Religious liberty is not a license for hate
Texas lawmakers in the current legislative session have filed at least 25 bills that promote or even require discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. This is wrong.
These divisive, mean-spirited bills betray a teaching common to many faiths, which we find first in the book of Leviticus 19:18 and repeated in Mark 12:31: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The first century Jewish Sage Rabbi Hillel expanded this idea when he taught: “That which is hateful unto you do not do to your neighbor.” This aspiration, commonly known as the Golden Rule, is simple: we should treat others as we want to be treated.
But of all the hateful legislation that has been filed, the most disturbing bills are 17 that — taken in total — would allow government officials, private individuals and businesses to use religion as justification to discriminate against LGBT people in virtually every aspect of their lives.
These bills authorize unequal treatment under the law, whether it’s a gay student seeking counseling services or a job, a same-sex couple seeking to marry or to provide a loving home to a foster child, or a transgender person needing basic medical care or trying to rent an apartment.
Religious freedom is one of our most fundamental rights as Americans. But we as faith leaders are troubled when we see politicians trying to redefine that freedom to mean the right to hurt people who are different.
Religious liberty has never meant the right to impose our beliefs on others. Nor does it give us the right to refuse to obey laws on so called “religious principle.” And it certainly does not mean the right to hurt people because we dislike them or are offended by who they are or whom they love. That is discrimination, not religious freedom.
We know all too well how some have used religion to justify discrimination against Jews, African Americans and others in our country’s history.
When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched, he did not march alone. Clergy and laity from Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities joined him. They came to stand as one against discrimination, marching forward together. Now some in the Legislature would drag us backward by declaring that yet another class of people should be singled out for discrimination. Have we not yet learned that when one group’s liberties are constrained, we all suffer the consequences?
What is to stop government officials or businesses from using religious objections to subject others to their personal moral agenda? If any of these bills become law, people would have license to wield their religious beliefs as a weapon and impose their own form of moral punishment on anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs and practices.
This is fundamentally wrong and antithetical to our values as Americans and as people of faith. Those in government who profess a deep religious faith would be wise to go back to their Bible and internalize the truths that have been the core of our beliefs for thousands of years. We are obligated to protect the weak and vulnerable in our midst, and we are called upon to treat each person we meet with the recognition that they too are created in the image of God.
The great African-American poet and writer Audre Lorde has written, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” Perhaps it is time for those who would shackle LGBT folks to remember that the God they claim to serve privileges love above all things, and sets captives free.