‘Religious Freedom’ Is a Core Value, Not a Scare Phrase

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The executive order is significantly reduced in scope from earlier drafts promoted by the Heritage Foundation and other social conservatives. In its final form, it:
1. Declares that it is the policy of the administration to protect and vigorously promote religious liberty;
2. Directs the IRS to exercise maximum enforcement discretion to alleviate the burden of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits religious leaders from speaking about politics and candidates from the pulpit (and which mostly goes unenforced, especially against black churches supporting Democratic candidates);
3. Provides regulatory relief for religious objectors to Obamacare’s preventive services mandate, a position supported by the Supreme Court decision in Hobby Lobby.

The ACLU is threatening to sue. Update: No, now they’re not.


Social conservatives, rightly, see a defeat—Trump (and Ivanka/Jared) are not, and have never been, on the anti-gay bandwagon.


But the Human Rights campaign isn’t changing its narrative:


Furthermore. From the comments: To the charge “Isn’t it more accurate to say that [the Johnson Amendment] mostly goes unenforced against ‘any’ churches? There has been exactly one (1) prosecution of a church under the Johnson Amendment in the 63 years it’s been around. Why single out black churches in particular?,” reader Jason replies:

Short of actual prosecution is the threat of prosecution. White evangelical churches have been warned, from time to time, about supporting socially conservative politicians and “crossing the line” from the pulpit, and liberal groups have threatened to make this an issue. But Stephen is correct; African-American churches sermonizing to vote for Democrats are under much less pressure, owing to the history of the civil rights movement. To raise the issue (and some on the right do) is to invite the charge of racism. So black churches feel much less constrained than do white churches.

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The Trump Divide

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Log Cabin makes its case:

Countered with:

Trump can be criticized on many grounds but all those “F”s from LGBT activist “leaders” is pure partisan progressive hackery.

Plus this charming cover.
trump

And widespread disdain for both parties—by those who identify as party supporters:

Finally, Andrew Sullivan detests Trump but makes some pertinent observations.

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More on the Anti-Trump March

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Washington Blade columnist Mark Lee comments on Facebook that “people are starting to ask on social media if the event will actually happen or if they should cancel their travel plans and reservations.”

As the Blade reports:

The National LGBTQIA+ “Equality March for Unity and Pride” in DC takes place in only 7 weeks – but there’s been little preparation or organizing for the event. No permits yet, no route finalized, no website launched, no details disclosed, and no money raised to cover the major expenses for an event of this type.


Yes, it will happen. Yes, it will be a mess. And yes, it will amount to little and lead to nothing.

But hey, the co-chairs are diverse, complete with a listing of their preferred pronouns including “They, Them, Theirs,” “They/Them She/Hers,” and “She, Her, Hers, Trans Goddess.”

More. When it’s finally announced, expect that platform to embrace the full bag of left-progressive political demands. On the LGBTQIA+ front, expect calls to roll back the extremely limited protections for small businesses under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by passing the Human Rights Campaign-backed Equality Act, and demands that the federal government mandate what are essentially gender-neutral restrooms and changing facilities.

Some activists might even say having ‘genital preferences’ in dating is transphobic, at which point sexual orientation itself may become a thought crime.

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Gender Nonconforming Isn’t Necessarily Transgender

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An interesting comment posted here:

When I hear about children who are identified as transgender today, I often think about what would have happened if I had been asked if I wanted to be a boy in 1987. I probably would have weighed the pros and cons and said “does that mean I don’t have to wear dresses or waste my time with makeup, can I have short hair, and not be made fun of for being stronger than all the boys? Sure, I’m a boy if it means you’ll leave me alone and let me play!” That’s a terrible position to put a child in– and, for many female children (and their parents), I fear, taking the transgender path may ultimately be a pyrrhic victory.

I love being a grown lesbian woman today (yup, lots of those “tomboys” will turn into lesbians that reveal the complexity and diversity of womanhood). I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But I have little doubt that many folks would be more comfortable with me and my lesbian sisters if we were “gender-conforming” straight men. What a loss that would be for everyone.

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Death in Chechnya

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On Easter Sunday, prayers for the persecuted gays in Chechnay and throughout the world. Via the Huffington Post:

Chechen police are snaring gay men by posing as gays looking for dates on social media sites, then arresting the victims and using the contact lists on their phones to discover more closeted gays. Once in jail, forced into dark cells so small they can’t even lie down, the men are mercilessly beaten in various ways, including having to run through a gauntlet of twenty men wielding bats aimed at the victims from the waist down.

Some who survive are released to their families, a move that is usually a death sentence. Chechnya is a hotbed of Islamic honor killings, usually of young women, but of gay men as well. When gay Chechens who’ve somehow remained alive get out of jail, they are often taken by their male relatives to remote places to be killed and buried. No one even searches for them.

Good to see this tweet from a GOP senator, linking to a Washington Post story:

Of course, there also is still much of this.

More.


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A GOP Bill to Ban Anti-LGBT Employment Discrimination Won’t Happen (IMHO)

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Via the Washington Blade, a look at the chances of Republicans moving an LGBT anti-discrimination bill.


I agree that Donald Trump might sign a reasonable workplace anti-discrimination bill, and I had forgotten that House Speaker Paul Ryan was a co-sponsor of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which the Democrats failed to move forward when during the first two years of the Obama presidency they controlled the White House and had supermajorities in Congress.

But I don’t think a Log Cabin-backed measure will go anywhere in the current political climate. For one thing, the establishment (i.e., Democratic) LGBT lobbies won’t support a bill that’s limited to employment discrimination and which includes reasonable religious exemptions. Without the support of the Human Rights Campaign, no Democrats will be on board.

The column’s author, Malcolm Lazin, executive director of the Equality Forum and LGBT History Month, says he would back such as measure. But he’s nevertheless dismissive of efforts to balance the competing rights of employment nondiscrimination and religious freedom, as if the latter was nothing but a right-wing ploy—a popular assertion by secular progressive who assign no value to constitutional protections against being forced by the state to violate deeply held religious convictions because, after all, only our rights matter.

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Circuit Split

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The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled that anti-gay workplace bias is unlawful under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, reversing an earlier decision from a three-judge panel. As the Washington Blade reports, in a 8-3 decision the court found “discrimination based on sexual orientation constitutes discrimination based on one’s perception of gender stereotypes, which the U.S. Supreme Court has determined is unlawful under Title VII.”

As I blogged last month, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled 2-1 that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits workplace discrimination based on a variety of factors including sex, doesn’t protect against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Unless the full 11th Circuit Court follows the 7th Circuit’s lead and reverses last month’s panel ruling, it Looks like this will be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Justice Kennedy may again be the swing vote.

As I said before, Title VII has already been stretched so far beyond its original intent, to say it can be stretched no further seems arbitrary.

More. An interesting observation from The Volokh Conspiracy site:

The interesting opinion here is not the majority…. It’s Judge Flaum’s. He makes a novel and extremely clever argument (at least to me) to explain why discrimination against homosexuals is sex discrimination using mixed motive theory.

Title VII prohibits me from firing someone for a mix of good and bad reasons (“mixed motives”). So if I fire you because you’re a woman who is bad at your job, but don’t fire men who are equally bad at their jobs, I have violated the law–even though part of the reason for the firing is that you are bad at your job, a lawful (indeed, laudable) reason to fire someone.

Flaum’s innovative observation is to point out that firing someone for homosexuality means that I am firing them based upon TWO facts, not one: the person is 1. a woman who 2. is attracted to women. (Or 1. a man who 2. is attracted to men.) Voila– whether fact number 2 is a prohibited characteristic or not under the law is irrelevant, because firing someone based on fact number 1 is most definitely illegal, and firing someone for a mix of legal and illegal motives is also illegal.

Flaum’s a conservative’s conservative. When he is going out of his way to explain to conservatives the obvious errors of the “sexual-orientation-isn’t-sex” line of argument, it’s time to pack it in.

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A Compromise in the Bathroom War

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Walter Olson writes:

The new compromise is being met with peals of outrage from some of the predictable ultras on both sides. But it looks to me like a more careful attempt to respect the legitimate rights of both sides than we’ve seen in this controversy up to now.

One problem with ordinances that require restrooms and locker rooms to be open to all regardless of gender, in an effort to end discrimination against transgender men and women, is that you get situations like this: Large Burly Man’ Lurking in Disney Ladies’ Room Should Make Everyone Stop and Think:

If this had been 5 years ago, you bet your ass every woman in there would’ve been like, “Ummm what are you doing in here?”, but in 2017? The mood has shifted. We had been culturally bullied into silenced. Women were mid-changing their baby’s diapers on the changing tables and I could see them shifting to block his view. But they remained silent. I stayed silent. We all did. Every woman who exited a stall and immediately zeroed right in on him…said nothing. And why? B/c I and I’m sure all the others were scared of that “what if”. What if I say something and he says he “identifies as a woman” and then I come off as the intolerant asshole at the happiest place on earth? So we all stood there, shifting in our uncomfortableness…trading looks. I saw two women leave the line with their children. Still nothing was said. An older lady said to me out loud, “What is he doing in here?” I’m ashamed to admit I silently shrugged and mouthed, “I don’t know.” She immediately walked out, from a bathroom she had every right to use without fear.

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The Census Brouhaha

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Meghan Maury, of the Criminal and Economic Justice Project at The LGBTQ Task Force, emails:

The Trump Administration is trying to make us invisible by excluding LGBTQ people from the 2020 Census and the American Community Survey (ACS). This is yet another attack on LGBTQ people’s freedom, justice, and equity.

Please sign our petition to the Trump Administration to demand that they reverse their decision not to collect data about LGBTQ people and their families.

We cannot allow LGBTQ lives to be erased! If the government doesn’t know how many LGBTQ people live in our country, how can it do its job to ensure we’re getting fair and adequate access to the rights, protections, and services we need?

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Gregory T. Angelo, head of the Log Cabin Republicans, emails:

How many more times can the Gay Left cry wolf?

The latest outrage du jour? Word that the 2020 Census will not include a question demanding survey respondents out themselves as gay or transgender.

Nevermind — the fact that outing is always wrong . . .

Nevermind — the fact that the Census has never included any LGBT questions in its history . . .

Nevermind — the fact that the Census recommendations were made by an Obama appointee . . .

In this era of hot takes and fake news, there’s nothing quite like a clickbait headline to set the wheels of The Liberal Outrage Machine™ whirring with breathless exasperations about anything and everything GOP.

It’s possible to have a good-faith debate about the size and scope of the federal Census, but half-truths and a lefty-media blame game in which everything Republicans do is bad and the Democrats are the sole arbiters of good is a disservice to journalism and a disservice to our republic.

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Guy Benson tweets:


Walter Olson has more:

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