Equality of Rights

            The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the importance of protecting religious liberty while not making LGBT a protected class. The U.S. Congress and some state legislatures are writing bills and/or amending civil rights laws to make sexual orientation and sexual identity as protected classes. They are doing so with the understanding that their bills and amendments would eliminate religious freedom.

            On Friday, May 17, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 236-173 to pass the Democrat-sponsored Equality Act. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi pushed the bill and claimed that it was “not about tolerance” but “about respect for our LGBTQ communities.” She tweeted that “For too long, conversations surrounding America’s LGBTQ community have focused on ‘tolerance.’ But tolerance is a condescending word. As we pass the #EqualityAct today, we take pride in this community and all they have & will achieve.” Racheldel Guidice says that House Republicans do not see it the same way. 

“HR 5 is an enormous blow to religious liberty and our Constitution,” Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., tweeted after Democrats passed the legislation. “The [Equality Act] is anything but equal, and enshrines a federally-mandated belief system that if you don’t agree with it – you’ll be punished. Deeply disappointed in the passage of such a destructive bill.”

Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., spoke out against the legislation earlier in the week, telling The Daily Signal, “The Equality Act – or I call it the Forfeiting Women’s Rights Act – takes away women’s and girls’ rights that we fought for for years.”

            If the U.S. Senate passes the Equality Act – which it is not expected to do, the rights of women, girls, and all religions will be swept into the dust bin of history. The same type of bills is being legislated in states. Blogger T.R. Clancy writes that earlier inJune, Michigan State Senator Jeremy Moss introduced similar legislation that is “meant to eliminate religious freedom. He says that “proponents of such amendments tell us as much.” He says that “Senator Moss isn’t even pretending this isn’t the case” and then quotes the following statement from Moss as printed in the Oakland Press. 

[T]he legislation will not make exceptions for those whose religious beliefs condemn homosexuality and other lifestyles[.] … That would mean, for example, that a Catholic school that teaches against homosexuality could not discriminate against a homosexual job applicant on the basis of sexual orientation.

Bakery owners and photographers could not refuse to serve a same-sex couple’s wedding on the basis of their religious beliefs.

            It seems to me that the Michigan legislation – if it even becomes law – is unconstitutional if the state does not recognize religious rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on two separate cases that the exercise of religious freedom is protected by the Constitution. Clancy suggests that protection of religious rights may be up to the willingness of the American people to protect.

While judges, politicians, celebrities, academics, doctors and psychotherapists are repeating these lies, it’s been left to religious believers to withstand them. The Catholic Church just released educational guidelines (50 years late, but better late than never) that state unequivocally that male-female sexuality is a “given natural or biological fact.” In the UK it was Muslim parents who put a stop to a school program in which their “[c]hildren are being told it’s OK to be gay.”

And again, though the motivations of the British Muslims and Christian parents are in part religious, they’re not doing these things to force acceptance of a creed on someone else, just the recognition of natural facts: our daughter is not a boy; homosexuality is not normal. Last month Pope Francis rejected the notion that being prolife is a religious position, arguing that abortion is a “pre-religious problem” that “existed long before Catholicism”: “Do not blame religion for something that concerns the human,” he said. “It is not lawful. Never, ever eliminate a human life or hire a hitman to solve a problem.”

            The Muslims and Catholics are not the only religious organizations to defend freedom of religion. In September 1995 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” This document has nine paragraphs defining and explaining the Church’s teachings about many aspects of family life. 

            The Proclamation says that “All human beings – male and female – are created in the image of God…. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.” In other words, I was female in my premortal life just as I am in my mortal life, and I will be female throughout eternity. I was created as a female, and I will remain a female no matter what I may think or feel about my gender.

            The same is true of all men and women. Whenever archaeologists find human remains, they are able to identify whether the person was male or female by the bones and the DNA. They do not find any of the numerous other genders that are being created in the minds of people today. So, science, as well as religion, declares that there are only two genders – male and female.