Marriage under attack

Unfathomably, the Texas Supreme Court has decided that just because obergefell finds that gay people can marry each other, they aren't necessarily entitled to the same BENEFITS as straight people.

"The Supreme Court held in Obergefell that the Constitution requires states to license and recognize same-sex marriages to the same extent that they license and recognize opposite-sex marriages,” according to Justice Jeffrey Boyd’s opinion, “but it did not hold that states must provide the same publicly funded benefits to all married persons.”

The case comes from whether or not Houston should give its employees equal benefits regardless of whether they are in a same-sex or opposite-sex marriage.  But two men claim that as taxpayers, they shouldn't have to "subsidize" marriages they view as obscene.

Honestly, it's no wonder the fastest growing religious group in this country is the "nones", with this sort of bile being spewed by so-called "Christians".

To be fair, the court just turfed the issue back down to a lower court.   They didn't elminate benefits.  But it shouldn't remain a question, surely, and seems clear that they should have trounced it once and for all.

Of course, now that we have Neil Gorsuch on the SCOTUS, the federal appeal to this may not be a slam dunk.  Lots of people claimed he was a good guy, that he wasn't opposed to LGBT rights.

Yeah, not so much.

On Monday, Gorsuch indicated that he opposes equal rights for same-sex couples, dissenting from a ruling that requires states to list same-sex parents on birth certificates. (Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined his dissent.) That, alone, is startling: In Obergefell v. Hodges, the court held that the Constitution compels states to grant same-sex couples “the constellation” of “rights, benefits, and responsibilities” that “the states have linked to marriage,” including “birth and death certificates.” Obergefell, then, already settled this issue. Gorsuch’s dissent suggests he may not accept Obergefell as settled law and may instead seek to undermine or reverse it.

Apparently, the FACT that over 60% of Americans support marriage equality means nothing, when there's a vile group of so called Christians able to attack our rights.  Funny, first they attacked us because we were a minority, and now that support is in the majority, they attack us because of that.

How is it that a minority of Christians who identify with this stuff are still winning legal battles in their intent to do me harm?

Religious Freedom Advocate comes out against Little Sisters

There's another challenge to contraception mandate before SCOTUS in which the Little Sisters of the Poor claim even filling out a form to say they don't want to provide contraception, is an unjust infringement of their religious freedom.

Interestingly, Douglas Laycock, one of the advocates for religious freedom laws like RFRA, disagrees.

Laycock’s brief is remarkable because of the way it turns on its head the plaintiffs’ argument that the nonprofits are victims of an overreaching government. In fact, Laycock argues, “religious liberty can be endangered by exaggerated claims and overreaching as well as by government intransigence and judicial under-enforcement,” and that the nonprofits’ arguments “endanger religious liberty, both legally and politically.” 

....
He argues first that the nonprofits are, in effect, seeking “absolute deference” from the court on their claims of substantial burden. He argues that adopting this standard “would lead to untenable consequences.” 

For example, he writes, a plaintiff could claim “God will punish the country and all its citizens,” if a “controversial public policy is not reversed.” That “would state a claim of substantial burden to which the courts would owe absolute deference,” the brief cautions.
What’s more, Laycock warns, the nonprofits’ overbroad argument that they are entitled to the same exemption as churches threatens the entire system of religious exemptions across the country..... 

Whatever the outcome, this brief by an erstwhile ally urging extreme caution on taking religious exemptions too far signals that the plaintiffs in these cases may have overplayed their hand.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Meanwhile about that religious liberty...

Also from the opinion.  Link in the post below.

Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered. The same is true of those who oppose same-sex marriage for other reasons. In turn, those who believe allowing same-sex marriage is proper or indeed essential, whether as a matter of religious conviction or secular belief, may engage those who disagree with their view in an open and searching debate. The Constitution, however, does not permit the State to bar same-sex couples from marriage on the same terms as accorded to couples of the opposite sex.

We know that the "religious liberty" issue is going to be major.  Several of the dissents touch on this.  While no church can be forced to marry anyone (if they could, many divorced Catholics would marry in the church!), things get murkier with schools and other institutions.  Catholic schools have been firing gay employees who marry.  The courts have found this to be legal, if regrettable.   I actually agree with those findings.  But a baker who is Catholic and offers a public service, cannot discriminate (in venues that include sexual orientation in anti-discrimination statutes).  That said, would you really want an angry baker making your wedding cake?

We must seek to respect those who oppose us, even as we disagree.  Let us be gracious in our victory.

Can we just call it "marriage" now?

Justice Kennedy for the Majority, 5-4, in Obergefell v. Hodges.

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people be- come something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

It is so ordered.

Marriage equality is a religious value, glad to see TEC right in front!

We are about a week away from oral arguments on marriage equality. The amicus briefs are all in and finally, finally the press is noticing that "Christian" is NOT synonymous with anti-equality. From Think Progress:

But even as this wave of anti-LGBT briefs makes its way to the desks of Supreme Court clerks, a number of religious groups are also submitting or signing on to briefs in support of same-sex marriage. The briefs, once cobbled together by a few progressive faith traditions, now brandish the names of thousands of historic Christian leaders and institutions, each voicing positions that challenge old religious views of homosexuality and highlight just how far America’s theological goal posts have shifted on the topic of same-sex marriage.

The largest of these was submitted earlier this year by the President of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church.

Yay, TEC!

Originally organized through the work of several Episcopal bishops, it was co-signed by a long list of groups from across the “Judeo-Christian” religious spectrum, such as the United Church of Christ, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and Muslims for Progressive Values, as well as pro-LGBT groups operating within Quakerism, Methodism, Presbyterianism, and Lutheranism. Like many left-leaning progressives, the brief argues the Court is primarily tasked with discerning the civil — not religious — definition of marriage, but highlighted the swelling number of Americans whose faith calls them to embrace LGBT rights.

And then (my emphases)

There is, of course, precedent for faith groups endorsing marriage equality with amicus briefs. A similar list of progressive religious groups, also led by Episcopal bishops, crafted a brief affirming same-sex marriage ahead of the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court case on California’s Proposition 8, which banned LGBT people from legally marrying in the state from 2008 to 2013. Briefs favoring LGBT couples were also filed in 2013 by the American Jewish Committee and the California Council of Churches.

But if Proposition 8 opened up a trickle of faith-based support for LGBT rights, Obergefell v. Hodges unleashed a veritable flood. The list of signatories in the 2013 brief from Episcopal bishops, for example, totaled a mere 6 pages. By contrast, the bishops’ brief in advance of the 2015 case includes several new organizations and the individual names of more than 1,900 faith leaders, additions that stretch the list of spiritual endorsers to a whopping 117 pages.

Welcome aboard everyone.  Now let's get this done!

And then there were 30....

Today, the Supreme Court decided not to hear the 7 marriage equality cases on its docket.  By denying certiori, it means that the lower circuit court decision affirming marriage equality in each of those cases is upheld.  That means for the five states in question (Utah, Virginia, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Indiana), it's the end of the line and marriages can begin again.

Moreover, six additional states that currently have bans in the 4th, 7th, and 10th circuits will fall under these decisions.

So we may see marriage equality in West Virginia, South and North Carolina, Colorado, Kansas, and Wyoming as well.

Wow.

The arc of justice just bent a little more.

The Court can always weigh in if any of the remaining circuits make decisions that are appealed.  This is more likely if one of those decisions goes against the wave for equality.

Scotusblog has more.

The Catholic roots of Hobby Lobby

From Salon, a history of the Hobby Lobby decision and a description of how its roots lie not in the purported Evangelicals who brought the case, but in the fierce rear-guard actions of the Roman Catholic conference of bishops.

 [The Bishops called] for a broad conscience clause that would allow any employer who had a moral objection to contraception to refuse to provide it. Increasingly it looked as if the fight wasn’t about finding a reasonable compromise that would allow Catholic employers to distance themselves sufficiently from the provision of contraception to satisfy at least the letter of the widely ignored Catholic teaching on contraception. It was an attempt to block the federal enshrinement of contraception as a basic women’s health care right.

Let's be clear about that.  "Religious Freedom" is a canard intended to cover the real effort to make contraception expensive and difficult to get.  Having failed to get their laity to adhere to RC teaching on birth control, they want to get the government to help them.

Women’s health advocates and political pundits expressed amazement that contraception could be so controversial in 2012. But they shouldn’t have been surprised. That’s because the forty-year fight over reproductive rights had never really been about abortion; it had always been about women and sex—specifically, the ability of women to have sex without the consequence of pregnancy. That’s why it was the shot heard ’round the world when in the midst of the flap over the all-male birth control panel radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called Fluke a “slut” for wanting her insurance to treat birth control like any other prescription medication. Limbaugh had revealed what the right really believed about women and sex: Women who wanted to have sex—especially outside of marriage— and control their fertility were doing something fundamentally illicit and shouldn’t expect anyone else to pay for it. To them, birth control was just a lesser form of abortion.

My emphasis.  That's what it's about: controlling women's sexuality.  This is the old Roman Catholic binary of woman as slut or virgin. It continues to frustrate me that we women are letting them do this.  

The religious freedom argument against equality

From Scotusblog (Lyle Denniston)

With lawyers moving very rapidly, the number of appeals to the Supreme Court on same-sex marriage rose on Tuesday to seven, as state officials in Indiana and Wisconsin separately challenged a federal appeals court ruling against their bans, and lawyers for the couples planned to file immediate replies. The new cases landed at the Court five days after that decision; the states had the option of taking ninety days to file.
... 

The Court has the option of taking on either or both issues, and it also has the option of putting off any consideration for the time being, despite the heavy pressure from virtually everyone involved in the cases, who contend that the Court should not wait any longer to decide. None of the cases is a mandatory appeal. It would be highly unusual, however, for the Court to pass up all of the cases, when everyone is championing review now. 

If the Court opts to take on the controversy anytime up to mid-January, a final ruling could be expected before the new Term is completed late next June.

And guess what?  The case may well rest not on constitutional law, not on fairness, but on religious freedom. Hello, Hobby Lobby.  Mark Silk at Religion News Service on an amicus brief filed for Utah:

The religious organizations make clear in their amicus brief that, besides addressing all relevant Fourteenth Amendment issues, the Utah case uniquely addresses the burden placed on religious liberty by SSM. Quoting from a 2012 letter from a coalition of anti-SSM religious leaders, they write:

Judicially redefining marriage powerfully conflicts with religious liberty because, among other reasons, such a dramatic change in the law inevitably will lead to “forcing or pressuring both individuals and religious organizations – throughout their operations, well beyond religious ceremonies – to treat same-sex sexual conduct as the moral equivalent of marital sexual conduct.”… 

Utah’s petition provides an opportunity to address whether avoiding religious conflicts and church-state entanglements is a sufficiently weighty reason, alone or combined with other interests, to warrant allowing States to retain the age-old definition of marriage. 

If the court did find such avoidance sufficiently weighty, I’ve no doubt that the next legal step would be to ask that all states be forbidden to permit SSM on religious liberty grounds. But the real significance of the brief, it seems to me, is that it represents an acknowledgment that SSM is becoming the law of the land, and that the battle has now moved to the securing of legal exemptions for religious objectors.

So, the logic here is that anti-gay archbishop Salvatore Cordileone's religions freedom demands that the state deny me my civil rights (not to mention any non-Catholic church's religious freedom to marry me).  The sad thing is, after Hobby Lobby, it's just what might appeal to the 5 Catholics on the bench in DC.

The contraceptive mandate redux

The Obama administration has proposed a work around for private employers who object to contraceptive coverage.  Now, instead of telling their insurer that they object, they are supposed to tell the government.

But amazingly, even that isn't good enough for the Catholic Bishops. 

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a response that was somewhere between tepid and picky. In a statement, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz said, “On initial review of the government’s summary of the regulations, we note with disappointment that the regulations would not broaden the ‘religious employer’ exemption to encompass all employers with sincerely held religious objections to the mandate. Instead, the regulations would only modify the “accommodation,” under which the mandate still applies and still requires provision of the objectionable coverage. Also, by proposing to extend the ‘accommodation’ to the closely held for-profit employers that were wholly exempted by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Hobby Lobby, the proposed regulations would effectively reduce, rather than expand, the scope of religious freedom.”

Thus nothing is good enough.

As Charles Pierce writes,

After all, the opposition to birth control is not based on the opposition to a government mandate. It's based on the opposition to the medicine, and the purpose that medicine serves. The question being litigated -- in public and, sadly, in the courts -- is not constitutional. It's theological. The essential text is not the Constitution. It's Humanae Vitae.

RFRA: I'lll have Swiss Cheese on that

What will the Hobby Lobby and Town of Greece cases do to actual religious freedom?

Do those rights only belong to Christians?

Does it turn our laws into Swiss Cheese? (my emphasis)

RFRA* covers all beliefs, and the First Amendment does not permit the courts to favor some believers over another. That means the RFRA-unleashing arguments that empowered the Green family can be invoked to empower believers with the opposite views. For example, the Satanic Temple, Conservative and Reform Jews, Methodists, and American Baptists have now staked out the argument that their religious beliefs conflict with sweeping restrictions on abortion. 

I am curious what the pro-lifers will do with such claims. Do they defend the abortion restrictions they paid for with lobbying and, therefore, argue that RFRA should be watered down for these believers? Or do they stick with a strong RFRA theory, and watch their anti-abortion accomplishments dismantled by the majority that disagrees with them on a woman’s right to make her own reproductive choices? 

What every legislator and American should understand is this: what happens when conflicting believers invoke RFRA in the same arena is that our duly enacted laws become swiss cheese. No rational system of law, in a country where the vast majority of citizens are believers, can or should encourage believers to roam around and pick and choose the laws that will apply to them. That is what RFRA does and the Supreme Court’s First Amendment doctrine never did, as I discuss in my forthcoming book, God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty.

*The Religious Freedom and Restoration Act, another gift from Bill Clinton.... 

On public prayer

This is a strong editorial on how the Supreme Court's decision on prayer actually harms religion. My emphasis:

Authentic prayer is a risky business. It has a way of forcing open realms in which answers are far from certain, set attitudes are questioned, and consciences are made uneasy. To pray, after all, is to acknowledge that no power on earth is supreme — not money, not weapons, not fame, not social standing, not romantic love, not even the US Constitution. All of these can be turned into idols, and often are. To pray is to look elsewhere for ultimate meaning, whose possible “intimations” pertain to everything — decidedly including foreign and domestic policy. 

“Religion,” in the words of the late scholar Ronald Dworkin, “is a deep, distinct, and comprehensive worldview: It holds that inherent, objective value permeates everything, that the universe and its creatures are awe-inspiring, that human life has purpose and the universe order.” What does such grandeur have to do with serving as mere bunting for public functions? A few formulaic words with heads bowed, akin to gaveling the room to silence, confirm all who know the code in their insidership. But it also does violence to the sublime mystery of real faith. 

The separation of church and state should mean just that, and not only for democracy’s sake. The United States has a long history of conscripting someone called “God” into its worst mistakes, and American religion has been horribly corrupted again and again. For the sake of citizens who believe differently, or believe not at all, prayer has no place at the elbow of on-duty officials. But for the love of God, who transcends town meetings and the very nation, prayer has no place there either.

On public prayer

Retired Bishop Gene Robinson reflects on the Supreme Court's decision on prayer.

...just because we can,should we? Wouldn’t it be the “Christian” thing to do, to show a bit of generosity of spirit and sensitivity to those whose beliefs differ from our own? If we are going to have public prayers (something worth debating another time), couldn’t they strive to include every person of whatever faith? I tried to do that for the President-elect. I’m still proud of my attempt. Here it is: 

Oh God of our many understandings, we pray that you will… 

Bless us with tears for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS. 

Bless us with anger at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future. 

Bless us with patience and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world. 

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences. 

Bless us with compassion and generosity remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

If you don't remember it, that was his prayer at the first inauguration of Barack Obama.  Robinson says, "After the prayer, I had numerous Jews and Muslims come to me in tears, saying that never before had they felt a part of such public prayer."

From the other side, not so much.

From conservative Christians I got voluminous hate mail accusing me of missing the opportunity to save souls by invoking the name of Jesus Christ, and judging me to have denied Christ like Peter and betrayed Christ like Judas. As for me, I am not worried about meeting Christ one day and hearing firsthand what he has to say about that prayer.

Because nothing invokes Christ like hate mail.

Civic prayer and diversity

A superb essay from Scotusblog, on the recent decision about prayer before a town meeting.

Town of Greece v. Galloway is a case about religious diversity – how to recognize it and how to accommodate it. Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion upheld one version of recognizing diversity, which we might call “deep” diversity or “thick” diversity. On that view, diversity is best preserved by allowing each particular religious faith to express itself, no holds barred, provided that every other religious faith gets its turn. 

But there is another way of acknowledging diversity, found in Justice Kagan’s dissent. That view, which we might call “consensus” diversity or “thin” diversity, responds to diversity by trying to find some common denominator between faiths, so that all faiths are placated, and no one faith is exalted over others. We respect diversity by each agreeing to tone down our particular faith, so as to respect the faith of others. 

The advantage of thick diversity in the context of Town of Greece is that legislators and citizens alike don’t have to check their religion at the door, or even to muffle or dilute it.....

But thick diversity has one obvious disadvantage. The problem of allowing one group to full-throatedly announce their particular religious beliefs at the opening of a governmental function is that those who do not share those beliefs may feel isolated, alienated, even separated from their government. It is not that they will feel coerced into believing what they don’t believe; that does not seem to be the major worry. It is rather that they will feel like outsiders to their own government, because they do not share in the faith of those who are governing them. 

... When does a prayer tip over into proselytization? Aren’t many prayers at least implicitly designed to proselytize? If not, why make the prayers publicly, rather than spoken by the legislature in private before the session begins?

Money and Power

“The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread to the law courts. And then to the army, and finally the Republic was subjected to the rule of emperors.”  Plutarch

In the wake of yesterday's Supreme Court decision:

Big donors, leaders of political parties and candidates with access to wealthy supporters will be the biggest beneficiaries of the Supreme Court decision issued on Wednesday, a ruling that could fundamentally reshape the political terrain in the 2014 elections and beyond. Election experts predicted a surge of new money into congressional campaigns and political parties, expanding the world of high-dollar fund-raising now dominated by 'super PACs' and big-spending political nonprofit groups. The decision effectively eradicates a significant campaign finance restriction brought about in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the cap on the total amount any one person can give to federal candidates and parties in any two-year election cycle. Two groups in particular stand to be most empowered by Wednesday’s decision: Those with the wherewithal to spend millions of dollars on campaign contributions and those with access to them, including party leaders, senior lawmakers and presidents.  New York Times

 Just wait till they decide that corporations have religions.

I despair.

Maybe we have to beat them by joining them. Is this the solution?

 If the burgeoning gray market in political money is to be countered, a few things need to happen. First, political money needs to be made easier, not harder, for politicians to raise. Second, the money needs to be encouraged to flow through channels that are ultimately accountable to voters and the national interest. Third, candidate and party donations need to flow in straightforward, observable ways rather than being routed circuitously, so that everyone can see what’s going on and vote or campaign accordingly. Fourth, disclosure needs to be improved for the nonprofits and other black holes. 

Greatly raising contribution limits and simultaneously improving disclosure would achieve those goals. High limits would affect only the most stratospheric contributions, the ones that raise the most serious questions about corruption; other donors could bring their money back into the mainstream system in an above-board way. Voters might not like it, but at least they could see it and, if they chose, vote against it. With money inside the political system, candidates and parties would have more control over their own campaigns and destinies. 

Yes, big donations buy access and influence. Yes, high limits tempt politicians to squeeze donors mercilessly for money. But if you think the existing system puts a stop to that, I refer you to the Adelson Primary the other day in Las Vegas, where Republican hopefuls lined up to curry favor with the gambling magnate. And in today’s era of presidential races that cost more than $1 billion and Senate races that top $20 million, even quite large contributions, short of the eye-popping level, are too small to make a candidate kiss the donor’s ring. With so much money out there in federal politics now (more than $6 billion in 2012), big is the new small.

Politically correct purges: JUST STOP IT

Does anyone remember Richard Grenell? He went to work for the Romney campaign and was hounded out when Evangelicals became outraged to discover he was gay. His being gay had nothing to do with the Romney campaign (after all, the anti-gay message is pretty strong in  Republican presidential campaigns) and nothing to do with his job. He was essentially not allowed to continue simply for being gay.

Cue the outrage: the man was hounded out of his job because he is gay!

Well, it's happening again.

Mozilla/Firefox has appointed Brendan Eich as its CEO: a man who supported Prop8 by giving a donation to the campaign. The company itself has a good diversity profile; there's no evidence that he's going to change that. In fact, he specifically that there won't be changes. But, based on a personal donation he made 6 years ago, some developers have called for a boycott of the browser. Simply because they disagree with the personal politics of the CEO.

Now, readers of this blog know that I was an ardent opponent of Prop8. As a gay, married Californian, I have a strong interest in this fight.

And I will tell you that boycotting Mozilla over the personal opinion of Brendan Eich against gay marriage is outrageous.

Look, we promote the idea that people who oppose marriage equality should live in peace in the secular sphere. It's the price of having a socially diverse civil polis. We promote tolerance. WE say we can live together even if we disagree.

Not if we're doing this sort of politically correct thought-policing, we can't.

This is no different than the firing of Richard Grenell. Or, to use another example from the news today, no different from the reversal of the World Vision charity which now says it will never, ever, hired a married gay person.

Indeed, it ties into the Hobby Lobby case currently before the Supreme Court, by saying a company has the right to control the personal behavior of its employees.

Their thoughts, if you will.

You will be assimilated, or you will be fired.

From the American Conservative: (my emphases!), an excellent piece on why we have to stop these purges:

Balkanized businesses, which only hire employees or leaders that are politically palatable to their donors and customers aren’t economically or socially efficient. Instead of creating weak-tie relationships across ideological divides, they segregate people who disagree, fostering a fear of contamination by association. This exclusionary approach raises the stakes of political conflict dangerously high. When the losing side of a debate is blacklisted, all disputes become wars of annihilation. 

When Eich donated to Proposition 8, his state was split on the issue; the measure passed by a 4.5 percent margin. If, less than a decade later, the losers of that fight are unemployable, the next group on the losing side of a historical shift has every reason to fight dirtier, while time is still on their side….

But neither side benefits from policing orthodoxy as tightly as these boycotts would do. World Vision made its policy shift in the service of this kind of neutrality; since some of the churches it worked with and the states it operated in recognize gay marriage, World Vision would respect, but not praise, their policies. That turned out to be unacceptable to its donors, who saw anything less than exclusion as tacit endorsement.

A healthy body politic requires that there be room to be wrong and still belong to normal society and commerce. A society that won’t live together can’t learn from each other.

Hobby Lobby, Contraception, and the threat to LGBT rights

By now you know that a company called Hobby Lobby wants to opt out of the provision of contraception to its employees, on the grounds that contraception is abortion (medically incorrect), and because Hobby Lobby's owners are devout Christians of a certain type.

This breathtaking expansion of the concept of "religious liberty" to allow companies to discriminate, could also allow a Muslim to demand women to wear a headscarf, or a Catholic to refuse to hire a man who remarried following divorce.

make no mistake this is linked to LGBT rights, because if you expand "religious liberty" to such a degree, you empower discrimination against gay people as well.  After all, if Hobby Lobby wins, then the bookstore down the street can refuse to hire a gay guy--or refuse to cover his husband under their health care that they offer straight spouses.

Harry Knox lays it out:

The plaintiffs in this case may say that they are fighting for religious freedom, but really they are fighting to avail themselves of all the legal and economic benefits that accrue to corporations while simultaneously availing themselves of the protections granted to individual citizens by the First Amendment. Wrapping this attempt to create a privileged legal category for corporate entities in the cloak of religious freedom demeans that freedom and those who cherish it. 

.... What court is wise enough to determine whether a corporation claiming to operate according to religious scruples is resisting a law for economic or ideological reasons? What conviction, no matter how baseless, cannot be wrapped in the protective cloak of faith?
....
The attempt to exclude contraceptive care from the Affordable Care Act is another step in asserting that entities -- not even individuals but entities -- have rights that trump those of women and their families. 

Bishop Gene Robinson draws the link between this, and the attempt to deny recognition to LGBT people.

I am watching a remarkable phenomenon: Followers of Jesus pleading with the government to allow them to shun those they regard as "sinners."Arizona's recent attempt to make it a religious right to discriminate, and similar efforts in other states, would give businesses the right not to serve almost anyone, for almost any reason, as long as it involved a seriously held religious belief. Services of all kinds could be denied to anyone whom the provider judged to be living an immoral life, according to their brand of religion.

Christians are not refusing to cater weddings of adulterers or gossips (condemned by name in Scripture), nor are they claiming that their religious beliefs are offended by photographing the wedding of someone who is greedy or a legislator who cuts food stamp funding. But bake a wedding cake for two people of the same gender, who love each other and are willing to take on the life-long commitment of marriage? This kind of Christian is not only offended but also claims to be a victim.

What it comes down to is this:

The Greens claim that corporations, through their owners, have freedom of religion — a very slippery slope. But should the entire company and its14,000 employees be held hostage by the beliefs of its owners?

Bishop Gene concludes,

Sometimes, even for a bishop, it's embarrassing to be a Christian. Not that I'm embarrassed by Jesus, whose life was spent caring and advocating for the marginalized, and whom I believe to be the perfect revelation of God. I'm just sometimes embarrassed to be associated with others who claim to follow him.

Why the Arizona bill still matters

Fortunately, there was public outcry against the "legal to discriminate" bill that they attempted to pass in AZ--enough that several clones have been put aside in other states.  But it's not over.  And it's not limited to the states.  From Think Progress:

it’s the exact same issue behind two of the most high profile Supreme Court cases being hear this term — Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Storesand Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius. In both of those cases, for-profit businesses object, on religious liberty grounds, to complying with Obama Administration rules increasing access to birth control. One of the most important questions presented by both cases is whether a for-profit corporation can have religious faith at all, and if so, whether it can use that supposed faith as the basis for a legal claim.... 

Denying birth control to your workers because of your own religious objections to it superimposes your own personal beliefs about conscience and faith onto your employees. So does refusing to serve a gay person due to a religious objection to their sexual orientation. If the Supreme Court winds up holding that one person’s faith can impose itself on another, which is exactly what the plaintiffs in Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood want them to do, then all the nightmare scenarios imagined in the debate over the Arizona bill could become very real — at least at the federal level. Indeed, it is even possible that business owners who object to serving African Americans on religious grounds couldchallenge a 1983 Supreme Court decision holding that religious beliefs cannot justify racist discrimination. 

If the Supreme Court is willing to overrule Lee, and to embrace the almost oxymoronic notion that corporations can be people of faith, then there could be little end to business owners’ ability to immunize themselves from the law — so long as they cover their objections to those laws in a religious wrapper.

Paying the price for equality

Have we won? Some commentators argue that it's all over bar the shouting, that the breathtaking steps towards marriage equality in the last 6 months prove that equality is now guaranteedas this article suggests:

But full legal equality is inevitable, as polls show overwhelming majorities of young people do not hold the same prejudices against homosexuals as their parents' and grandparents' generations. ….

Still the author admits

That gays won the culture war may seem paradoxical in light of the fact that, in most states, they still cannot get married or obtain civil unions (something which the Supreme Court is unlikely to change in its pending decision). The victory might also come as cold comfort to gays living in the 29 states where they can be fired due to their sexual orientation. 

Paradoxical?  You bet. The constitutional amendments against marriage equality will be difficult and in some places nearly impossible to overturn. And, we have hardly won if we can be fired for mentioning we have a same-sex partner. We have made progress, but not nearly as much as the media thinks.

 For one thing, there's the backlash, with a steep increase in anti-gay violence culminating a few days ago in a murder in NYC, of a young man, simply for being gay.

From the HuffPo:

Carson's murder highlights the shortcomings of a rights-based, marriage-based approach to LGBT equality, and cries out for deeper, and more difficult, forms of engagement.

With states falling like dominos into the marriage-equality camp, many have expressed shock that homophobic hatred and violence is "still" possible. But why is this shocking? The advent of civil rights for African Americans did not end racial violence, still widespread nearly 50 years after the Civil Rights Act. Feminism has not ended violence against women. Indeed, from Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall, to echo President Obama's historic turn of phrase, legal inequality is only the tip of the iceberg. Submerged beneath it are deep-seated patterns of injustice, privilege, prejudice and fear.…

In social struggles, legal equality is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. Yes, the state's imprimatur upon animus is now being, gradually, removed. But the animus itself remains. Carson's murder; the other acts of violence against LGBT people in New York… are not vestiges of bygone days we thought we'd left behind. Rather, they are a reminder that most of the work still lies ahead.

That's for sure. It's all too easy to fall into the lull that it's all okay.   But anti-gay attitudes are not vestigial.  They are mainstream.  In Virginia, the GOP has just nominated for Lieutenant Governor a man who defines hate speech against gay people with his lies and insults.

So, as the backlash escalates and the rhetoric becomes more poisonous, we must be more careful. Every gay person knows how to guard their contact with each other, to be wary all the time, as described here: 

It's a practice well-learned, the art of coming together and slipping apart -- every corner starts not with a footstep but with a glance forward, every kiss begins and ends with darting eyes above a smile. Sometimes people smile -- women with strollers whose babies reach out and gurgle, old couples who nod slowly in silent recognition and acceptance.

Sometimes it's the long, long stare that goes right through my body…..

Oh, the stare.  Yes, we've all felt the stare:  the disdain, sometimes disgust, as they rake you with their eyes. They don't look away.  They want you to be uncomfortable, to pierce you through.   The writer goes on to describe an encounter in a restaurant, where a woman yanks her daughter to another table lest she (the daughter) be contaminated by the proximity of lesbians. You've got to be taught, you see, to hate the gays. The author goes on to lament,

When I hold my wife's hand I only want to feel her skin in my palm and our rings clink together. I only want to feel safe. 

But we are not safe.  All of us know that feeling--the constant awareness of where we are.  Is it safe to touch our fingertips?  To hold hands?  To exchange a glance?  If we get the stare--will violence follow?

And it's not just the threats of physical violence. There is a mental effect too, of having this constantly in the news, of enduring the lies, the bile, and the hatred of those opposed to equality. I've been worn down by this, by the degrading feeling of being talked about with such language. And a recent study suggests that I'm not alone in feeling this:

As the country awaits two important Supreme Court decisions involving state laws on same-sex marriage, a small but consistent body of research suggests that laws that ban gay marriage — or approve it — can affect the mental health of gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans. When several states passed laws to prohibit same-sex marriage, for example, the mental health of gay residents seemed to suffer, while stress-related disorders dropped in at least one state after gay marriage was legalized….

"They reported multiple stressors during that period," Hatzenbuehler [, the lead investigator,] says. "They reported seeing negative media portrayals, anti-gay graffiti. They talked about experiencing a loss of safety and really feeling like these amendments and these policies were really treating them as second-class citizens." ...

Hatzenbuehler says his larger point is really that policymakers, judicial leaders and ordinary citizens need to remember that social policies are also health policies.

What the equality opponents constantly ignore is that they are not talking about anonymous "they". They are talking about me, my family, my loved ones. They are talking about someone's brother, father, friend, or co-worker. As they tell lies about the gays and our relationships, as they beat (and shoot) our brothers, they are attacking all of us.  Yes, it is personal.

And here we sit, waiting for the Supreme Court to dissect us again with their pointed legal niceties, for them to decide if we are we, the people, full American citizens with equal rights--or whether once again we will be pushed aside as something other than fully human.

And it is taking a toll.

Abp Cordileone and the HRC meme

During the Prop8 arguments, the Human Rights campaign started a meme where they dyed their equality logo red for love.  This took over avatars on facebook and twitter, and many fun versions of it appeared.  Did you put it on your social media? 

Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco responded in kind, in a way that is hardly flattering to Roman Catholics. They put up a division sign with a scriptural citation: The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

This was supposed to be a commentary about how people are divided, but that's not how it was received. The Archdiocese eventually removed the image due to the flood of negative comments from people dismayed at the symbolism. From KQED

"It infuriated me," said Don Wagda, a Bay Area attorney. "I thought it was highly disrespectful when they posted the division symbol. It was the most divisive of all."

Naturally, the Archdiocese are now claiming that they are victims of an organized hate campaign. Because, you know, Catholics are victims of marauding gays.

But Michael Cole-Goldschwartz, spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, said the group had not responded to the parodies of the "=" campaign that its marketing director, Anastasia Khoo, dreamed up. He noted the division symbol on the archdiocese Facebook page. "Frankly, I thought it characterized the opposition," he said. "We're happy that our message got out and it's unfortunate that they're using this for their own anti-gay message. But it is what it is."

 Recall that the SF Archdiocese is home to Abp Salvatore Cordileone, father of Prop8 and an archconservative who is rapidly rising in the hierarchy. As we've discussed here on several occasions, Abp Cordileone is no friend to gay people. He is very smart, and frankly, this expression of division exactly fits his attitude.

Do you think that the Archdiocese was making a commentary, or thumbing its nose at the LGBT community?


H/T Joe My God

First responses after oral arguments

Today the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the legitimacy of CA proposition 8, which in 2008 rescinded the right of same sex couples to marry in the Golden State, while leaving all the benefits of marriage intact. Veteran SCOTUS watcher and SCOTUSblog writer Tom Goldstein think they will decided not to decide:

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that the Court probably will not have the five votes necessary to get to any result at all, and almost certainly will not have five votes to decide the merits of whether Proposition 8 is constitutional.... 

The Justices seem divided on the constitutionality of Proposition 8 on ideological lines, four to four – i.e., all the members other than Justice Kennedy. For the more liberal members of the Court, there was no clarity on how broadly they would rule. 

But Justice Kennedy seemed very unlikely to provide either side with the fifth vote needed to prevail. He was deeply concerned with the wisdom of acting now...So his suggestion was that the case should be dismissed. 

If those features of the oral argument hold up – and I think they will – then the Court’s ruling will take one of two forms. First, a majority (the Chief Justice plus the liberal members of the Court) could decide that the petitioners lack standing. That would vacate the Ninth Circuit’s decision but leave in place the district court decision invalidating Proposition 8. ... 

Second, the Court may dismiss the case because of an inability to reach a majority. Justice Kennedy takes that view, and Justice Sotomayor indicated that she might join him. Others on the left may agree. That ruling would leave in place the Ninth Circuit’s decision. 

The upshot of either scenario is a modest step forward for gay rights advocates, but not a dramatic one.