UNITED STATES
Verdict
28 APR 2016 MARCI A. HAMILTON
So far in the 21st century, U.S. religious leaders are best known for negative positions like their demands for a “free exercise right” to discriminate against the beleaguered minority of LGBTQ individuals, a First Amendment right to discriminate against their own ministers, a right of secular employers to deprive women of reproductive health care choices in their employment benefit plans, and, last but not least, child endangerment, from starvation, to neglect to sex abuse. Small wonder that institutional religious affiliation has been dropping. At the same time, the headlines persistently cover religiously-fueled global terrorism, which is a sobering reminder of the atrocities that religion can justify, as we know from even a cursory study of world history.
Others have tried to paint the contemporary push for extreme religious liberty as a new “Great Awakening” when in fact it has been a time of global darkening for the vulnerable, including LGBTQ individuals, women, and children.
The Supreme Court has abetted some of this by failing to stand up for its power to interpret the First Amendment and instead letting Congress, via the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, unilaterally set free exercise standards. Moreover, the Court acquiesced in RFRA’s allowing the courts to become unaccountable policymakers, letting a majority of Justices hand employers an unnecessarily broad right to discriminate against their employees well beyond the category of clergy in Hosanna Tabor. Finally, at least while Justice Antonin Scalia was on the Supreme Court, a majority significantly narrowed the indispensable separation of church and state by carving back the Establishment Clause’s standing doctrine and opening doors to and more.
Thus, the Court with Scalia responded to the era of darkening by reinforcing the voices of negativity, discrimination, and oppression. A majority often seemed to have abandoned the pose of blind (fair) Lady Justice and instead flirted with theocracy. The one bright spot has been the Supreme Court’s majority affirming the fundamental right for same-sex couples to marry, but the hysterical voices in dissent in Windsor and Obergefell no doubt mobilized and empowered the ugly developments we now see in North Carolina and
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