Religious liberty is under assault. The American people know it, and they mind. Fifty-two percent of Americans say religion is “very important” in their life; 89 percent believe in God.
Yet the executive branch in Washington is acting as though religions — particularly Christianity, Judaism and Islam — are the enemy of decent people everywhere.
The word “bigots” is frequently employed.
Just this month the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights — the agency, ironically, tasked with protecting religious freedom — issued a report claiming “religious freedom” and “religious liberty” are “code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia (and) Christian supremacy.”
No room for equivocation there.
The Constitution’s First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”
The Civil Rights Commission instead recommends protecting “religious beliefs,” but not religious “conduct.” It is willing to protect private religious thoughts, but not actions. All it takes is for the Supreme Court to agree for this to become the law of the land.
The executive branch’s position on religious liberty has changed dramatically, and quickly. In 1993, two of Congress’ leading liberals, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and then-Rep. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). It passed overwhelmingly and was signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton.
RFRA says simply: If the federal government wishes to restrict religious rights, it can do it only for important reasons and if there is no other practical way to meet its objective.
For two decades, RFRA enjoyed broad support, praised for providing a mechanism for finding a middle ground between competing priorities. No more.
The first major attack on RFRA came when the Obama administration insisted Obamacare require that private employers, including religious employers, finance birth control and early abortions. Numerous employers rebelled. The Supreme Court, in its one major decision — with others pending — on the matter, stood for religious rights, 5-4.
One of the five, Justice Antonin Scalia, has since passed away. The high court presumably now is 4-4 on religious rights and the next president has a vacancy to fill.
The second blow to RFRA came when the Supreme Court granted a major victory to the more secular side of the gay marriage question by ruling in 2015 that laws restricting marriage to between one man and one woman unconstitutionally restrict an individual’s right “to define and express their identity.”
Millions of religious Americans were stunned. The groups lobbying to enact gay marriage, happy as they were, had another problem. Their goal was gone. If they didn’t find new ones, they’d have to close shop.
And so they sought others, seeking laws penalizing small businesses whose owners declined to participate in gay marriage ceremonies. If RFRA protected the right of individuals not to be involved, then RFRA was for “bigots.”
These groups also developed, seemingly overnight, the ardent belief that the federal government must impose and enforce a policy that a person’s sex is unrelated to biology.
The Obama administration agreed with enthusiasm, arguing in federal court in a case not yet decided that the 1964 Civil Rights Act makes it illegal to assign restrooms and showers on biological sex. Millions of Americans now face the possibility that their children will be forced to shower with the opposite biological sex as a condition of attending public schools.
Our next president will make at least one, possibly several, Supreme Court appointments, and appoint new members to the Civil Rights Commission. He or she will decide whether to continue to sue nuns and others to force them to buy birth control, and whether to continue to argue in court that the 1964 Civil Rights Act says it is illegal sex discrimination to decline to be nude with the opposite biological sex.
The American people know this. Federal policies forcing boys to shower with girls is the sort of thing parents notice. Ordinary folks mind being called “bigots.” They know, in general at least, the role the executive branch is playing here and the vital importance of the Supreme Court in deciding these questions.
Don’t expect them to vote as if they don’t know.
