With all the media attention on various US states where ‘religious freedom’ bills have been floated in the past few months, it may be time to aim readers at this handy little Huffington Post article: How to test if your religious liberty is being attacked.
The short answer: it probably isn’t.
Point 1: these bills are not at all about real religious freedoms, but about establishing state mandates that would protect state and/or private workers from ‘persecution’ on the basis of religious beliefs. Not their own real persecution, but their discriminatory treatment of other people. The examples given often purport to show hard-working business-people being forced to offer goods and services to customers who don’t follow a particular social or moral mandate. Gays are often singled out. So are unwed mothers, mixed marriages, and members of other faiths.
It’s good to have a choice. I’m always relieved when a business telegraphs its owner’s politics and beliefs clearly, so I can make the reasoned choice about whether to spend my money there or not.
The nastiness becomes subject to law when there is no customer choice. There’s no other baker or pharmacist. Your home loan is overseen by one bank loan officer who could make the difference between you as an upstanding homeowner or you as a financial loss with an underwater mortgage. You could be needing law enforcement, fire, or ambulance services, and be denied on the basis of the responder’s ‘religious liberty’ to decide who they help.
This is not E Pluribus Unum, but a creeping Balkanization of everything we hold dear as Americans.
Point 2: these bills are not at all about actually winning a state court challenge, much less one taken up to the Supreme Court. The lawmakers writing and sponsoring this stuff know damn well it won’t fly with most of the voting public. But what it does do brilliantly is fire up the ultraconservative base, fueling its deranged conspiracy theories of being victimized. “See?” say the lawmakers to the town hall attendees. “We’re on your side. Give us money and help us win our primaries!”
The ultraconservative folks in their tiny world-bubble think this is a major war. It’s the last snarling gasp of old hardliners who will soon die off, and their home-schooled heirs who will soon run up against the internet and a world that has no patience for their delusions.
So the next time you hear someone going on about ‘religious liberty’, step back and figure out what they’re really saying.