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Religious Freedom

Laws exaggerating the necessity of religious freedom incentivize anti-LGBT action and adversely affect the market.

Today 37 states and Washington, D.C., offer marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Is it a coincidence that scores of bills have erupted in state legislatures in the name of "religious liberty," from those who oppose same-sex marriage?

Nope. While same-sex couples and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) families join center stage, rising choruses of "not so fast" are flaring up. Conservative activists and legislators are rushing to build statutory firewalls against LGBT acceptance and cooperation—particularly ones that deal risky and direct blows to American commerce.

After all, religious freedom advocates insist, even if gay couples choose to marry why should we force a business owner or even a solitary employee to serve them if this violates his faith?

While chambers of commerce and technology companies have been among the most vocal critics, including Apple, Yelp and Salesforce, others are now speaking out. The CEO of Angie's List just declared their Indianapolis expansion canceled, and a host of other U.S. businesses are moving fast to ban future travel and business contacts with Indiana.

To be clear, religious liberty laws can touch both government actions as well as those in the private sector. While both are disturbing, for the moment my concern is with the American marketplace.

Ten years ago, when I wrote about the emerging LGBT economy in my book, "Business Inside Out," I described the signs of businesses past that hung in shops, hotels, restaurants and other public accommodations: "No Jews," "No Negroes," "No Irish," or "No Chinese or dogs."

Not one declared, "No Homosexuals." There was absolutely no need. It was then universally acknowledged that shopkeepers and business owners could ban LGBT customers and guests outright.

Religious objectors in the market are by no means new. In doctrinaire Puritan times, non-believers had little chance to open shop or expect civil treatment. Instead they took their "outsider" faith elsewhere or even formed new colonies. And in the 20th-century Jim Crow America, Biblical dictates guided legislatures and courtrooms to uphold segregation.

To be fair, in our 21st century, religious freedom legislation is not identical to hated Jim Crow laws. However, these modern descendants do have the disturbing aroma of stigma and discrimination that masquerades as true faith.

Advocates for religious freedom bills say they don't urge discrimination against individual gay people, but rather are seeking religious exemption from recognizing same-sex couples and their families.

Religious freedom is coopted by Right wing movements to prevent encounter of difference and exclude identities.

But noticeably absent from that conversation was any serious dialogue about the relationship between theology and the law.

Why should we publicly debate theology? Isn’t that a private concern?

Hardly. Theological commitments are not easily limited to the private thoughts and inner lives of those who hold them. Those of us who study religion are often reminded of what Robert Orsi has referred to as the “power of theology as a component of lived experience.” Theologies tell stories about the way things should be. They make real-world demands.

Here’s an example:

Earlier this month NPR’s Steve Inskeep interviewed Rev. Tim Overton, a Baptist minister in favor of the original measure which, in Rev. Overton’s view, would have permitted denial of services on religious grounds, despite the repeated claims by some lawmakers to the contrary. In the middle of that interview, the minister laid out a major theological claim and he explained how his commitment to that claim shapes his imagination of “freedom” in public affairs.

Here he is in his own words, emphasis mine

…we are saying that in—you know, all of life for the Christian is about glorifying God. We are worshiping God in the workplace. And so to ask a religious person who happens to own a business to do something that is against their conscience, I just don’t think that squares with the American tradition of freedom of religion.

Let’s consider for a moment his theology. The first part—that all of life is lived as worship before God—is actually a fairly traditional Christian theological claim. It’s a basic claim that on its own could likely be affirmed by wide spectrum of people of faith.

What we have here is not some radical position or an outlier in the spectrum of American religious belief and non-belief. Rev. Overton’s views are grounded in his Baptist Christian tradition. Many Americans would certainly find resonance in this view—and leaving aside the claim about God and worship, individual conscience is certainly also a key for many people who hold no religious belief.

So, what’s the problem with this view?

The problem is not so much that there are a good number of Americans who have consulted their theological traditions and decided that it would be against their personal conscience to affirm same sex marriage. The problem is that in the recent efforts of many religious Americans, the law is being used to legislate a vision of freedom that defines religious freedom as “freedom from.”

Unlike the early American Baptists, who faced serious persecution, these advocates seek to use the law to protect their vision of worship in the workplace as a purity ritual. It is a vision of religious expression free from interference in the form of difference, free from the conflicting demands of our common lives, and free from any obligation to our neighbors that we might find uncomfortable.