Category Archives: Gay Rights

Defining “Religious Liberty”

Tomorrow, the South Bend City Council will consider amending its Human Rights Ordinance to include protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

HR Ordinances–while relatively toothless in Indiana–express a municipality’s intent to discourage some people from picking on other people based solely upon their religion, race, gender and other markers that are irrelevant to the question whether those people can pay the rent or perform the duties required for the job.

I’ve agreed to serve as a sort of “expert witness” at the Council hearing, and as a result, over the last week or so I’ve been copied with the various arguments being made in opposition to the proposal. As often happens when I find myself immersed in indignant justifications of homophobia, I’m increasingly feeling like an inhabitant of the Twilight Zone.

One example is the “legal memo” submitted by the Alliance Defense Fund. I’ve seen most of its arguments before–it’s pretty much a retread of similar arguments made when other Indiana cities passed similar measures. The ADF insists that Indiana municipalities lack the authority to pass such ordinances–despite the fact that over the past decade or so several have done so, and none have been challenged. The memorandum mis-characterizes court cases, and engages in the other tactics lawyers resort to when they find themselves on the losing side of a legal argument.

I understand those tactics; at one point or another, we all find ourselves desperately trying to find a legal basis for what are really policy arguments.

The jaw-dropping argument, however, and the most ridiculous claim in the entire 30+ page “brief,” is a claim that the religious exemption is inadequate because it does not protect “religiously motivated” discrimination.

Let’s think about that for a minute.

The proposal before the South Bend Council contains an exemption for religious organizations. This exemption, in my opinion, is entirely appropriate–if your religion disapproves of gay people, or unwed mothers, or atheists, the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment forbids government from forcing your church or other religious organization to employ such people. The law requires that we accommodate even beliefs that are at odds with basic American values.

Apparently, however, protecting the right of religious organizations to follow the dictates of their faith–even when those dictates are inconsistent with civil rights laws–isn’t sufficient. According to the ADF argument, if I truly believe gay people are sinners, that belief alone should allow me to discriminate with impunity–If I can’t fire employees I discover are gay, if I can’t refuse to rent to GLBT folks, the government is denying me religious liberty.

This is similar to the argument that anti-bullying legislation infringes the “free speech rights” of the bullies. The argument is apparently that I should be able to pick on gay people—or black people, or women, or Muslims–if I say my motivation is religious.

There’s a yiddish word for that argument: Chutzpah.

Obviously, an exemption for “religious motivation” would eviscerate the law. But this is part and parcel of the worldview of those who oppose equal civil rights for GLBT folks. Stripped of the “legalese” and rhetorical devices, that argument is simple: legislation that is inconsistent with my particular religious beliefs is a denial of my religious liberty.

The religion clauses of the First Amendment require government to be neutral between religions, and between religion and non-religion. To use a sports analogy, government is supposed to be an umpire, not a player. But there are citizens who simply cannot abide the notion of a neutral government–who experience “live and let live” and civic equality as affronts to the primacy to which they feel entitled. In that peculiar worldview, a government that insists on fair play for gay people is a government that’s denying them religious liberty.

I can hear the theme from “Twilight Zone” as I type…..

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The Bullies’ Pulpit

A few statistics:
  • 9 out of 10 LGBT students experience harassment at school, and LGBT teens are bullied 2 to 3 times as much as straight teens.
  • More than 1/3 of LGBT kids have attempted suicide.
  • LGBT kids are 4 times as likely to attempt suicide than are their straight peers.
  • For every lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth who is bullied, four straight students who are perceived to be gay or lesbian are bullied.

Despite statistics like these, and despite a spate of recent headlines about episodes where tormenting behaviors have pushed GLBT youth to suicide, the Indiana General Assembly has refused to pass the sort of anti-bullying legislation that is law elsewhere; our intrepid legislators have expressed concern that anti-bullying measures might infringe the “free speech rights” of the students who disapprove of classmates they perceive to be gay. That such disapproval tends to take the form of persistent physical and verbal abuse evidently does not merit equivalent concern.

If you are a gay teen in Indianapolis, and you are coming to terms with your sexuality in an environment that not only doesn’t protect you, but does protect the bullies who make your life miserable, you don’t have a lot of options. If your parents aren’t accepting, your situation is even worse. Most of us remember how hard it was just being a teenager, let alone a teenager facing mocking, marginalization and other evidence of social disapproval.

The Indiana Youth Group has been a godsend to so many of those teens. It has provided a “safe place”–an environment in which troubled and/or angry and/or depressed young people can get counseling, make friends, and feel valued.  The 15-year-old girl who was cutting herself because the physical pain made the psychic pain easier to bear; the 13-year boy who was already raiding the family’s liquor cabinet in an effort to blot out classmates taunts; the self-destructive 16-year old boy who rarely spoke–as well as less damaged children who simply yearned for a non-judgmental environment–find their way to IYG. For twenty-five years, the organization has been a safe haven for children who are hurting as a result of thoughtless cruelty and intentional homophobia.

Our Indiana legislators couldn’t find it in their hearts to pass a law that would protect these vulnerable children against bullying in our schools. They also couldn’t find time in their busy legislative schedules to address a number of important issues facing the state. But at least twenty of them managed to find the time to do a little bullying of their own.

Their mean-spirited effort to pass a law that would keep IYG from participating in the State’s specialty license plate program failed–due largely to a grass-roots outcry joined by news media around the state. But these lawmakers weren’t willing to let the matter die. They wrote to the Department of Motor Vehicles, claiming that IYG and two other organizations had “breached their contracts” by giving a small number of plates to donors–a practice that was evidently fairly widespread, and a “breach” that legislators and the BMV had previously ignored.

When you are a state agency, and you get a letter signed by twenty of the people who control your funding, you listen. So IYG’s participation in the specialty plate program has been suspended, and the bullies in the General Assembly have achieved by stealth what they couldn’t manage in the light of day.

It’s worth considering what it is that they have achieved.

Their “victory” has kept license plates with the legend “IYG” off the road.  In their fevered imaginations, such plates would have signaled “acceptance” of the existence and equal civil status of gay people, and thus hastened the decline of Western Civilization As We’ve Known It.

Their “victory” has also kept IYG from participating in a fundraising program, proceeds of which would have supported a staff position. Fewer hurting children will be served if they can’t replace those funds. (But they are gay hurting children, so they don’t matter.)

Studies show that bullies have a quite distinctive mental make-up—what psychiatrists call a hostile attributional bias, a kind of paranoia characterized by attributing hostile intentions to others. The trouble is, bullies perceive provocation where it does not exist. (Think of the persistent accusations from homophobes about the nefarious “gay agenda” or their more recent insistence that groups like IYG are “targeting” children.) Those imaginary provocations are used to justify their aggressive behavior. Bullies pick on people and act aggressively because they process social information inaccurately. Unfortunately, real people get hurt in the process.

If there is one thing we have learned from this distasteful, embarrassing display it is that we’ve elected at least twenty bullies to the Indiana General Assembly. No wonder they wouldn’t pass anti-bullying legislation.

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And the Beat-em-up Goes On….

What is it with the homophobia?

It’s one thing to believe–based upon a (highly selective) version of the bible–that gay people are immoral. You want to think that, fine. It’s a free country. As I used to say, if you don’t like gay folks, don’t invite any of them to dinner.  Your loss.

Of course, most of these religious warriors aren’t “live and let live” people. So we have weird efforts to hurt the GLBT community by passing legislation that would deny them an equal opportunity to participate in the state specialty license plate program. We are treated to the seriously hateful spectacle of legislators refusing to pass an anti-bullying bill because it might protect gay children.

And now, there seems to be a movement to roll back human rights ordinances around the country.

I find it impossible to understand the animus felt by these people. I do understand not liking someone. I understand disapproving of the policies or tactics of a group of people. I even understand that people who are uncertain of their own sexuality, or unable to deal with social changes, may feel threatened by the emergence of gays from the closet. But for the life of me, I don’t understand people who seem motivated solely by the desire to make the lives of others miserable.

On the other hand, considering just how much time and effort these “Christians” are spending on their campaign to marginalize and demean gay people, maybe they don’t have lives of their own.

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Lock Up Your 12-Year-Olds!

Sometimes, I’m so distracted by how batshit crazy the right-wingers have become that I forget how utterly despicable they can be.

To appropriate an old Henny Youngman joke (google him), “Take Eric Miller. Please. Take him.”

Miller–who makes a comfortable living pretending that bigotry is religion–has a new “Urgent Legislative Alert” that will be distributed Sunday to the network of far-right churches that support his salary (thinly disguised as membership dues to his organization, Advance America).

The “Urgent Alert” has a banner headline: “BMV Approves Pro-Homosexual License Plate!” In only slightly smaller font is “Help Protect Children-Revoke License Plate Now!” This is followed by the usual sanctimony, text piously bemoaning the harm to children that will be caused if the Indiana Youth Group receives the “seal of approval” that issuance of a license plate would imply.  What is truly disgusting is the assertion, which is repeated three times in the text of the flyer, that IYG “targets” children as young as twelve.

Well, yes indeed it does. It has to, thanks to people like Eric Miller.

IYG is an organization that only exists because people like Miller cause so much pain to so many young people who don’t have the wherewithal to fight back, or even understand what the fight is really about. It is an organization that opens its arms to young, vulnerable, hurting kids –too many of whom have been thrown out of their homes by parents who care less for their own flesh and blood than for the illusory security offered by a rigid, punitive, unChristian theology.

IYG “targets” these teenagers by providing them with acceptance, a healing  message and a safe place to figure things out. The message is simple: no matter what hateful people say,  you are a valuable human being who simply happens to love differently. Being different is neither right nor wrong–it’s just different. So don’t hurt yourself, don’t hate yourself, and please don’t kill yourself.

That’s the “pro-homosexual” message Eric Miller finds so offensive.

I could point out that what Miller wants the State to do is unconstitutional–he wants the State to deny IYG the equal protection of the laws–but I’m sure he knows that. He just doesn’t care–just as he doesn’t care if the children he is helping to hound and demean, the children he is targeting, end up physically or emotionally damaged or dead as a result of the attitudes he is promoting.

We certainly should lock up our twelve-year-olds–not to “protect” them from IYG, but to keep them away from heartless bigots like Eric Miller.

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What Governor Christie Doesn’t Get

Yesterday, the New Jersey Senate voted to recognize same-sex marriage. Indications are that the Assembly (the lower house) will do likewise. Meanwhile, an equal-protection lawsuit is working its way through the New Jersey courts; it would be mooted by this legislation.

Governor Christie has vowed to veto the measure–no surprise. But his professed reason means he is either dishonest or constitutionally ignorant.

Christie says he’ll veto the bill because so important a matter should be subjected to popular vote.

In the United States, we don’t get to vote on other people’s rights. The whole reason for the Bill of Rights was to protect minorities–not just members of different races or religions but people with unpopular ideas or different ‘lifestyles’–from unequal treatment by the government even when a majority of citizens wanted government to treat those minorities unequally. The Bill of Rights is what we call a “counter-majoritarian” instrument; it protects our individual rights against the passions and prejudices of the majority.

Perhaps Governor Christie should consult the famous explanation by Justice Jackson in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnett. 

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

(Of course, in a consistent world, this principle would also apply to state legislatures. No one would get to vote on whether another citizen was entitled to equal rights. But in case it has escaped notice, this is not a consistent world. In any event, as my mother used to say, two wrongs don’t make a right.)

I don’t get to vote on the Governor’s rights, and he doesn’t get to vote on mine. If the legislature doesn’t override his threatened veto, the courts eventually will. That’s not “judicial activism.” It’s application of a bedrock constitutional principle.

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