Anderson Speaks on Religious Liberty and Discrimination
Posted Sep 13, 2017
Last night, Ryan Anderson returned to deliver a lecture that he called a follow-up to the one he gave at Union three years ago on “What is Marriage?” This year, Anderson discussed how we as Americans should respond to those who support traditional marriage but oppose the Supreme Court decision in Obergefelle v Hodges which legalized same sex marriage nationwide. Anderson, the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom, What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, and Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination, spoke to a large crowd in the Grant Center as part of Union University’s annual Constitution Day Lecture sponsored by the Department of Political Science, Center for Politics and Religion, College of Arts and Science, and School of Theology and Missions.
Anderson began by stating that no one should blame gays and lesbians for the decline of family structure in the US. That blame squarely falls on heterosexuals who have made a mess of sex and marriage over the past 50 years and contributed to the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefelle. Straight people bought into the changing ideology of sex and marriage that has led to changes in sexual mores, no-fault divorce, and the fact that 40% of all children are born out of wedlock.
He then asked what will be the freedoms of those who believe and want to live out their belief in traditional marriage. We have already seen the first casualty in the redefinition of marriage with the forced shutdown of faith based charities that serve the disadvantaged. In Massachusetts, the state forced Catholic Charities to stop participating in adoptions because they refused to place children in homes of same sex couples. This result is especially troubling since Catholic Charities had the highest success rate of any organization placing children with behavioral problems in adopted homes. Most organizations have little trouble finding homes for babies. However, more organizations have trouble placing older children in teens in adopted homes. Catholic Charities had success with these children because they could minister to the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of the children and their new families and did so by placing these children in homes with a mother and father. The question is today whether faith based organizations will be able to serve the poor because of their beliefs on marriage or whether the state will make it too difficult for them to do so.
The second casualty may be faith based colleges and universities. The question of whether faith based organizations with orthodox sexual views to pursue their mission without penalty first came up in the oral arguments during Obergefelle. Justice Alito asked the Solicitor General, the attorney for the US, whether faith based institutions would lose their tax exempt status. The Solicitor General said, “I don’t deny it. It’s going to be an issue.” Instead of saying that faith based organizations could continue to serve but do things differently, he said they may lose their tax exempt status which threatened many institutions. He could have said that not all colleges have to be the same. Yale and Harvard can be authentically Ivy while Union could be authentically Christian, BYU authentically Mormon, Yeshiva authentically Jewish, etc. We could easily let parents and students decide if they want to apply to these schools because of their unique identity. Yet, the Solicitor General implied that everyone must conform to the new orthodox on marriage and sexuality.
The third casualties could be Christian professionals who may want to live out their beliefs but may not. Many people, on the left specifically, believe faith is lived out on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday but most faithful people believe that they are required to live out their faith every day of the week. Recently, we have seen Baronelle Stutzman, a florist, sued by the Washington Attorney General. She had hired homosexuals in the past and served one gay couple for 7 years. When this couple decided to get married, they asked her to provide the flowers for the wedding. She told them that she could not because of her religious beliefs. The state AG heard about the situation and sued her and eventually the gay couple also sued. In another case, an Oregon baker was fined $135,000 for not baking a cake for a same sex wedding.
This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case of Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cake Shop in Denver. Phillips considers himself a cake artist and sees creating cakes as part of his God given talent. Because of this, he had refused to make cakes with alcohol depicted, lewd cakes for bachelor parties, a cake that said homosexuality is a detestable sin, and a cake celebrating a divorce because that violated his Christian beliefs. No one sued him until he declined to bake a cake for a same sex couple, even after he explained his reasoning.
We may also see civil servants forces to violate their beliefs. Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk, opposed same sex marriage but did not object to issuing same sex marriage licenses if her name was removed. Thus, she was willing to comply with the law but asked for a workaround because of her faith. Her request was not that unusual as pro-life police officers had been allowed to no work protests at Planned Parenthood and animal rights supporters were not forced to sell hunting licenses. Yet, the governor refused. When Matt Bevin was elected governor, he created a workaround in two weeks by removing county clerks’ names from marriage licenses. In North Carolina, state law allows those opposed to same sex marriage to do other duties in the county clerk office. These attempts to accommodate religious objectors follows federal law that requires government to reasonably accommodate those with religious objections. Yet today, some oppose even this regarding same sex marriage.
So how should Christians think about these issues? First, he argues that we should care about the religious liberty of those who we may think are wrong. We should care because it is a fundamental human right to seek out the divine on our own and live out those beliefs, provided that you do not harm other people. Religious liberty is an aspect of the common good that can only be limited for the common good. It would be contrary to the common good to provide exemptions for murder, stealing, etc. However, we can easily find win-win situations by protecting rights and accommodating religious liberty as seen in Kentucky removing county clerk names off same sex marriage licenses and North Carolina allowing county clerk employees to perform other duties in the office (hunting licenses, drivers licenses, etc.).
Second, we should prohibit discrimination against private actors because justice and the common good require it. A restaurant that bans African-Americans from eating there undermines justice by perpetuating white supremacy seen in slavery, segregation, etc. In these instances, white people unjustly harmed African-Americans. This example helps us see different kinds of discrimination. First, there is invidious discrimination such as Jim Crow laws. The whole point was to communicate that African-Americans are less than human and would pollute the water fountain, bathroom, or restaurant if they used that facility. Second, we discriminate when take certain factors into consideration when relevant. For example, we do not believe it is invidious discrimination to have male and female locker rooms because the separate locker room does not communicate that women are lesser. Third and despite the best efforts of activists, we would not say a pro-life doctor who refused to perform an abortion is discriminating on the basis of sex. Sex isn’t important because the doctor would not perform an abortion on a man (if that was possible). It is the dignity of the unborn child that leads the pro-life doctor to refuse.
In terms of religious liberty, it would be invidious discrimination if a Catholic hospital refused to provide treatment if someone is gay. It would be invidious because sexual orientation does not matter in terms of treating someone with a health problem. In the same manner, it is not invidious for Catholic Charities to place children in a home with a mother and dad because it is better for the child. The focus is on the best interest of the child and not sexual orientation. The condition is that the best dad cannot replace the best mom and vice versa. The orphan deserves the best chance which social science shows occurs with a mother and father.
Another example would be a hospital refusing to provide chemotherapy to a transgender individual because they are transgender. That is invidious. Yet when Catholic hospitals refuse to provide sex reassignment surgery, it is not invidious because Catholic hospitals believe that sex reassignment surgery is not good medicine. The hospitals base this belief on medicine and not gender identity. We need to remember that not every disagreement is discrimination. There is a place for good faith disagreement on what is medically appropriate or not. We should not want government to decide appropriate outcomes and thus threaten doctors with the loss of their medical license if they oppose government opinions.
We have to remember that there is bigotry and it is real. But believing males and female should marry is not bigotry and we shouldn’t believe those who claim that those who believe in traditional marriage are the modern day version of the KKK.