Like the falsely named religious freedom protection bills that state legislatures, including Maine’s, considered, and largely dismissed, this year, the First Amendment Defense Act aims to legalize discrimination in the name of protecting religious beliefs. It should be quickly dismissed by Congress in favor of a bill to extend federal nondiscrimination protections to LGBT Americans.
The First Amendment act, sponsored by conservative Republicans in the House and Senate, would allow broad discrimination against gay and lesbian couples, as well as unmarried heterosexual couples and single mothers. They say the bill is needed, after the Supreme Court’s June 26 ruling that states must allow same-sex marriage, so the federal government can’t punish churches that won’t perform same-sex marriages. They cite the hypothetical example of the IRS pulling a church’s tax exemption for this reason. The First Amendment already prohibits this and protects churches’ rights to determine who can and cannot be married in their institution. It does not give them the right to extend such determinations to the public in general.
Oddly, Mike Lee, R-Utah, frequently uses the word “tolerance” when talking about the bill he sponsored.
“Our country,” he told NPR in a recent interview, “was founded on a proud tradition of religious freedom and tolerance.”
That freedom, however, meant that Americans were free from a state-established religion. As a result, no one religious view is favored over another, nor should one be forced upon citizens with different beliefs.
Worse, tolerance, in Lee’s view, only goes in one direction. Religious institutions, including colleges and universities that receive federal funding, should be allowed to refuse to hire those who don’t follow their beliefs. Those institutions, however, don’t have to tolerate those whose beliefs and lifestyles don’t conform to their world view.
The American Civil Liberties Union concluded that under the act, federal employees could refuse to process tax returns, visa applications, or Social Security checks for married same-sex couples and businesses could deny sick leave to a gay employee seeking to care for a sick spouse.
This is discrimination, and it should remain illegal.
Earlier this year, state Sen. David Burns, R-Whiting, sponsored LD 1340, which would have made it harder for state laws that were seen to “burden the exercise of religion” to pass legal muster in court. The bill had many similar provisions to a bill that was passed by the legislature in Indiana in March that led to a huge — and potentially economically harmful — backlash.
The national outcry was so fierce against the Indiana law that Republican Gov. Mike Pence quickly signed a fix to the bill and the state hired a public relations firm to help rebuild its image.
In Maine, Burns pulled his bill from consideration in mid-April.
It would be easy to dismiss bills such as Burns’ and the First Amendment Defense Act as mere political grandstanding, but they have considerable support among Republicans and set a dangerous tone of intolerance. The First Amendment Defense Act has 136 co-sponsors in the House and 36 co-sponsors in the Senate, including presidential candidates Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham.
Sen. Angus King and Rep. Chellie Pingree oppose the measure (as does Sen. Susan Collins) and instead signed on to the Equality Act, introduced Thursday in both the House and Senate. It would add sexual orientation and gender identity to other protected classes, such as race or religion, in existing federal laws. The bill would also ban discrimination in areas including employment, housing, public accommodations, access to credit, and federal funding. Collins and Rep. Bruce Poliquin should also support the Equality Act.
“It’s time that we as a nation put an end to the discrimination that finds refuge in the far corners of our laws and that manifests itself every day in the lives of those in the LGBT community who want nothing more than the basic rights and protections guaranteed to others,” King said Thursday.
It is heartening to see that this bill already has 40 sponsors in the Senate and 139 in the House, more than the unnecessary and intolerant First Amendment Defense Act.
