LGBT activists are saying that after (hopefully) the freedom to marry throughout the U.S. is recognized by the Supreme Court, other battles await. For many, the fight for strong anti-discrimination protections looms large; for some, it’s the perennial goal of even more closely embedding LGBT activism within the broader progressive agenda of redistribution and regulation.
But as the Washington Post reports, evangelical and Catholic religious groups, including charities and universities, fear that they will find themselves targeted in the battles ahead:
Leaders of religious institutions, including colleges, hospitals and nonprofits, are waiting to see how the case might affect issues like accreditation, government funding and tax exemption. Organizations have worked on issues related to poverty for the past 50 to 100 years, including Catholic Charities and World Vision, receive government aid for their services, aid that some fear could be challenged….
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an evangelical campus ministry, which has corralled hundreds of thousands of students to work on issues such as poverty, was denied recognition on several California campuses because of it did not sign a nondiscrimination statement.
“Setting aside the overblown rhetoric in all directions, there does seem to be a real difference for the framing of ‘religious liberty and the American culture wars’ when the battle lines move from issues like school prayer and vouchers—or even cake bakers and florists—to questions of whether religious student groups can be on public university campuses, whether religious colleges should be accredited, and whether local school systems should accept volunteer support from churches and ministries,” [John Inazu of Washington University School of Law] said.
The hope that we might achieve legal equality under the law, including the right to marry, but that no one should be forced by the state to provide services or otherwise participate in same-sex marriages, and that religious groups might be afforded reasonable tolerance to abide by their own traditions, is likely not going to happen. Zealots on both sides have too much invested in maintaining the culture wars.
17 Comments for “Post-Marriage Battles Loom”
posted by Jorge on
Organizations have worked on issues related to poverty for the past 50 to 100 years, including Catholic Charities and World Vision, receive government aid for their services, aid that some fear could be challenged….
A lot of liberal ideas that seem “fair” do seem to mess with the building blocks of this country.
It’s a mistake that happened before. It will only serve to widen the gap between the rich and the poor both nationally and internationally. Again.
posted by Mike in Houston on
If you get government money to perform a service, then you are a proxy of that government… ergo, if the government cannot discriminate based on certain characteristics the proxies cannot either.
It’s the same principle of having the contractor services for a company abide by the parent company’s code of ethics or safety policies.
This does not preclude private entities (like a Catholic adoption agency) from pursuing their mission, it merely recognizes the boundary between private & public.
Religious college accreditation is based on compliance with widely adopted curriculum standards — it’s when doctrine is inserted into certain areas (like asserting that the Earth is 4000 years old in a geology class) that you run into conflict.
These issues have been around for a while, it’s just coming into focus as marriage equality becomes a reality.
As to the focus for LGBT activists — as one — I suspect that our focus will be largely on securing anti-discrimination protections in the public sphere and that’s about it (outside the bubbles of SF & NY). One of the basic tenets of the LGBT non-discrimination movement is that we’re only asking to remove economic barriers and to allow everyone the opportunity to succeed or fail based on merits. That’s it… and if I might say, a rather libertarian notion at that.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
As to the focus for LGBT activists — as one — I suspect that our focus will be largely on securing anti-discrimination protections in the public sphere and that’s about it …
I agree. A level playing field is all we seek.
In Wisconsin, because our non-discrimination laws have covered sexual orientation since the 1980’s without causing heads to explode, we are focusing on (1) eliminating remaining government-sanctioned discrimination in adoption and other areas (which will have to be done through the courts given the political makeup of the legislature and executive), and (2) working with local governments to extend non-discrimination laws to transgendered (again, because of the political makeup of the legislature and executive, state-wide action isn’t worth discussing at present).
We are having success on both fronts. In the last year, we’ve gained transgender protection in Wisconsin’s major cities, and the lawsuits are working through the courts to do what the legislature should be doing, rewriting Wisconsin’s laws from “husband and wife” to “spouses” all across the board. It is a pain in the ass to have a Republican-controlled legislature and a Governor running for President as a social conservative — no hope for a political solution in our state — and that’s a fact. But we will get it done through the courts.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
An organization, religious or otherwise, that accepts government funds to provide services on behalf of the government is acting as an agent/contractor of the government, not as a private organization, with respect to performing those services. The organization is in no different position, in terms of providing the service to all on an equal footing, than a government employee.
posted by Lori Heine on
Exactly right. They can’t keep their faces in the trough and greedily gobble up all the taxpayer-funded goodies they can get, then turn around and claim that they are functioning as lily-white and purely-religious or ideological entities.
posted by Jorge on
If you get government money to perform a service, then you are a proxy of that government… ergo, if the government cannot discriminate based on certain characteristics the proxies cannot either.
Well then, obviously the counterargument is that the government can discriminate based on certain characteristics.
That the government writes a rule ostensibly banning discrimination really means it chooses not to, not that it can’t. What you are advocating is no different than making things up as you go along, things that are actually violations of the rules, and then punishing people for not following your way–without even telling them what they’re supposed to be doing. It’s sleazy when managers do it in the workplace, and it’s no better when the government does it.
An organization, religious or otherwise, that accepts government funds to provide services on behalf of the government is acting as an agent/contractor of the government, not as a private organization, with respect to performing those services.
Then that means it is the government’s choice whether or not to terminate that organization.
Promoting the worship of money is evil, not to mention anti-federalist. Put the blame where it lies, Tom.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
What you are advocating is no different than making things up as you go along, things that are actually violations of the rules, and then punishing people for not following your way–without even telling them what they’re supposed to be doing.
Such nonsense, Jorge. In almost every case, the actions of the organizations acting for the state in various capacities are bound by laws and regulations, usually detailed.
An organization, religious or otherwise, that accepts government funds to provide services on behalf of the government is acting as an agent/contractor of the government, not as a private organization, with respect to performing those services.
Then that means it is the government’s choice whether or not to terminate that organization.
Dead on, with the caveat that if the government contracts with an organization to provide services on behalf of the government, then the government is responsible to ensure that the organization operates according to the applicable laws and regulations. If the organization does not, the government has an obligation to terminate the contract/agency, or be liable for the failure of the organization to act in accordance with law.
posted by Jorge on
Dead on, with the caveat that if the government contracts with an organization to provide services on behalf of the government, then the government is responsible to ensure that the organization operates according to the applicable laws and regulations. If the organization does not, the government has an obligation to terminate the contract/agency, or be liable for the failure of the organization to act in accordance with law.
If the organization was already providing the service long before the government got involved with its big checkbook, what we have is more of a hostile takeover of a service rather than the government contracting out for a service.
posted by Houndentenor on
But no one is forcing these groups to accept government money. If they want to claim the religious exemptions, they can do that, but not with taxpayer funds. There is no takeover here, but perhaps these groups should have listened to people who warned that religious groups taking government money was a bad idea. (And yes, they were warned, repeatedly.)
posted by Tom Scharbach on
If the organization was already providing the service long before the government got involved with its big checkbook, what we have is more of a hostile takeover of a service rather than the government contracting out for a service.
More nonsense. Organizations are not precluded from providing services according to their own lights, religious or otherwise, so long as (1) laws are not broken in the process (for example, child abuse laws apply to all orphanages, private or government-funded) and (2) the organization is not acting as a government agent/contractor, using government funds, to provide the services.
In the last days of his presidency, President Eisenhower warned about the dangers of creating and sustaining a “military-industrial complex“. At this point, we can understand President Eisenhower’s wisdom; the economic “health” of our country is now dependent on perpetuating a vastly expensive military. We cannot now put the money to better use without major economic distortion.
We have created a similar “faith-based services complex” in our country, going back many years. Religious organizations providing services with government money have become so dependent upon the government for funding, in many cases, that private charity no longer sustains the organizations, and the organizations are dependent upon government funding for existence.
The reason that Catholic Charities went out of the adoption business in several states (accompanied by much hew and cry about “religious persecution”) is not because the government forced Catholic Charities out of business, but instead because Catholic Charities had become so dependent upon government funding that it could no longer provide the services as a private, religious organization in those states.
Does the government now have an obligation to bail out Catholic Charities, providing government funds without requiring that Catholic Charities comply with the laws applicable to government-funded adoption agencies? I think not.
As Houdentenor pointed out, responsible people, both “people of faith” (meaning conservative, Bible-believing Christians in the common usage) and the rest of us (Catholics, Jews, mainstream Protestants, Mormons and secularists), warned against entangling religion and government.
Our warnings went unheeded. We all live with the result of that foolishness, and will for many years to come.
posted by Mark F. on
@Tom If you are down to trying to get protection for the transgendered (1 person in 1,000) in Wisconsin, I’d say you are doing pretty well. Here in California, I think there is little need for any gay rights movement to exist anymore, as any law favorable to the LGBT Community that you can think of has already passed.
posted by Houndentenor on
And what about the other 49 states and the territories? Yes, some states have anti-discrimination laws, but MOST do not and states are currently passing laws to override any city ordinances. Marriage isn’t the only gay rights issue, nor do all gay people live in the deep blue states like California.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
@Tom If you are down to trying to get protection for the transgendered (1 person in 1,000) in Wisconsin, I’d say you are doing pretty well.
My comment identified two tasks:
Both are important, but the first task is primary, in my mind, and it is going to take years to accomplish, absent a change in the political structure of our state government (Republican- controlled legislature, Republican Governor).
Wisconsin law does not permit married same-sex couples to adopt as a couple, because the statute allows only a “husband and wife” to adopt. Wisconsin’s Department of Vital Statistics does not currently list both spouses in a same-sex marriage as parents of a child adopted by or born to the couple. The list goes on and on, and we have to attack the problem piecemeal, issue by issue, lawsuit by lawsuit.
It is idiotic.
The Legislative Reference Bureau identified the laws pertaining to marriage in connection with our 2009 Domestic Partnership Act, and it would take relatively little effort to have the Bureau prepare recommendations for an omnibus bill making technical corrections to the laws affected by the 7th Circuit’s ruling in favor of marriage equality.
But that isn’t going to happen, or isn’t likely to happen.
The Republican Party in our state controls all three branches of government (legislature, executive and judicial — the state’s Supreme Court, anyway) and social conservatives are in control of the government. The legislative route would require a knock-down battle with respect to each law, and the, with our Governor running for President as a staunch, Bible-believing social conservative (his most recent pronouncement was that he now favors a federal anti-marriage amendment), we’d have to have a veto-proof margin to make it past his desk.
So it ain’t smelling like roses out here in America’s Dairyland, unlike in California. We have a lot of basic work to do. We’ll get it done.
posted by JohnInCA on
These campus whiners are just that: whiners.
If in college I had tried to start a college campus group that said “no Christians allowed”, my group would have been rightfully denied student association funding. Why? Because the rules for a group receiving funding from the student association was that you let *all students* participate.
And on that topic? The school’s Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship was okay with that. They didn’t receive funding and carried on just fine without problem.
As for adoption agencies and what-not… sorry, but there already *are* adoption agencies that discriminate along all sorts of lines that the government frowns on. They get away with it by not taking government money. And I’m okay with that.
So really, what a lot of this comes down to isn’t anti-Christian discrimination, or singling out Christians, or anything like that. It’s just fair play. At worst it’s removing a privileged status that shouldn’t have existed to begin with.
posted by Lori Heine on
The religious right has opened up a gigantic and very nasty can of worms. Now it’s shocked–shocked!–at the direction the conversation is taking.
I think the conversation is long overdue, but it isn’t going to go the way they wanted it to go.
Religious organizations like the Catholic Church have been perfectly content to be welfare queens for decades. They haven’t had the least concern for the “religious freedom” of taxpayers–a great many of whom would never have voluntarily chosen to fund them at all–but whose pockets were picked to support them.
If they truly gave a damn about religious freedom, this is an odd time to suddenly decide they need to stand up for it.
I think churches and private organizations have the potential to do a lot of things the government has been doing, and to do it better than government has been doing it. But all I’ve heard them doing, lately, is crying about how persecuted they are because they can’t be nasty to gays.
The only churches and Christian religious organizations, by and large, who are voicing concern over the government’s curtailment of their freedom to do what their Founder–Jesus–told them to do are the more progressive ones. Most of which are inclusive of LGBT people, or at the very least not obsessed with kicking us around.
If the conservative churches and religious organizations want to take a good, hard, honest look at how the camel’s nose got so far under the tent flap, they can do so at any time. Religious freedom isn’t only about privileges; it’s about responsibilities. It is, in other words, the freedom to meet responsibilities–not merely the freedom to do what they please and to avoid doing things they’d rather not do.
posted by tom Jefferson 3rd on
What they did in Utah was not perfect. However, I got
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Should have said: What they did in Utah was not perfect. However, I got to imagine that it was pretty impressive in terms of getting some civil rights protections for LGBT people and also addressing some of the concerns of the opponents.
Religious exemptions would (a) have to allow a small/self-employed business the freedom to refuse to bake a wedding cake (for example) to any couple that the business owned had objections to.
What I have seen proposed is the idea that only conservative Christians should be able to practice anti-gay discrimination.
Why not allow gay people (or say, Muslims or Jews) to discriminate against Christians? Why not allow other forms of (racial, ethnic, religious) discrimination to be permitted under a religious freedom exemption?
These re the type of questions that supporters of ‘religious freedom’ bills seem content to ignore or insist that religious freedom should only apply to cases were conservative Christians object to gay wedding cakes or gay wedding photographers or gay wedding rings or gay wedding rental space.
The bottom line: I welcome serious and civil conversation about religious freedom. I just do not see it happening with the religious freedom bills. Which is unfortunate for many reasons . The most obvious being that it will make it much harder to pass LGBT civil right bills in red states.