Posted on 03/30/2015 6:36:22 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Indiana has adopted a state-level version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), thereby imposing a “strict scrutiny” legal standard when the state government or local powers pass laws that interfere with the free exercise of religion. For this, Governor Mike Pence and Indiana’s legislators have been denounced as gay-hating monsters, a claim that was never made about President Bill Clinton, who signed the federal RFRA, or about the people and powers of such liberal states as Connecticut, which is one of the 20 states with a RFRA. Another dozen or so states have constitutional provisions similar to those in RFRA.
Indiana’s law is controversial for two possible reasons. The first is political: Democrats, unhappily laboring under the largest Republican congressional majority since before the New Deal, are looking to pick fights over issues such as gay rights, abortion, and environmental regulation, believing that this will help their fund-raising and invigorate their demoralized partisans. The second reason might be more substantive: Indiana’s law, like some other state RFRAs (but unlike the federal statute, which has been interpreted in different ways by different courts), expressly states that it allows religious practice to be raised as a defense not only when the government is a party to the controversy but also in litigation undertaken by private parties under state law — including laws that prohibit discrimination against homosexuals. Which is to say, this is another skirmish in the endless battle of the Big Gay Wedding Cake.
Critics say that Indiana’s RFRA amounts to a license to discriminate; it isn’t — far from being a blanket grant of immunity, it simply allows religious liberties to be raised as a defense in lawsuits. That religious liberties may be offered as a defense is not a guarantee that this defense will be accepted by a court.
The RFRA story is tangled. The original impetus for the federal law was a Supreme Court decision holding that American Indians need not be granted exemptions to drug laws so that they may use peyote in religious rituals, a fact that surely must be a comfort to the senior senator from Massachusetts. The federal RFRA aimed to restore the constitutional standard that the Court jettisoned in that case. At first, the federal law applied both to the federal government and to state and local governments, but it was later restricted to federal applications when the Supreme Court found that Congress had overstepped its constitutional authority in preempting state and local governments. As a result of that decision, many states adopted their own versions of RFRA.
RFRA enjoyed wide bipartisan support until the Hobby Lobby case reminded Democrats that they care a great deal more about Obamacare and contraceptive subsidies than they do about the religious liberties of people who hold views that inconvenience the Democrats’ political platform.
RFRA, in both the federal and the Indiana versions, is a piece of law aimed at allowing for the emergence of social compromise. RFRA reasoning does not give religious persons or institutions the power to simply ignore laws that conflict with their consciences; rather, it compels the government to demonstrate a compelling government interest when it burdens religious expression, and to accomplish any substantial burdening of religious liberty in the least invasive manner. Both of those requirements — compelling government interest, least burdensome means — are open to a considerable degree of interpretation, which is of course by design: That is what allows a modus vivendi to emerge.
Gay-rights activism is, just at the moment, very much oriented toward preventing the emergence of any social compromise on the matter of homosexual marriage, which is why tradition-minded florists and bakers, generally conservative Christians, are being targeted for prosecution as enemies of civil rights. In terms of government interest, homosexual couples planning wedding receptions in Connecticut are a good deal less compelling than were black Americans who were effectively circumscribed from public life — political, social, and economic — under the machinery of oppression constructed by Democrats after the Civil War. Among other things, the market provides same-sex couples plenty of other options. But gay-rights activists insist that the situations are morally and politically identical. That this view is rightly received with some skepticism by the general public — including much of the public inclined to support gay marriage and similar issues — is why the increasingly fanatical homosexual activists reject the notion that religious liberty might even be raised as an issue in the case of a wedding planner who does not wish to be involved in the blessing of a homosexual union. Their goal is a coercive coast-to-coast regime with no room for social compromise at all.
Gay Americans in Pennsylvania and Florida do not seem to have been very much burdened by those states’ RFRA statutes, nor by similar constitutional provisions in such bastions of reaction as Massachusetts and Minnesota. But individuals such as Jack Phillips of the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado have been made into outlaws because their religious scruples compel them to forgo the custom of clients planning same-sex weddings. There is no guarantee that Indiana’s RFRA will prevent that sort of heavy-handed coercion in the Hoosier State, but it creates the opportunity for coming to a sensible arrangement that respects the dignity of all parties involved. And that, needless to say, is why the people who perversely call themselves liberals oppose it.
selective rage...nothing new
Would that we could have a SCOTUS that determined, under 1st Amendment that Freedom of Association singularly applied to the 1st Amendment freedom of religion.
Suddenly, association with political parties would be subject to the scrutiny of the courts.
HEY HEY
WHAT DO YOU SAY
I WAS BORN THIS WAY..[repeat repeat repeat...]
Homosexuallity is not a race, sex or religion,period.
Its a life style and no amount of BS from the left can change that.
Makes you wonder if the Abolitionist movement could have been stymied if the Confederacy had made a “religious right to own slaves” argument.
RE: HEY HEY
WHAT DO YOU SAY
I WAS BORN THIS WAY..[repeat repeat repeat...]
__________________________
Paediphiles can use this chant too.
What they are doing is protecting the free exercise of Islam, by refusing to interfere with the subjugating or killing of Infidels. After all, it's in their "holy" book! < /sarc >
Doesn't make me wonder that.
Makes me wonder when leftist trolls like you are going to start boycotting states that prohibit pedophilia.
Actually pedophilia is prohibitted in every single state of the union, territory and all across the developed world. For very good reasons. You seem disappointed.
RE; if the Confederacy had made a “religious right to own slaves” argument.
I believe there were MANY preachers who actually made this argument during the time of Lincoln.
The Civil war and the 13th amendment ended that.
RE: Makes you wonder if the Abolitionist movement could have been stymied if the Confederacy had made a “religious right to own slaves” argument.
_________________________________
Implicit in the above “wondering” of yours, is the idea that gay rights are the same as civil rights for ethnic minorities.
But we are not talking about civil rights here. Gays ALREADY do have civil rights. What we’re talking about is participating in a ceremony that one’s religion (like Christianity, Islam, etc. ) teaches is sinful.
Racial discrimination was eventually deemed irrational because one’s physical appearance is irrelevant to one’s behavior and moral character. However, sexual PRACTICE, or sexual lifestyle, by definition has everything to do with one’s behavior — and that we do have a right to judge.
Our society has laws against incest, pedophilia, and polygamy. Institutions have policies against intimacy between superiors and subordinates.
And if a corporate executive embarrasses a company because of a sex scandal, he may be fired. These examples demonstrate the necessity of discriminating against sexual behavior deemed harmful, perverted or immoral.
The RFRA is simply an attempt to PREVENT people from FORCING a religious person from participating in a ceremony he deems immoral. That’s all.
Can you read?
The Indiana law is intended to protect shopowners who for religious reasons don’t want to participate in homo festitivies-—weddings and wedding cakes, floral arrangements, Chik-fil-A and Hobby Lobby-type situations, etc.
You are comparing this to a law requiring slave ownership.
Either you cannot read and comprehend or you are a newbie troll who spends more time worrying about pedophilia laws than keeping up with the discussion.
All sarcasm aside, where the law is going to be challenged is the commerce angle. No one has to participate in a gay ceremony or ritual, that part of the law is air tight and is an extension of the law signed by Clinton. But, commerce is regulated by the Congress per the Constitution and that is where this lawe is likely to be attacked. No one can force me to participate in a ceremony, but at the same time, when I choose to enter into the stream of congress I volunteer to be regulated by the federal government. If I don’t want to serve gays, or blacks or Protestants, or redheads, I don’t go into business, not go into business and then discriminate. Eventually this law will be tweaked per a Constitutional challenge.
Actually, pedophilia is legal in some countries unofficially. Some countries will not prosecute men who marry child brides.
“Actually pedophilia is prohibitted in every single state of the union, territory and all across the developed world. “
So was same-sex marriage. So your point?
Refusing to serve someone because of the way they were born is against the law. There is no “gay” gene so there is no proof they were born that way. I could just as easily say I was born Republican because I have always felt I was a Republican.
Just a heads up. When this law is challenged it will be challenged on the basis of commerce. Regulation of commerce is a responsibility assigned by the Constitution to the US government.
The use of those two clauses, frankly, demonstrates the unfortunate conditioning that even nominal Conservatives, at a once truly Conservative journal, have sustained by the one sided way that the Academic/Media complex--those whom I have described as "Marxist influenced pseudo-intellectual poseurs," have colored the educational & journalistic analysis of philosophic issues.
The right to discriminate is the very essence of liberty: the right of the free citizen to decide for himself, what radio station to listen to; what brand of cereal to purchase; which newspaper to read--or whether to read any at all;--what church to attend, or not attend; what girl to court, love or marry; what beverage to buy, and with whom, if anyone, to drink, etc.. The so-called "civil rights" laws have been treated by the "Mipips" (described above) as extensions of freedom; but in fact they are clearly denials of freedom. Proclaiming someone's right not to be not preferred in employment or doing business, by Governmental edict is a logical contradiction of what Americans, prior to the 1940s understood as liberty.
There was a time when the National Review that strenuously supported Barry Goldwater, who rejected the "Civil Rights" edicts, would have understood the point.
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