Is there a religious exemption for discrimination? Not what you'd think

That's the question, isn't it?  We all know the cake-baking story by now--there's a case before the Supreme Court in which a baker claims that he shouldn't have to make a wedding cake for a same sex couple, even though he happily makes wedding cakes for all  manner of other couples.

 Yet, in another case recently decided in a lower court in CA, the judge found that making a custom cake is an act of free speech.  It's the custom nature of the design that he protects.

Of course, we've seen across the Bible belt attempts to legislate and protect anti-gay discrimination, not just in bakeries but in other services--one of the more egregious was attempted under VP Mike Pence's tenure as Governor of Indiana.  LGBT people are routinely abused and denied services even in the absence of such legislation.

But here's a different example, that has nothing to do with Teh Gayz, from a resort town in Michigan.

In Bay View, only practicing Christians are allowed to buy houses, or even inherit them. 

Prospective homeowners, according to a bylaw introduced in 1947 and strengthened in 1986, are required to produce evidence of their faith by providing among other things a letter from a Christian minister testifying to their active participation in a church.

Last summer, a dozen current and former resident members filed a federal lawsuit against the town, its ruling Bay View Association and a real estate company, claiming the Christian litmus test was illegal and unconstitutional.

The real-world consequences of this seem clearly unjust.

Sheaffer, who defines himself as culturally Christian, is married to a Jewish woman who cannot inherit his home because of her religion. Under the existing rules, their two children, aged 11 and 14, themselves sixth-generation Bay Viewers, would also be barred from inheriting their father’s property because of their mixed religious makeup.

 Is it a church property?  Not really:

While the governing Bay View association enjoys 501(C)(3), or charity, status through an affiliation with the Methodist church, the homes on its land are sold at a profit by individuals on the marketplace. Four percent of all Bay View home sales are directed to association coffers, and current properties are listed between $120,000 and $1m.

I would think the Methodists would be a little concerned about being linked with this intolerance.  Heck, it would seem to be a no-brainer, right?  But it isn't.

Dick Crossland, a retired consultant who has been a leading voice for the preservation of membership rules, says he is saddened by the way in which the opposing group has portrayed the association and its board as bigoted. 

“We accept anyone that wants to join the same way that Christ accepts anyone as Christian. We don’t discriminate against anything that you can’t change,” he says. 

The debate has been hurting the community, says Crossland, who added he would have been willing to work on a “legacy solution” for Sheaffer’s family’s case – but not for the broader public.

Because once you let THOSE PEOPLE in, who knows what will happen?  It won't surprise you that this convenant was originally also linked to racial exclusion.  And, once that became illegal, Christianity could be a proxy.

much of the mid-century history of Bay View matches national trends, with racial segregation ending and white people doubling down on religious restrictions and creating private organizations in which they could control membership intake.

And of course, on the QT, these "good Christians" admit that most of them are not practicing the faith.

SO,  what do you think ?  Should Bay View HOA be able to impose a religious litmus test on home ownership?

When Muslims are under threat: "Is it safe to pray?"

Religious freedom at its most fundamental is when people are threatened for peaceably practicing their faith.  And religious freedom is indeed under attack in the US and the UK....but the victims are not CHristians.

Two news stories today expose western Islamophobia in heartbreaking fashion.

In Virginia, a 17 year old girls was killed on her way home from evening prayer

Nabra was reportedly among four or five teenagers who had left the mosque in the early hours of Sunday. It was not unusual for worshippers to walk after nightfall in what is usually a safe neighbourhood.

A Fairfax county police statement said: “An investigation determined she was walking outside with a group of friends when they got into a dispute with a man in a car. It appears the suspect, Darwin A Martinez Torres, 22, of Sterling, got out of his car and assaulted the victim. Her friends could not find her and police were called to help.”

Her body was found, reportedly beaten to death.

In London, another case of a van driving on a sidewalk to mow people down--but this time, the targets were Muslim worshipers leaving their mosque.  The crowd caught the driver and the local imam reportedly protected him until the police arrived. 

SITE, the terrorism-monitoring group, said Monday white-supremacist organizations were celebrating the attack in Finsbury Park, while pro-ISIS groups used it to incite Muslims.

The Guardian adds,

A report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that anti-Muslim hate crime incidents rose sharply in 2015 and increased a further 44%, from 180 to 260, in 2016. Human rights groups have called on Donald Trump to be more forceful in speaking out against acts of violent intolerance.

An article in the Atlantic looks at the consequences for the community.

"It’s a really scary question to have to think about, to be honest—to even have to be in the state of mind where you have to ask the question, ‘Is it safe for me to go pray?'"

That, friends, is what religious persecution is.

When Christians are under threat

Apparently, awareness of religious freedom and support for Christians under threat only applies to American Evangelicals offended by red Starbucks cups, same sex marriage, and "Happy Holidays". and not those literally at risk of death for their faith.

Honestly, wouldn't you expect the Christian Right to be loudly protesting this?

A large roundup of Iraqi Christians by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been met with widespread criticism toward President Donald Trump, who previously pledged to protect such communities from persecution in the Middle East. 

Dozens of Iraqi Christians and other immigrants were seized over the weekend in a series of ICE raids, many of which took place in Michigan, a state known for its large Middle Eastern population. Those arrested face risk of deportation back to their home countries, some of which Trump had previously criticized as being hostile toward Christians. 

.... Local lawyer Wisam Naoum said Sunday that ICE officers deliberately waited to take action when the local Chaldean Catholic Assyrian community gathered for mass....some final orders had been received to deport individuals back to Mosul, the former Iraqi stronghold of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) that now serves as the venue for a violent showdown between the jihadists and an Iraqi government-led offensive. "

I guess not.  

Religious Hate

Two pieces to point out to you today.  The first comes from Mississippi, where an elderly man died in 2016.  The funeral home reneged on taking care of his corpse, because they discovered that (gasp!) he was gay! and married!   While they aren't saying anything, I would bet that they claim that burying a gay man is an invasion of their religious liberty to hate gay people.



Hot on the heels of that report comes news that the president is planning to sign his long-planned "religious freedom" bill.  This would give wide latitude to discriminate on the grounds of religious liberty.  This is way beyond baking cakes for a same sex marriage.  This is....well, this is about refusing to bury a man because he is gay.  Or even refusing him medical care.

President Donald Trump has invited conservative leaders to the White House on Thursday for what they expect will be the ceremonial signing of a long-awaited—and highly controversial—executive order on religious liberty, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. 

Two senior administration officials confirmed the plan, though one cautioned that it hasn’t yet been finalized, and noted that lawyers are currently reviewing and fine-tuning the draft language. Thursday is the National Day of Prayer, and the White House was already planning to celebrate the occasion with faith leaders....

The new draft is being tightly held, but one influential conservative who saw the text said it hasn’t been dialed back much—if at all—since the February leak. “The language is very, very strong,” the source said.

 Back in February, Sarah Posner broke the details. The order at the time

construes religious organizations so broadly that it covers “any organization, including closely held for-profit corporations,” and protects “religious freedom” in every walk of life: “when providing social services, education, or healthcare; earning a living, seeking a job, or employing others; receiving government grants or contracts; or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square, or interfacing with Federal, State or local governments.”

The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act.

Basically, it establishes conservative Christianity as a uniquely protected faith and uniquely disadvantages LGBT people and women.    It is widely reported that Ivanka and Jared Kushner managed to head the previous iteration off at the pass, but apparently that victory was fleeting.

We'll see what the new order brings, but I'm ready to march yet again.  You'll know they are "Conservative Christians" by their hate.  Is there any wonder nfewer and fewer people want to be called "Christian"?

South Carolina and a twist on religious freedom

From the Washington Post, a sad tale from South Carolina.  First, some history--remember, religious freedom was near and dear to the founding fathers!  I did not know this honorable role from SC:

South Carolina became a pioneer in providing sanctuary to refugees fleeing religious persecution with the March 1, 1669, Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina protecting the rights of “Jews, heathens, and other dissenters from the purity of Christian religion.” This included a Charleston community of Sephardic Jews, who finally found sanctuary after generations of roaming the globe following their expulsion from Spain. 

The document, co-authored by John Locke, was revolutionary. It helped to form the philosophical bedrock that laid the foundation for the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the American tradition of serving as a refuge for the persecuted.

But not any more:

In the coming days, however, South Carolina could go in a different direction, this time pioneering dangerous and misguided legislation that would create a hostile environment for refugees, pressuring them — and the faith-based groups that help them — to “self-deport” from the state.

Basically, it makes the faith-based groups or social services legally responsible for any crime committed by a refugee.  The intent is to discourage groups from brining refugees into the state.  of course, the refugees in question are largely Muslim.  

A touch of hypocrisy: 

Conservatives have used this religious-freedom claim to carve out exemptions for religious organizations to non-discrimination laws, health-care mandates and much more. That so many of them seem ready to abandon religious-freedom concerns when it comes to refugees, subjecting religious organizations to undue scrutiny and impeding their ability to serve, suggests that these politicians value religious freedom only when it serves their political agenda.

Ya think?

Apparently the protection of "religious freedom" only applies to Christians of a certain flavor.

Nondiscrimination and the Roman Catholic bishops

Tremendous essay in the National Catholic Reporter today about the ongoing participation of the Roman Catholic Bishops in the anti-gay "religious freedom" culture war. (This on the heels of firing the Editor of the Catholic News service because he tweeted something critical about the anti-gay laws in North Carolina.)

"Hollenbach and Shannon advise, and we agree, that "the church should not ask the state to do what it has not been able to convince its own members to do." 

It should not ask the state to enforce a teaching against homosexual acts that it cannot convince the majority of its own members to accept. The burden of proof is on the church to demonstrate that homosexual acts are destructive of human dignity and cannot serve "the good of the person or society." So far, it has not offered a compelling argument. An unproven assertion should not be advanced as the basis for an abusive use of religious freedom aimed at preventing or repealing nondiscrimination legislation and imposing the church's morally questionable doctrine on the broader society. 

The bishops have every right to advocate for their moral position and to protect religious institutions from participating in what they perceive as immoral activity, but they do not have the right to impose their moral teachings legislatively in a pluralistic society. That, we conclude, would be the very worst kind of proselytism."

Exactly.  Put another way, the RC Bishops do not have the right to tell Episcopalians who can get married.

Religious freedom run amok

As predicted, the backlash against LGBT people is raging, under the cover of "religious freedom".  States in the South particularly are busy passing laws that enable people to refuse service to gay people (and in some cases, anyone else!) against whom they have any religiously-motivated bias.  

Outdoing itself in a race to the bottom, Mississippi's bill considers that protected actions

include "guiding, instructing or raising" a foster child in accordance with those three beliefs; refusing to give counseling, fertility services or transition-related medical care; declining to provide wedding-related business services; and establishing sex-specific dress codes and having sex-segregated restrooms and other facilities. (NPR)

"Sex specific dress codes".  Some hard-right Christians don't think women should wear trousers or short sleeves.  Better be careful if you wear jeans.

The sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions protected by this act are the belief or conviction that: 

(a) Marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman; 

(b) Sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage; and 

(c) Male (man) or female (woman) refer to an individual's immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth.

So you can also discriminate against unmarried cohabitants.

The winning meme over and over has been some strange idea that allowing trans people to use the bathroom empowers pedophiles.  So, a trans man with a beard is supposed to use the ladies' room?

Leave aside for the moment that "anatomy and genetics at time of birth" often don't match (just for starters, there are XX men, there are XY women, and there are intersex people...I can explain these in the comments if you want).

The LGBT community and allies have not come up with an effective way to fight this other-ing of trans people.

John Pavolovitz writes, 

God help us, we just cannot stay out of people’s bathrooms and bedrooms. 

....Somewhere along the way, so much of Evangelical Christianity began to fixate on sex for the same reason the porn industry does: it gets people excited and it generates lots of money.

Exactly.  Nothing riles up the faithful like the specter of people different from them.  Ka-ching!

Pavlovitz continues,

The more Christians fixate on trivial crusades about sex and sexuality, the more we cheapen the Gospel, the more we distort the life-giving message of Christ, and the more we alienate the watching world who sees this all too clearly. 

Just once they’d like to see us claim “religious liberty” compelling us to feed children or curb gun violence or combat Cancer—or anything remotely life affirming. Instead we use it to withhold wedding cakes and police public toilets. 

When the Church has its eyes squarely on Jesus it will find itself seeking the hurting and the needy and the forgotten, and abandoning its lazy battles and desperate witch hunts. 

Not any time soon, at least in the South.

Whose religious freedom, part N....

Interesting take at Religion Dispatches about several cases where Muslim employees are no longer allowed a prayer break.  This would seem to be a clear case where accommodation of religion is being egregiously ignored.  After all, these employees just want a quick break. They aren't trying to make anyone else pray with them.  You would think all those conservatives would be right behind them, right?

Oh, wait.  Muslims.  Yeah, we have seen that some conservatives don't think Muslims are eligible for religious freedom.

But there's another reason, not about Muslims, but about WORKERS.  That is, employer's rights trump those of workers.

.... the requested accommodation would benefit workers, potentially at their employer’s expense, rather than the reverse. In Hobby Lobby and similar cases, employers have used religious exemptions as a way to resist progressive government regulation intended to provide a benefit to workers. In contrast, the Muslim workers in these cases are demanding enforcement of a workers’ rights protection—specifically the Civil Rights Act, a law that some conservatives and libertarians resist to this day. 

While employees say that the accommodation would not impose a meaningful burden on employers, the companies have implied that allowing prayer breaks could cause delays on rapid-fire production lines. It’s an interesting contrast that while the religious right sees no problem in shifting the cost of contraceptive health care from employers to employees or the government in order to accommodate the religious beliefs of a company’s owners, they seem unwilling to allow workers to shift even the minimal costs associated with five-minute prayer breaks to their employers. 

....
There are plenty of arguments for why courts should exercise caution in granting any religious accommodation in the workplace, and should carefully consider the effects an accommodation will have on employers, employees, consumers and the public. It should raise suspicion, however, when those who most adamantly demand the right for business-owners to enforce their beliefs on workers seem unwilling to speak up for the religious rights of minority workers.

Isn't it nice to know that the defense of the employer class transcends any actual principles.

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.

Allies and assumptions: I'm not, but....

The rise of rights for LGBT including the right to marry, and in some places, non-discrimination protections, has depended upon two important phenomena:  first, the willingness of LGBT people to come out and identify themselves (often at great risk), and second, the willingness of straight allies to stand up for the gay minority.

Indeed, those non-gay allies, the people who are members of the majority, are an important and vital voice for the community. A gay person advocating for their rights is different than a  straight person  arguing for  gay rights. The straight person is assuming not to have a dog in the fight, so to speak:  it's as though they are legitimized because of their dis-interest.

Still, there's a difference between people who can say "I'm not gay, but I support the community", and allowing someone to assume you are gay yourself, even if you aren't.  It's joining the marginalized where they are.  Less effective in some ways, more effective in others.  It's also what happened with the twitter tag earlier this year, #jesuischarliehebdo.

As many of you know, I'm a non-believer who regularly attends an Episcopal church;  a secular Christian, as I call myself.  I'm active in many ways in our church and I am not in the closet about my lack of belief.  Outside of that community,  I'm gay, an academic and a scientist,  identities that are  widely assumed to be non-religious, if not actively hostile.

Recently, I have had several instances of identifying myself in my professional community as church-friendly, and I have decided to let those people assume that I am a practicing Christian.  It shakes them up:  it breaks the mold about me and challenges easy assumptions both about religion and who believes. 

These are little things.  I asked vendors at a local convention exhibition for donations of spare t-shirts for the homeless program run by our church (the vendors, who are generally not scientists, were quite friendly about it.)  This amused my wife, who  had wondered if I would bring church into the request.  

More strikingly, though, was pointing out to my university that a major committee meeting currently slated for Good Friday and Holy Saturday was occurring on a significant religious holiday and personally quite inconvenient to me, which seems to have left them nonplussed.  

Here's the thing:  I am fairly confident  that they would never schedule a meeting on, say, Rosh Hashanah.  It seems odd to me  that they would not have the same awareness of Easter as one of the two major annual Christian holidays in the country, thus making the assumption that none of us on the committee would be celebrating.

I will be interested to see whether the assumption that I am a Christian has any further consequences.   However, I should add that I was careful to identify myself as participating in the Episcopal church.  The fundamentalists can find their own advocate!

And all this is turning around in my head as I look at the dangerous rhetoric surrounding Muslims in this country.  

What is the most effective way to be allies to our Muslim brothers and sister? Is it to use our position of privilege as non-Muslims to speak out?  Or is it to allow the assumption to be made that we are ourselves Muslim?  I think in particular of the Christian professor at evangelical Christian Wheaton College who was suspended for donning hijab in solidarity with the Islamic community  (though they now  claim it's because she said God is the same God for Muslims and Christians.  But so much for tenure....).

How do we most effectively advocate for justice? 

The war on Christians

There is a war on Christians.  It is being conducted in the Middle East by terrorist groups such as Isis.

But, apparently, to a particular type of Christian, the was is being conducted here because Starbucks has a red cup for the holiday season.

Seems festive to me, but apparently, a red cup that does not include the words "Merry Christmas" is an insult to the 70% of Americans who identify as Christian, leading to rants on Facebook and You Ttube.

And it seems that the message of the season is lost.

Which is something like this

Moreover, as John Pavlovitz writes,

These continual strident, shouting, red-faced rebuttals to Atheists and non-Christians and corporations are doing exponentially more harm than good in the world beyond the already-convinced; representing Christians as aggressive, bitter brats forever challenging everyone to fisticuffs. 

....So much of our modern Christian culture (from talk radio show hosts to bullhorn screaming preachers to brazen church signs) has devolved into faith-justified antagonism and sanctified fight-picking in the name of Jesus—and I just don’t get it.

I don’t even recognize so much of this stuff as being of Christ anymore.

When did the Good News of Jesus become a massive middle finger to anyone who doesn’t believe what we believe or express faith the way we personally express it? 

....
In so many ways Christianity has lost the plot and bastardized the message, and people are right to reject it. Until we can provide an expression of faith that better mirrors the life and ministry of Jesus, I don’t blame anyone for opting out. 

Or as Gandhi put it, you Christians are so unlike your Christ.  

Justice Alito: more dangerous than Scalia?

From Slate, Mark Stern on the more dangerous justice:

Long ago, Alito realized that anti-gay “religious liberty” was high on the religious right’s post-marriage equality agenda. And he’s already preparing for the coming constitutional showdown.....

As his Obergefell dissent demonstrated, Alito views marriage equality, and gay tolerance in general, as a threat to religious liberty. Now he has confirmed that he favors the right of groups and businesses to employ free speech as a sword, to use the Constitution to justify otherwise unlawful discrimination. The justice knows the battle over Obergefell is over. But the fight to give anti-gay Americans a special right to discriminate is just beginning—and Alito has already positioned himself to lead the charge.

Did Kim Davis jump the shark for religious liberty?

The Washington Post reports that the efforts of Kentucky clerk Kim Davis to block gay people from marrying are not viewed kindly by her fellow Americans, and indeed may have harmed the call for religious liberty.

Sixty-three percent of Americans say Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis should be required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples regardless of her religious objections, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
.....

Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed say it is more important to treat everyone equally than to accommodate someone’s religious beliefs when the two principles conflict. That view held sway across a broad range of Americans, including majorities of self-identified Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives.

You already know who the hold-outs are, right? White Evangelicals and those who ID as VERY conservative.  I don't think the ones in the courthouse shrieking "pervert" at the gay couples are helping the cause, though.

Writing in Time Magazine, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar  is dismayed at the way that politicians advocate that laws they dislike should be ignored.

When politicians support Davis in defying the U.S. Supreme Court, they are making it clear why they should never be elected to any office, let alone the Presidency of the United States where they would take the oath to “support and defend the Constitution” since they are emphatically telling America that they wouldn’t support and defend it. They have announced that if you sincerely disagree with the Constitution, feel free to ignore it. And not just ignore it, make sure to use your position so that others are barred from following it.... 

Once the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether or not a law is constitutional, then that’s the law of the land until the Constitution is amended. If the majority of the people want it amended then it will be. That’s the democracy we’re always celebrating on the Fourth of July and bragging about to other countries. However, if we get to break any law we don’t personally believe in, we will have destroyed the country. It’s shocking to me that anyone supports government officials overriding the Constitution to impose their personal beliefs on the people. It’s especially shocking when those who want to be president advocate it.

So, it appears that the majority of Americans support the rule of law and the fair and equal access of all people to government.  We'll see if they vote that way.

Thought for the day

I bet that the fervant Kim Davis supporters are the same people who have hysterics about the threat of the imposition of sharia law.

Funny, they seem to be very selective about whose God is above the Constitution.

The clerk goes to court and Christianity loses (updated)

The Rowan KY county clerk, Kim Davis, believes that her religiously-founded disdain for same sex marriage entitles her to refuse to do her job.  Her office is refusing to provide marriage licenses to any couple, straight or gay.  Religious freedom, you know.

Think about that.  She is saying that her religious beliefs entitle her, a public servant, to deny her fellow citizens legal civil rights.

Susan Russell writes, 

What if I'm a Muslim and my understanding of my religion is that women shouldn't drive? Can I refuse to issue drivers' licenses to women? Or if I'm a Hindu and a vegetarian -- can I refuse to issue fishing licenses because killing/eating fish is against my religion? Of course not. Likewise, your personal opinions and beliefs about who should or should not be getting married has absolutely no bearing on who you issue marriage licenses to as a county clerk. Period.

Exactly.  And just to make it sweeter, Ms Davis has been divorced three times.  But wait, there's more!

She gave birth to twins five months after divorcing her first husband. They were fathered by her third husband but adopted by her second.

She has since found JAYSUS and has been absolved of sin.  Wiped clean.  Like it never happened.  Of course it doesn't work that way for the Roman Catholics, who consider a couple married following divorce to be living in adultery.  Good thing she's not Catholic, then.

But regardless of her past, even if she were pure as snow, that would not justify her actions.

She has lost in federal court.  While her appeal is pending, she asked for an extended stay of the decision so that she didn't have to sign the licenses.  The 6th circuit said, no, no stay.  The Supreme Court said no, no stay.  You have to start giving out the licenses while your appeal is pending.

GOD! cries Davis and won't do it.  Clerk Davis is facing contempt charges, fines, maybe jail.

Even anti-gay Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation thinks she's nuts.  Quoted in Think Progress, 

“The citizens of Rowan County have a right to receive in a timely and efficient manner the various government provisions—including licenses—to which they are entitled,” Anderson writes for one of Heritage’s websites. 

He adds.... that “[s]aying your religion requires your entire office to stop issuing marriage licenses to everyone . . . cannot be reasonably accommodated without placing undue hardships on the citizens unable to receive their licenses in their county and forced to drive to another.” 

.... the fact that as prominent an anti-gay luminary as Anderson believes that Davis has gone too far is a sign of just how thin a limb the Kentucky clerk now finds herself upon.

Joe Childers makes the constitutional point:

Religiously neutral civil mechanisms are the only possible way for true religious freedom to exist for multiple religions simultaneously. Civil servants who are religious ought therefore to be even more scrupulous about preserving religious neutrality in their duties than non-religious servants, for they are more directly enjoying religious freedom in their own lives and have more to lose from threats to that freedom.

 So what's up?  Everyone agrees that this is wrong at many levels.

Is she merely a puppet of the lawyers who are fundraising wildly? Mark Stern in Slate:

I’m growing a bit concerned about Davis’ lawyers. Davis is being represented by the Liberty Counsel, a far-right fringe group that specializes in anti-gay litigation. (Naturally, it is also a Christian ministry and a tax-exempt nonprofit.) Founder and Chairman Mathew D. Staver has used Davis’ case to raise money and boost publicity for his group, going so far as to hold a rally for Davis..... 

When a federal judge ordered Davis to issue licenses or be held in contempt of court, the Liberty Counsel advised her to disobey the ruling. Good lawyers don’t usually tell their clients to defy lawful court orders, especially when jail time is a real possibility. Yet the Liberty Counsel didn’t mind putting their client at risk—perhaps because the idea of a middle-aged woman being hauled off to jail for purportedly following her conscience would send thousands of anti-gay Americans reaching for their pitchforks (and checkbooks).

Liberty Counsel, which gallingly is funded by tax-deductable donations and grants, stands to gain.  The  Lexington KY Herald-Leader agrees:

So, why is Liberty Counsel marching alongside Davis in this losing cause? It takes a lot to keep that marketing machine humming and those executives paid, and the only way to keep those donations coming is to stay in the news. For that purpose a losing cause is just as good as, perhaps better than, a winning one.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/08/13/3987637_time-for-davis-to-do-her-job-or.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

It's always about money.  Dan Savage sees a method to Kim's madness: t he greed of martyrdom:

....this isn't about Kim Davis standing up for her supposed principles—proof of that in a moment—it's about Kim Davis cashing in. There's a big pile of sweet, sweet bigot money out there waiting for her. If the owners of a pizza parlor could rake in a million dollars just by threatening not to cater the gay wedding no one asked them to cater... just imagine how much of that sweet, sweet bigot money Kim Davis is going to rake in. I'm sure Kim Davis is already imagining it.

Regardless of who is using whom, money and martyrdom go hand in hand.  But Dan goes on,

.... This pathetic bullshit is what passes for Christianity in America today. Thanks to the efforts of hate groups like the American Family Association, the Family Research Council ....,, the 700 Club, the Moral Majority, the National Organization for Marriage, the National Association of Evangelicals, etc., and the mousy, near-complicit silence of left-wing and progressive Christians, "Christian" is now synonymous with "anti-gay bigot."

"Mousy, near complicit silence of left-wing and progressive Christians".  Yup.  Because if you don't defend the brand, the brand becomes Kim Davis.  Dan continues,

To be a good American Christian like Kim Davis—or a good Alaskan Christian like Bristol Palin—you don't have to stay in your first marriage, ....you don't have to deny marriage licenses to straight people who are remarrying or marrying outside the faith or obtaining marriage licenses for Godless secular marriages. Nope. You just have to hate the homos. ....You don't have to feed the sick, clothe the naked, house the homeless—you don't have to do any of that shit Jesus actually talked about—you just have to hate the homos hard enough to go to jail for for your beliefs cash in on your bigotry.

That, my friends, is Christianity in America today.  And all the gay friendly mainlines, the ELCA, UCC, PCUSA, TEC, you all are being so NICE about it, while your brand is going down the drain.   You quietly wring your hands or comment on Facebook, so politely, "you know, we're Not All Like That (NALT)."  Oh, but remember, you pretty much don't have any friends on Facebook who don't already agree with you.

Why isn't anyone saying assertively and publicly, "this woman DOESN'T SPEAK for Christianity"?  Why isn't anyone speaking out?  Why are you letting this once more be cast as the mediatainment narrative likes it, as a battle between Teh Gayz  and the Christians?

Can anyone wonder why the Nones are the fastest growing religious group in the country?

Update:  Found in contempt of court, Ms Davis was taken into custody.  She apparently intends to stay there, and refuses to allow her clerks to administer licenses.  The fundraising no doubt will pick up, until it doesn't,  and no one will marry in Rowan County.

Drop the persecution complex--for the Gospel.

Rachel Held Evans takes on the persecution complex  (Emphasis in original)

Facing disagreement is not the same as facing persecution. Conservative Christians are right about one thing: public opinion has shifted on same-sex marriage (particularly within the Church), and this means they are more likely to encounter pushback when they insist same-sex marriage ought to be illegal. Facebook friends may argue with them. Comedians may satirize them. Bloggers may write posts like these disagreeing with them. But to conflate such disagreement with the sort of persecution Jesus warned his disciples about is not only myopic, but also a slap in the face to those Christians who face very real persecution around the world. Living in a pluralistic society that also grants freedom and civil rights protection to those with whom one disagrees is not the same as religious persecution. And crying persecution every time one doesn’t get one’s way is an insult to the very real religious persecution happening in the world today. It's no way to be a good citizen and certainly no way to advance the gospel in the world.

and

If conservative Christians continue to treat LGBT people as second-class citizens and cry persecution every time they don’t get their way, they will lose far more than the culture wars. They will lose the Christian identity. We’ve obscured the gospel when the “right to refuse” service has become a more widely-known Christian value than the impulse to give it.

Lord, have mercy on us and show us a new way.

Read the whole thing!   For the sake of the gospel, drop the persecution complex

The politics of "religious liberty"

This piece by a constitutional law professor is worth reading in full.

In short, the term “religious liberty” has been bastardized. It simply does not mean the same thing in the constitutional and statutory contexts. It should come as no surprise that when Congress spawned religious liberty, it was a political tool, politically motivated, and sure to invite political discord without reference to constitutional principles that would otherwise wrap religious liberty into our republican form of government. When religious liberty became political tinder, it was debased and divorced from a balance between liberty and licentiousness and transformed into a ticket for courts to be super legislators and the believer to do whatever the believer wants. ....

Thus, there is constitutional religious liberty that was in place until 1990 and which yielded remarkable peace and responsibility between believers and their society. And there is the statutory religious liberty post-1990 that tells believers to run over any law contrary to their belief.

On religious clerks, complicity, and public morality

In Kentucky, a county clerk is in court, over her refusal to allow her office to provide marriage licenses to same sex couples.

She choked back tears at times as she argued that issuing licenses under her name would violate her religious beliefs even if a deputy clerk performs the task in her stead..... 

.... If [the judge] orders Davis to issue licenses, she said she would deal with that when it comes, but resigning is not an option because it would only leave the matter to her deputies.

Because nothing is more important than making sure THOSE PEOPLE can't get married in her county.  Really?  I'm sorry, but your religious beliefs do not trump the law you are sworn to uphold.  Otherwise, Catholic clerks could refuse o issue licenses to previously married people, or refuse to file divorce papers.

An excellent article in the American Prospect looks at the leveraging of religion to allow discrimination in the ongoing culture wars regarding abortion and gay rights.

Laws authorizing health-care providers to refuse patient care illustrate how conservatives are now using the ideas of conscience and religious liberty. States like Mississippi could accommodate the conscience objections of health-care providers while ensuring alternative care for patients. But health-care refusal laws rarely require institutions to provide alternative care; many even authorize providers to refuse to inform patients that they are being denied services that they may want.

That is, the laws privilege the views of the person claiming religious freedom over any rights of the individual being denied service.

Now, as laws recognizing same-sex marriage spread, religious conservatives have begun to look to health-care refusals as an inspiration and a model for restraining another development they could not entirely block.

But there's a switch.

Today’s conflicts over marriage and health care feature a special kind of conscience claim—claims about complicity. The employers in Hobby Lobby objected that the ACA forced them to provide “insurance coverage for items that risk killing an embryo [and thereby] makes them complicit in abortion.” Similarly, businesses in the wedding industry object to “facilitating” same-sex weddings. ....

So the issue, then, is not what the person himself is doing, it's that he wants to have a bright line between himself and that Other One of whom he disapproves.

Because complicity claims single out other citizens as sinners, their accommodation can inflict targeted harm. Complicity claims are increasingly entangled in culture-war politics as a means of mobilizing the faithful against the practices of people who depart from traditional morality. For these reasons, accommodation of the claims is fraught with significance not only for the claimants but also for those whose conduct the claimants condemn. These third-party effects need to be taken into account in weighing whether and how the government should accommodate complicity-based claims of conscience.

Is there a way around it?  The authors think that Hobby Lobby actually was written sufficiently narrowly that it will help. They conclude (my emphasis)

One group of citizens should not be singled out to bear significant costs of another’s religious practice. The government may have to limit complicity-based conscience claims to avoid harming third parties who do not share the claimants’ beliefs. This approach respects claims to religious freedom and the rights of other citizens—standing by conscience while recognizing its new role in culture-war conflicts.

Meanwhile, we'll see what happens in court in Kentucky.

We're better than this

One of the reasons I do not identify as a leftist or a progressive is the lock-step rigidity and political correctness that pervades the left.

For example, the Brendan Eich case was a purge of political correctness.  For those who don't remember, Eich was the presumptive head of Mozilla, who was hounded out of office because he gave a donation to Prop8 back in 2008.

Now, I fought damn' hard against Prop8, and I don't like that people supported it.  But 6, 8 years later, we need to realize that we've moved on.   I believe hounding Eich out of office is no different than when the Romney campaign firing an employee (Richard Grenell) because he was gay. Eich did not act against the law.  He did not change policies of his company.  He made a legal political donation to a cause years before he was hired, as a private citizen.  Truly, if Eich could be fired for that, why couldn't a conservative firm fire me for making a donation to the other side?  Should a boss who supports Hilary be able to fire someone whose car sports a Jeb! bumper sticker? 

 I also have a problem when the left surges around calling for boycotts of celebrities who stay stupid stuff.  Stop watching their TV shows, if you want, but let their declining ratings be a reason to take them down, and not an employer-enforced political correctness.  Regrettable though it is ,some people do have a religious objection to marriage equality and they are entitled to that viewpoint even if it is offensive.  We would do better to try to persuade them by example, to encourage them to evolve.  And so I'm uncomfortable about the left's litmus tests. It's wrong to say that people on the opposite side of the political spectrum shouldn't be employable because of their personal beliefs, all other things being equal.

However, all other things are NOT equal when you are a government employee.  And you don't get to use your religious beliefs to interfere with the civil rights of others, when you have sworn to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution.  It wasn't allowable for inter-racial marriage, and it's not allowable now.

Multiple federal courts have decided that, for example, law-enforcement officials don’t get to decide which people they serve and protect, which means they are not entitled to opt out of assignments to patrol abortion clinics, protect casinos or investigate pacifist groups because of religious objections. Under similar logic, marriage clerks don’t have the right to choose not to serve gay men and lesbians, just as they also can’t refuse to serve interracial couples (something that a Louisiana public official, citing matters of “conscience,” attempted as recently as 2009; he was forced to resign).

Incidentally, the courts also say private businesses can't use religious excuses:

In other cases where people tried to exempt themselves from otherwise generally applicable laws on the grounds of religious belief, the courts said no dice, at least when there was third-party harm. In perhaps the most awesomely named Supreme Court case of all time, Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises , the court affirmed the principle that a barbecue chain could not refuse to serve African American customers because the owner sincerely believed that the Bible mandated segregation of the races. The owner’s free exercise of religion did not get to trample the civil rights of others.

(Oh, and remember the bakers in Oregon?  They were found in violation of the state's non-discrimination ordinance.  That's not the same thing as having an opinion;  they can have all the opinion they want, but they can't actively discriminate.   Note, though, that they weren't fined $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake.   They were fined $135,000 in damages for publicizing the names and address of the lesbian couple such that the couple got death threats and could have lost their foster children. )

So, meanwhile, there are a number of county clerks around the country who are refusing to provide marriage licenses to gay couples.  (It's not clear they also refuse licenses to the previously divorced.... ;-P ), on the grounds of religious freedom. But as government employees, they don't get to do that.

As the New York Times says,

However they justify these tactics, their conduct is illegal and they must stop.

Even after Loving v. Virginia, it still took court cases to get the antimiscegenation laws fully overturned. 

Mopping up over the next few years required federal court intervention regarding the obtaining of marriage licenses in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, as well as a state court ruling in Florida 

So, back to where I started about the left's lockstep.  One of the clerks in question is a woman in Kentucky whose religiously-based refusal of a marriage license to two men went viral.  In a bit of delicious hypocrisy, she's reportedly been married 4 times.

She's being excoriated by the left wing, including cruel attacks on her looks.

The couple she refused is not pleased about this.

David Moore and David Ermold are denouncing the attacks on Davis, saying their fight isn't about her marriages, but their right to get married.

"I don't like that," Ermold says on camera with Moore agreeing. "That is not what this is about, at all. We just want a marriage license, that's what we want."

They add their county is filled with "good people, all around."

Especially David Moore and David Ermold, who, despite being denied their constitutional right to marry, are big enough and honorable enough to not want the one person standing in the way of their right to marry, to be subjected to attacks.

The nature of the attacks against this woman simply fuels the religious right's meme that they are being oppressed. It hardens hearts all the way around.   Surely, surely, we are bigger and better than this.  If we want people to evolve on this issue and move ahead, we have to provide a civil way to share our communal space.

Otherwise, we are just as bad as they are.

Resisting marriage equality because "religious freedom"

Several states are resisting implementation of the Court's decision on same sex marriages, by throwing up the "religious freedom" meme.

The most extreme example is this, in which a lawyer under Alabama Justice Roy Moore claims

Public officials are ministers of God assigned the duty of punishing the wicked and protecting the righteous.

Well, that's patently not true.  Alabama is NOT a theocracy and neither are these United States, and the oath to uphold the Constitution that they all took is not predicated on "when it agrees with my religious views."

In Michigan, efforts to protect "religious freedom" are renewed, including a demand that marriages only exist in religious settings.

Conservatives in the House have introduced legislation that would only allow religious clergy to perform marriage ceremonies and remove that responsibility from local clerks and judges. Other couples who don't want to use clergy for their nuptials could provide an affidavit of marriage to county clerks. The legislation also would allow marriage certificates to be shielded from public record laws.

"If this legislation becomes law it will protect our public officials from having to perform same-sex marriages and put the marriage licensing business back in the position of being in the realm of the churches and religious leaders," said state Rep. Todd Courser, R-Lapeer, in a statement explaining the bill he sponsored.

But that is putting religion front and center in a CIVIL contract.  That is WRONG.

In Texas, the Attorney General has suggested that clerks are free to refuse licenses on religious grounds.  The Dallas Morning News correctly states,

 Top Texas leaders must stop standing in the way by encouraging government employees to invoke a personal religious exception when asked to provide marriage-related services, such as issuing licenses or officiating at civil ceremonies.

Denton County Clerk Juli Luke struck the right tone regarding Friday’s ruling by stating, “Personally, same-sex marriage is in contradiction to my faith and belief. … However, first and foremost, I took an oath on my family Bible to uphold the law, and as an elected public official, my personal belief cannot prevent me from issuing the licenses as required.”

Exactly.

State employees do not have discretion to selectively embrace the constitutional protections they agree with while rejecting those they object to, even on religious grounds. Constitutionally, governments — including their employees — must present themselves as religiously neutral. 

Look, this is not a religious issue.  Civil marriages are civil contracts.  I haven't noticed Roman Catholic clerks refusing licenses to previously divorced people, although such marriages are disallowed by their faith.  Nor devoutly orthodox Jews refusing licenses to interfaith couples.  This is only about bias against LGBT people.  And it needs to stop.


Cross posted from Gay Married Californian