Ideas and Society

An ill wind is blowing. The worst kind of cultural climate change is coming upon us—and the religious should be terribly unnerved. The frenzy around the Indiana Religious Freedom Law, portends a world where the rights and freedoms of Christians in America will be substantially reduced, beaten back and contracted in a world where we will be less free to live and speak our religion in any kind of a public way.

If things follow in the trajectory we are now on, religious people—particularly conservative Christians will feel the squeeze. Some have called it the “ghettoization of Christians.”

In late March, Indiana passed a Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It said that if the government were to substantially burden the exercise of religion, it had to do so for a compelling government reason and in the least restrictive way possible. The aim, according to Ryan T. Anderson was to protect the rights of all citizens equally “to live out their beliefs at home, in worship and at work without unnecessary government coercion.” The idea was to set a legal standard for the courts, to give a place of balance between contending claims.

This should not have been enough to create a firestorm with leaping rhetoric and wild accusations because the Federal government has had this same law in place since 1993 when it passed unanimously in the House, with 97 votes in the Senate and was signed into law by Bill Clinton. Today 19 states by statute and another 11 by court interpretation live under that same standard.

How much things have changed in such a few years.

In practice, says Anderson, the RFRA’s “have provided protection for Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, Native Americans among others. They have protected the freedom of a Sikh woman to carry religious articles of her faith at work, allowed a Native American boy to wear long hair at school, and ensured a Christian ministry could continue serving recently released prisoners.”

This did not give people a blank check to do anything they wanted in the name of religion, nor did it give businesses a “license to discriminate.” It merely was a protection for the religious from heavy government intrusion in dictating how they exercise their religious freedom.

The Noise of Detractors

Detractors leaped on this bill because they said it would allow discrimination, calling it an anti-gay bill and spinning hypotheticals about homosexuals not being served in diners. This was nonsense, but it didn’t stop the rhetoric from ringing with great effectiveness.

With the swipe of a pen, making RFRA Indiana law, Governor Mike Pence and Indiana, in general, became the target of mudslingers. The name Indiana instantly became synonymous with bigotry, so much so that there has even been speculation if the state can ever recover its image.

Public opposition to the religious freedom law has come from interest groups, media, corporations, elected leaders and powerful personalities.

Hilary Clinton, whose husband had signed the Federal RFRA into law tweeted, “Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today,” adding that Americans should not discriminate against people because of “who they love.”

Apple CEO, Tim Cook couched his objections that the bill was anti-religious. “I have a great reverence for religious freedom. As a child, I was baptized in a Baptist church, and faith has always been an important part of my life. I was never taught, nor do I believe, that religion should be used as an excuse to discriminate.”

Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff, a technology company with a major presence in Indiana announced he would cancel all company events in the state. Jeremy Stoppelman, the founder of Yelp, which publishes online reviews of businesses said that “it is unconscionable to imagine that Yelp would create, maintain, or expand a significant business presence in any state that encouraged discrimination.”

When Ryan Anderson was explaining the reality of the Indiana RFRA law on MSNBC, host Ed Scultz actually had the studio cut his mic and only allowed him to continue later, after a break, when he could be more “courteous.” See that here.

On and on it goes. Connecticut Governor Daniel Malloy signed an order barring all of its state employees from traveling to Indiana for state work. Angie’s List is backing off developing in Indiana. Boycotts have been called for and protests organized.

The Disingenuity behind the Attacks

Anyone not familiar with the substance of the Indiana law or just reading about the hoopla surrounding it in the media would have been misled about its content and its effect. Religious freedom scholar, Douglas Laycock, of the University of Virginia, has said that state RFRA’s “are quite unlikely to affect discrimination claims…So far, the religious claimants have lost all of those cases, including the wedding photographer under the New Mexico RFRA, and the florist in Washington under a RFRA-like interpretation of the state constitution.”

He said, “Discrimination cases in other contexts simply don’t come up. The florist in Washington had served her gay customer for years, knowing that the flowers were for his same-sex partner; she had had gay employees. She didn’t object to any of that; she objected to serving the wedding, because she understands weddings and marriages to be inherently religious. She sees civil marriage as resting on the foundation of religious marriage.

“Of course there are real bigots out there, and some of them discriminate against gays and lesbians. They are doing that in states without RFRAs as well as in states with RFRAs. They mostly aren’t asserting religious justifications; they aren’t producing cases. And if they do start to produce cases, all experience is that they’re going to lose.”

A Lynch Mob

What is clear from the lynch mob that gathered against Indiana is that protecting religious freedom has become synonymous with being a bigot, whose ideas are worth roping up even at the cost of truth. Religious freedom equals bigotry in this view—and we know what society thinks of bigots. They are not allowed a legitimate point of view, nor a place at the table.

In a recent article Kevin D. Williamson describes the new war on the private mind—that dares to contest the prevailing narrative or idea of what is good. He notes:

“There are three problems with rewarding those who use accusations of bigotry as a political cudgel. First, those who seek to protect religious liberties are not bigots, and going along with false accusations that they are makes one a party to a lie. Second, it is an excellent way to lose political contests, since there is almost nothing — up to and including requiring algebra classes — that the Left will not denounce as bigotry. Third, and related, it rewards and encourages those who cynically deploy accusations of bigotry for their own political ends.

Adlai Stevenson famously offered this definition: ‘A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.’ We do not live in that society.”

He notes that “when everything is subject to brute-force politics, and there can be no live-and-let-live ethic”, “a nation facing financial ruination and the emergency of a bloodthirsty Islamic caliphate is suffering paroxysms over the question of whether we can clap confectioners into prison for declining to bake a cake for a wedding in which there is no bride.” The irony of it all.

No Other View Allowed 

The religious need to understand that they have entered a world where the politically correct will no longer tolerate them—particularly in the area of their support for traditional marriage. One writer compared it to the Starship Enterprise coming upon the Borg in their intergalactic journeys. The Borg say, “Resistance is futile.  You will be assimilated.”

Or at least they can make the punishments very real both in a political and cultural sense. Just ask Brandon Eich who lost his job as the head of Mozilla for a donation to the Proposition 8 campaign, defending traditional marriage in California. Or Orson Scott Card, whose creative abilities as an internationally renowned author were not enough to keep him from being dropped from writing a DC comics adventure. Or Gene Schaerr who had to leave his high-powered Washington DC law firm to defend Utah’s marriage amendment law.

Blogger, Rod Dreher had a conversation with a Christian law professor from a noted university who only spoke to him on the grounds that he could remain anonymous. That’s how dangerous he perceived the conversation to be on this topic. To maintain that anonymity, Dreher refers to him as Kingsfield in this exchange.

Kingsfield looks forward with worry for Christians in a post-Indiana world. He says, “The constituency for religious liberty just isn’t there anymore.” When America became a secular society, the will to protect religion faltered. Secularists see devotion to God as just another preference that can be changed with enough pressure.

He notes, “’It’s like a nuclear bomb went off, but in slow motion.’ What he meant by this is that our culture has lost the ability to reason together, because too many of us want and believe radically incompatible things.

“But only one side has the power. “When [Dreher] asked Kingsfield what most people outside elite legal and academic circles don’t understand about the way elites think, he said ‘there’s this radical incomprehension of religion.’

“To elites in his circles, Kingsfield continued, ‘at best religion is something consenting adults should do behind closed doors… There’s a lot of looking down on flyover country, one middle America.”

For these elite, they believe that holding to the tenets of religion, particularly regarding marriage, has no reasonable, rational point of view behind it that is worth considering, They believe the only reason for not embracing and celebrating same-sex marriage is because of animus.

What is concerning is that this is the view of the socially powerful. These are the people who shape our views as a culture—the elite of the media, the intellectual class, entertainment, and corporations. It has the potential to affect every area of our lives as religious people.

Kingsfield gave some examples from hiring within the academy (but it applies to corporations as well.) He says, “A college professor who is already tenured is probably safe. Those who aren’t tenured, are in danger. Those who are believed to be religious, or at least religious in ways the legal overculture believes constitutes bigotry, will likely never be hired. “

“For example, the professor said, he was privy to the debate within a faculty hiring meeting in which the candidacy of a liberal Christian was discussed. Though the candidate appeared in every sense to be quite liberal in her views, the fact that she was an open Christian prompted discussion as to whether or not the university would be hiring a ‘fundamentalist.’”

Some Questions Moving Forward

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat said,

“that the only remaining question in the same-sex marriage ‘debate’ was what kind of space, if any, an ascendant cultural liberalism would leave to Americans with traditional views on what constitutes a marriage; that the correlation of forces (corporate now as well as cultural and legal) was such that the choice of exactly how far to push and how much pluralism to permit would be almost entirely in the hands of liberals and supporters of same-sex marriage. “

That should make us shiver. He says, because of our religious views, our space for action and acceptance, will ultimately come down to what those who disagree with us will allow. In other words, they hold the power.

He continues, “One of the difficulties in this discussion, from a conservative perspective, is that the definition of “common sense” and “compromise” on these issues has shifted so rapidly in such a short time: Positions taken by, say, the president of the United States and most Democratic politicians a few short years ago are now deemed the purest atavism, the definition of bigotry gets more and more elastic, and developments that social liberals would have described as right-wing scare stories in 2002 or so are now treated as just the most natural extensions of basic American principles.”

Looking forward what can the religious expect? These are a few of the questions Douthat thinks critics of Indiana’s RFRA should consider:

1) Should religious colleges whose rules or honor codes or covenants explicitly ask students and/or teachers to refrain from sex outside of heterosexual wedlock eventually lose their accreditation unless they change the policy to accommodate gay relationships?

2) In the longer term, is there a place for anyone associated with the traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic view of sexuality in our society’s elite level institutions?

3) Should the state continue to recognize marriages performed by ministers, priests, rabbis, etc. who do not marry same-sex couples? Or should couples who marry before such a minister also be required to repeat the ceremony in front of a civil official who does not discriminate?

4) Should churches that decline to bless same-sex unions have their tax-exempt status withdrawn? Note that I’m not asking if it would be politically or constitutionally possible: If it were possible, should it be done?

What Happened in Indiana

The pressure was too much for Indiana and Governor Pence. They caved and added language to “clarify” the bill which in the end satisfied no one. The language said that the new religious freedom law cannot be used as a legal defense to discriminate against patrons based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Mark Rienzi, Senior Counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty said of the fix:

“The proposed “fix” to Indiana’s RFRA is unnecessary. Our country has had over 20 years of experience with RFRAs and we know what they do: They provide crucial protections to religious minorities.

“The key disagreement is over what should happen in a very small class of cases where individuals are asked to participate in a same-sex wedding in violation of their religious beliefs. In that situation, there are two possibilities: (1) Our government can drive religious people out of business, fine them, and possibly even imprison them; or (2) our government can say that these religious people deserve a day in court, and that courts should carefully balance religious liberty with other competing values.

“The original RFRA would give people their day in court; the proposed “fix” would be a green light for driving religious people out of business. Our society should not settle this issue by punishing religious people before they even have their day in court.”

We may not be florists or wedding photographers trying to determine what our conscience allows in celebrating a same-sex wedding. That issue may seem foreign to us. But what is clear is that religious people need to be aware of the issues and vigilant in defending freedom. When we see religious freedom trampled in an arena that seems not to concern us personally, know that we may be next in line in an area that concerns us very personally. With John Donne we can surely say in the wake of contracting religious freedom, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”