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February 5, 2011

Elder Dallin H. Oaks, one of 12 apostles who lead the LDS church says the first amendment right to freedom is under siege. I find this hard to believe. From my point of view, religion saturates this country top to bottom, with government endorsement at all levels. I've learned to live with it, just as I've learned to live with the fact that a lot of people enjoy the Super Bowl, too. Try running for public office in this country as an atheist or as someone who cannot abide football, and see how far you get.

Here's the transcript of Mr. Oaks's speech at Chapman University School of Law. Let's go through it and find his examples where religious freedoms have been abridged. I'm sure he must have some big, alarming ones.

You've got to get clear down to part III before he gets into any specifics. He says that 25 years ago "I took sad notice of the fact that the United States Supreme Court had diminished the significance of free exercise by expanding the definition of religion to include what the Court called 'religions' not based on belief in God." Yeah, what the hell were those activist judges doing extending religious freedom to Buddhists and Hindus, when everybody knows that it should only apply to belief in the one true Mormon god.

He cites the case of Employment Division v. Smith in which the Supreme Court ruled that it did not violate the first amendment for the state of Oregon to withhold unemployment benefits from two men who had been fired from a drug rehab clinic for using peyote as part of a religious ritual. Mr. Oaks said this "significantly narrowed the traditional protection of religion." I look forward to Mr. Oaks actively supporting those people who are creating sort of flimsy (IMO) religions that practice marijuana use as a sacrament. He fails to mention that Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act three years later that effectively reversed the Supreme Court's decision, restoring religious protections to the use of peyote as a sacrament by Native Americans.

Mr. Oaks cites one author who he does not name (Amos Guiora) who is opposed to free religious speech. That's one person. There have always been individuals who have held opinions like that. Their free speech rights guarantee they get to publish books about their views. That does not constitute any diminution of religious freedom.

He says that religious preaching "of the wrongfulness of homosexual relations" is being threatened. I know of no such thing in the United States, and he cites examples in Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Singapore. I'm know too little about legal religious freedoms outside the U.S. to say much about that, except that if he wants to say that religious freedoms are under threat outside the United States, I would certainly agree with him. One of the things that has set America apart from most of the rest of the world is that the threats to religious freedom are out there, not in here.

He cites the case of a New Mexico photographer who refused to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony. You can read the court's decision here. More to the point, the relevant part of the New Mexico Code is here.

It is an unlawful discriminatory practice for... any person in any public accommodation to make a distinction, directly or indirectly, in offering or refusing to offer its services, facilities, accommodations or goods to any person because of race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, spousal affiliation or physical or mental handicap

There are civil rights laws like this in every state, although most do not include "sexual orientation" in the list. It's part of the burden of putting yourself out there as a business available to all. If the photographer wanted to limit her work to, say, just Christian weddings, or only Jewish weddings, she would have to have kept her business informal, no license, no advertising, relying on friends and word of mouth. In a purely libertarian society, there would be no such civil rights laws, and private businesses would be free to make decisions on any criteria they liked. Mr. Oaks may need reminding that without civil rights laws like this, LDS church members would not be nearly as successful as they are today.

He mentions the case of the United Methodist Church pavilion in New Jersey. This story has gotten very twisted and distorted by those opposed to gay marriage. The pavilion is on a boardwalk that is owned by the church. The church had voluntarily made the boardwalk and pavilion open to the public, in return for which the state of New Jersey extended a real estate tax exemption to that part of the property. When the church refused to rent the pavilion to a lesbian couple, they went against their own pledge to keep it open to the public. So the church lost its tax exemption. The lesson here is not some loss of religious freedom, it's that if you suck at the government's teat, then you take what the government gives you. If you want freedom, stay away from taxpayer money.

And then he mentions the case of an adjunct professor being fired from the University of Illinois because of an issue about his teaching about Roman Catholicism. IMO, based on the news story, it sounds like an incredibly stupid student failed to grasp the subject, got offended, and the university caved on the issue. It's an issue of academic freedom, however, not religion. It's a state university class about Catholicism. They fired the instructor. The course remains and the instructor is still free to be a Catholic. See my earlier comment about sucking at the government teat.

BTW, the central issue in the University of Illinois had to do with the Catholic church's position on homosexuality. I wonder if Mr. Oaks will cite anything other than gay issues.

Nope. He goes on to mention master's degree candidates who think homosexuality is sinful. And another case where "A Los Angeles policeman claimed he was demoted after he spoke against the wrongfulness of homosexual conduct in the church where he is a lay pastor." Here's the news story as reported in Catholic News Agency and it pretty well matches the L.A. Times story in Google's cache, so I think I've got the facts. At the funeral of Officer Nathaniel Warthon Jr. (who did not die in the line of duty) Sgt. Eric Holyfield delivered the eulogy. This took place at Gospel Word of Life Apostolic Church where Sgt. Holyfield is a lay pastor. When he gave that eulogy he not in his police uniform, but he did identify himself as an L.A. police officer and the supervisor of the deceased. Many uniformed police officers were in attendance. He read from the King James version of First Corinthians: "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminates, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of God." I'm sure that gave great comfort to the Widow Warthorn. Who would care about homophobia at a moment like that? I would question the sergeant's sanity for reading something like that at a funeral. Was he suggesting that the deceased had committed some of those sins? What in the world was his point?! Anyway, I'm sure the LAPD have something in their code of conduct for officers that says something about not besmirching the reputation of the department. There was a similar thing in the code of conduct for Social Security employees, and I think we can agree that the position of police officer is much more publicly sensitive than that of a Social Security desk drudge. I was free to go out on a street corner and read any horrid thing out of the Bible I wanted to, but if I did it at a funeral for a Social Security employee and announced that I worked for Social Security and then launched into a tirade about fornicators and bastards and what-not, you can bet the shit would have hit the fan. And in the LAPD the shit hit the fan by moving Sgt. Holyfield to a less desired position and withholding promotions. Hey, at least he wasn't sent for a mental health evaluation. He sued claiming that "The department has 'historically discriminated . . . and continues to discriminate against officers that cite from the Holy Bible.'" If that were true, every officer who ever recited the Lord's Prayer would be held back, creating a rather gigantic backlog of low-ranked police. The case was settled out of court. Sucking government's teat, etc. etc.

Mr. Oaks finds a couple of more gay issues to cite: "The Catholic Church's difficulties with adoption services and the Boy Scouts' challenges in various locations are too well known to require further comment." Again, both he Catholic church and the Boy Scouts are completely free to hold and practice their anti-gay positions. But the Catholic Church can't do that and simultaneously be involved in state-sponsored adoption activities. And the Boy Scouts don't get to use government subsidized facilities to further their anti-gay teachings while practicing that beautiful knot-tying that they do. It's the government teat again.

After briefly mentioning a non-gay issue (President Obama said "freedom of worship" rather than "freedom of religion" - oh my god, the sky is falling.) Mr. Oaks comes back to the gay thing. Specifically, "President Obama's head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Chai Feldblum." She is not the head of the EEOC, but just one of five commissioners. He objects to her ideas as presented in this 66-page essay in which she is trying to formulate a way to resolve conflicts between gay rights and the rights of religious believers based on recent court decisions - Lawrence v. Texas, for example. Mr. Oaks quotes a few partial sentences out of context and misconstrues them. His position seems to be that anything that prevents him from imposing an LDS theocracy on the country is an infringement on his religious liberty.

Finally he comes to Perry v. Schwarzenegger. He says there "are the current arguments seeking to brand religious beliefs as an unacceptable basis for citizen action or even for argument in the public square." He doesn't cite any specifics or explain why it would restrict his right to his religious freedom if my marriage did not conform to the rules of the LDS church.

That's the end of his examples. It was all gay this and gay that, except for the peyote story and Obama's "freedom of worship" thing. He did start out by saying "I am not here to participate in the debate on the desirability or effects of same-sex marriage. I am here to contend for religious freedom. I am here to describe fundamental principles that I hope will be meaningful for decades to come." It's not about those gay people being gay, you see, it's that his religious liberty requires them all to behave like Mormons.

He tries to explain how we've come to this sorry state of affairs where the rest of us just don't do what the LDS church expects of us. "Each person is free to decide for himself or herself what is right and wrong." Oh my god, we can't have that. That would be like religious liberty or something. Only properly constituted authorities (such as the 12 apostles, I imagine) should be able to decide what is right and wrong. He goes on to describe the views that the only morality is the one dictated by god, that no mere human can determine what is right or wrong without a book of instructions.

Filed under Libertarianism,Religion | permalink | February 5, 2011 at 03:52 PM

Comments

Elder Oaks makes the same convenient mistake, regarding religious freedom and homosexuality, that most other fundamentalist religionists make:

they think that only their position on homosexuality - condemnation - is a religious belief and worthy of protection.

However, the belief 'homosexuality is not a sin' is also a religious belief, and equally deserving of protection, if not more deserving. Yet the LDS, and other fundamentalist denominations, have violated the religious freedom of people who believe 'homosexuality is not a sin' with laws that penalize homosexuals.

The truth is that Elder Oaks, and his peers, only support freedom for their religious beliefs, and advocate suppression of everyone else's religious beliefs.

Full and real religious freedom in the U.S. requires civil equality, including marriage, for GLBTQ people as well as heterosexuals.

Posted by: David at Feb 6, 2011 11:37:36 AM

Well done, Ron.
Articulate and dispassionate discussion. I hope this gets the wider distribution and attention in the blogosphere that it deserves.

Posted by: b at Feb 6, 2011 6:56:20 AM

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