Over the past few weeks, we've seen these controversies in Indiana and Arkansas
involving laws that would allow religious discrimination against LGBT people.
There's so much misinformation about what the bills do, why they need to be passed,
that I just wanted to take this time to cover kind of the background information about these cases.
Let's make sure that when we argue against these laws, we're fully educated about them.
This is going to be super-simplified. I know. I'm skipping over a lot of details just to kind of
give you this overview, but I hope you look up the details for yourself.
So, let me go back to 1990.
There was a law in Oregon that banned possession of or use of peyote, which is a hallucinogenic drug.
It applied to everyone.
But a couple of Native Americans, who happened to be drug counselors,
were fired for using peyote.
Not only were they fired, they got no unemployment benefits.
So they sued.
Their argument was that using peyote was just a part of their religion.
So, really, they were fired for exercising their religious freedom.
The question the courts had to decide was:
If there's a law that's supposed to apply to everyone,
could there be religious exemptions to it?
The Supreme Court said no.
The law is the law. No exceptions.
And that applied in this case to the Native Americans because
they were fired for reasons that had nothing to do with their religion.
But that spooked a lot of religious people who thought this law may come back to haunt them.
So a few years later,
Congress decided to pass a law carving out these exemptions.
Because if your religion says you have to do something,
the government shouldn't be able to tell you otherwise.
That was the religious freedom argument.
They passed a law, with bipartisan support,
called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Let's call it RFRA.
President Bill Clinton signed it into law in 1993.
RFRA said legitimate religious exceptions to the law were okay
unless the government had a really good argument for saying otherwise, like a public safety issue,
and as long as they were doing it in the least restrictive way possible.
For example, if you're a Muslim prisoner who wants to grow a beard because your religion says you have to,
but the government says you can't grow a beard in prison because you might hide something in it,
the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year,
using a law very similar to RFRA,
that the government can't force you not to grow a beard. That's not a good enough reason.
Let the man have a short beard. It's okay.
But if you're a Quaker
and your religion says you have to oppose war, and you know your taxes go to support our military,
you can't just say, "I'm not going to pay my taxes this year".
In that case the government has a pretty good reason
to force you to pay your taxes, and your religious exception doesn't really apply there.
And then, following some additional legal battles,
various states started passing their own version of RFRA to apply to their laws.
When Barack Obama was a state senator,
he helped pass Illinois' version of the same law.
Now, before I move on, I should say that there are some groups out there
that oppose RFRA altogether
because basically what RFRA does is say
that if you have a really compelling religious argument to break the law,
you might be able to get away with it.
But if you just have a really strong feeling about something,
that's not good enough.
That gives religion a special place in our government
and for that reason, a lot of church-state separation groups
don't like RFRA at all.
Now, let's jump to last year.
Remember the Hobby Lobby case that was in front of the Supreme Court?
The owners of Hobby Lobby said they didn't want to provide abortion pills to people who worked for them,
which they weren't actually doing but it didn't matter because they had a really strong belief about it.
And the Supreme Court said, "Fine,
we will exempt you from that law; you don't have to provide comprehensive health insurance for your employees
because of your religious beliefs, because the owner's religious beliefs".
Now, I disagree with that ruling.
But look what it did.
The Supreme Court said that RFRA didn't just apply to individuals like the guys using peyote.
It applied to companies.
Companies had religious rights,
which bring us to Indiana.
Suppose you're a Christian florist.
You're supposed to serve everybody who comes through your door. That's what the anti-discrimination laws say.
Now, a gay couple walks in and wants you to arrange flowers for their wedding.
Should you be allowed to say no?
The conservative argument has been,
"Sure". According to RFRA, if your religious beliefs forbid, you know, gay marriage,
then you should be allowed to say no; you don't want to participate in a gay wedding.
The government doesn't have a good enough reason to force you to do it,
especially when there are other florists in the area.
The liberal response has been, "Come on,
you're not been asked to participate in a wedding,
you have a business". Just because you have gay customers, it doesn't matter.
Just arrange the damn flowers.
Making things worst in Indiana was the fact that LGBT people weren't already protected under the anti-discrimination laws.
They're not a protected class like they are in some other states.
So, in theory, Christian florist didn't even have to treat them equally.
The state passed some provisions to fix this
due a lot of the backslash,
but the truth is anti-LGBT discrimination is still a very real problem in Indiana.
So, what's going to happen now?
You have anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBT people in some places,
but you also have RFRA providing religious freedom
protection in other places.
That's a question the courts are going to have to decide:
Does the government have good enough reason to say that equal treatment of LGBT people
trumps someone else's religious freedom?
The religious right says, "No,
if someone doesn't want to serve gay people, just ask the customer to go to the next town over.
But I think the government has a pretty compelling reason
to want everyone to be treated equally under the law.
Some people are already trying to test just how far this law will go.
In Indiana a guy started up the first church of cannabis.
His argument went like this,
Indiana has a law that says I can't smoke marihuana,
but my religion demands that I do.
So, if RFRA means my religious beliefs trump whatever the law says,
time to talk up.
Personally, I think RFRA goes too far in both the state and national level.
There's no reason that just because you have a strong religious belief about something,
that should matter more than someone else who just has a strong conviction about it.
The law is the law.
But since repealing RFRA at this point seems a little too far-fetched,
the most we can do is make sure there are anti-discrimination measures in place in states like Indiana,
where it would be really easy for people
to discriminate against gay people if they wanted to because of their faith.
My name is Hemant Mehta and I write at FriendlyAtheist.com
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