is reasonable for citizens to believe that marriage is the union of man and woman. When citizens lead their lives and run their businesses in accord with this belief, they deny no one equality before the law. They deserve protection against government coercion.
Racial segregation laws, including bans on interracial marriage, were, by contrast, aspects of an insidious ideology that arose in the modern period in connection with race-based slavery and denied the fundamental equality and dignity of all human beings. The race of the spouses has nothing to do with the nature of marriage, and it is unreasonable, therefore, to make it a condition of marriage. This chapter explains all of this.
The foundational principle of American life is liberty under law. In general, consenting adults are free to enter or refuse to enter relationships of every sort—personal, civic, commercial, romantic—without government interference. Freedom of association and contract is presumed. If the government is going to interfere, it must explain why. It has the burden of proof.
The baker, the florist, and the photographer should be equally free to run their businesses according to their own values. Disagreement with someone’s actions is not enough to justify the government’s coercing him into conformity with prevailing opinion. Free association and exchange are usually sufficient to sort these things out, especially in cases of abuses, without the costs of government interference.
It was called the Civil Rights Ordinance, but it was misnamed. It was an ordinance that actually took away civil rights and freedom from people. It criminalized civil behavior. It didn’t accomplish the stated purpose of the ordinance, and it was crafted by an outside group. It wasn’t something Fayetteville residents put together.1
“Unless the board approved special treatment for transgendered students and teachers, the state’s largest school district would lose $42 million in federal funding.”
The consequences of the board’s decision are clear: Boys who think or feel they are girls will be allowed to use restrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex. If the board follows the example of Minnesota, schools would have to accommodate male transgendered students who want to spend nights at travel games in hotel rooms with female athletes.
“credit, education, employment, federal funding, housing, jury service and public accommodations.”
These SOGI laws must be resisted, as I explain now.
SOGI laws can have serious unintended consequences. They threaten small-business owners with liability for alleged “discrimination” based not on objective traits but on subjective and unverifiable identities. They expand state interference in labor markets, potentially discouraging job creation. They endanger religious liberty and freedom of speech. And they mandate employment policies that, with regard to many workplace conditions, violate common sense. In short, SOGI laws regulate commercial decisions that are best handled by private actors, and they regulate educational decisions best
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