Freedom of Religion Is Not Freedom to Discriminate

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Category: Politics

Published: Thursday, 02 April 2015 19:55

Written by Pam Keith

by Pam Keith (Pam Keith is a candidate for Florida Senate 2016)
The American marketplace is governed by certain "rules of the road" that ensure that businesses are all held to the same standards and that consumers have full and equal access to goods and services. These rules are universally applicable and deeply woven into our culture.

Americans fully comprehend that in the business sphere, the only color that is important is green. And while businesses are free to determine how they comport their business, they are not free to do so in a way that patently disadvantages the marketplace generally or any segment of consumers within it.

We know that discrimination based on race or gender harms the

marketplace and harms consumers. So too does discrimination based on sexual orientation or nationality or religion. Putting aside for a moment the profoundly hurtful disrespect shown to a person who is denied service on such a basis, the "pick and choose who is worthy" model of business operations creates too much uncertainty and dissension in the marketplace. The local Wal-Mart is no place to engage in a sanctimonious judgment of a customer because he or she is gay, bi-racial, divorced, wearing polyester, or an atheist. Business owners have no legitimate reason to insert themselves in their customers' lives in such a fashion. If a person's religious beliefs so permeate the operations of his business that he cannot abide by the basic "rules of the road" -- that all customers be treated fairly so long as they can pay for items or services -- then he ought not operate a business.

Rather, he is better suited to run a club, clique or church. Businesses are not places to engage primarily in religious expression. They are places to make money and to feed our economic machine.

Gay money is just as green as straight money. It should be accepted everywhere. Governor Pence's defense of Indiana's ill-conceived law amounts to no more than verbal shadow boxing. He claims that the law merely gives the highest level of judicial scrutiny to laws that impose on religious beliefs. The question is "what laws, specifically, are we talking about here?"

We are talking about laws that prohibit discrimination. So, if you pass a law that says that anti-discrimination provisions can be challenged based on religious beliefs AND that courts must give greater weight to the religious belief than the anti-discrimination provision (which is what RFRA does), than what you are doing is giving those business owners a pass, an exemption from having to comply with those anti-discrimination provisions. That is what the Indiana law does, and that is precisely what it was intended to do.

So, for example, if the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race, an Indianan who is sued for race discrimination could raise a defense under Indiana's new law, asserting that the Civil Rights Act infringes on his religious belief, and thus that he should not be subject to the Act or liable for its violation.

Contrary to Governor Pence's repeated assertion that the law does not permit discrimination, the intention of the law was to ensure that businesses CAN legally evade anti-discrimination provisions. Which to most folks amounts to the same thing.

staff note: Pam Keith received her Master's degree in 1992 then decided to attend Boston College Law School. After graduating from law school, she was commissioned into the United States Navy, as a Judge Advocate (Chief Lawyer).
Ms. Keith's volunteered to go to Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf, to serve as the Officer in Charge of the Legal Services Office. In Bahrain, she spent most of my time at sea working on military justice cases

Pam Keith is running for the office of US Senate and deserves your considerations. http://pamkeithforsenate2016.com/