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Commentary: Arkansas bills preserve discrimination

Lawmakers’ efforts embrace unhealthy religion in state

Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

-- George Wallace, governor of Alabama, 1962

Segregationist politicians like George Wallace enjoyed extraordinary public popularity among Southern white voters in the Bible Belt of the 1960s. With the support of Christian leaders they fought to keep black people out of restaurants, schools and voting booths. Interracial couples were targets for violence, and attackers were rarely convicted. Many white churches barred black worshippers or sent them to the segregated balcony.

These memories returned as I read of the anti-gay legislation just passed by the Arkansas Legislature: House Bill 1228 and Senate Bill 202, a contemporary version of "segregation forever!"

Co-sponsored by the same lawmakers, HB 1228 requires the most stringent enforcement of judicial review whenever anyone claims their "sincerely held religious beliefs" may have been substantially burdened. It's a free pass for faith-based discrimination.

SB 202 tells progressive cities that would like to promote liberty and to encourage business investment and tourism by extending civil protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens that they cannot offer any freedoms or protections that aren't already in state law.

The recent Diocesan Convention of the Episcopal Church passed a resolution opposing these laws as "cloaking the desire to discriminate in the language of religion."

It is amazing to think what kinds of "sincerely held religious beliefs" might now be protected under HB 1228. Can a teacher post "No Gays Allowed" on the classroom door? Can a restaurant refuse to serve a mixed-race family? Can a landlord refuse to rent to a single parent? Can a doctor refuse treatment to families of divorced and remarried persons? Can an emergency responder refuse to treat an injured person because they are wearing a Jewish kippah, a Muslim head scarf, or a Christian cross? Can a police officer refuse to patrol or protect a church or mosque or synagogue because the officer is offended by their beliefs? Can a business refuse service to anyone who appears to be gay, lesbian or transgender? Is domestic violence to be tolerated under the Biblical admonitions "spare the rod and spoil the child" and "women are commanded to be obedient"? Can anyone smoke pot or ingest hallucinogens as long as its use is a "sincerely held religious belief"?

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai bears on her face the scars from men with "sincerely held religious beliefs" that women must not be educated. In Uganda, a Christian legislature has attempted to apply the death penalty to same-sex acts and to make it a criminal violation to fail to report to the authorities someone you may suspect of being homosexual .

We say it is not that way in the U.S. We treasure our constitutionally protected right to freedom of religion. In this nation, no particular religion is given precedence so that all religions may be free to practice.

And we also treasure our constitutional protections for basic human rights and the pursuit of the common good.

What happens when these protections are in conflict?

Traditionally, our freedom of conscience is only limited when it interferes with the rights and freedoms of others, with public safety and health, and with the promotion and protection of the common good -- the chief purpose of government, according to the Preamble to the Constitution.

HB 1228 and SB 202 fail to uphold human rights and support the common good. They are fundamentally unhealthy laws designed to make discrimination legal.

Healthy law and healthy religion are similar.

Healthy religion establishes us within a network of relationships that unites and reconciles humanity within an ultimate wholeness. You can know healthy religion by its fruits: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and temperance (Galatians 5). Healthy religion promotes compassion, forgiveness, altruism, and the path of union --transcending self into that which is ultimate.

Unhealthy religion works in the other direction, fragmenting the whole through spiritual pride and exclusiveness. Unhealthy religion creates cliquish divisions between us and them, right and wrong, saved and damned. Unhealthy religion oppresses those regarded as "others," and, at its worst, enforces "religious purity" by force or violence.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu had this to offer in 2010: "No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity--or because of their sexual orientation ... An even larger offence is that it is being done in the name of God ... My fellow clerics, of all faiths, must stand up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice."

Lowell Grisham is an Episcopal priest who lives in Fayetteville. Email him at [email protected].

Commentary on 02/24/2015

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