Critics Call Religious Freedom Act Legalized Bias Against Gays

Critics of the proposed Michigan Religious Freedom Restoration Act say it could have unintended consequences – among them, legalizing discrimination against gay people. (Patch file photo)

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A religious freedom bill passed last week in a lame-duck session of the MIchigan Legislature is being widely criticized as legalizing discrimination against gay people.

The bill’s sponsor, Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger, R-Marshall, said that’s not the intent of the legislation, which is modeled after the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act that the Supreme Court ruled cannot be applied to states.

“This is not a license to discriminate,” Bolger told the Detroit Free Press. “People simply want their government to allow them to practice their faith in peace.”

Rather, he said the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which sped through the House Judiciary Committee and won approval by the full House on a 59-50 party-line vote, is intended to protect people with sincerely held religious beliefs from government over-reach.

In defense of the bill, Bolger cited examples such as the baker who doesn’t want to provide a cake for a gay wedding or a Jewish butcher who doesn’t want to handle non-Kosher meat, but critics said it’s not as innocuous as all that.

Among the opponents is state Rep. Vicki Barnett, D-Farmington Hills, who said the bill as written requires citizens to practice the faiths of their “employers, grocers and pharmacists.”

Barnett said that though the “free exercise of religion is one of the most basic principles in our state and federal constitutions, this bill moves us in new and unchartered directions.”

Broadly written, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act would allow paramedics and other emergency medical responders to refuse treatment to a gay person, or a pharmacist to refuse to HIV prescriptions if they subscribe to religious tenets that say homosexuals should be put to death.

In another extreme application of the law, the New Civil Rights Movement pointed out that Catholic institutions could refuse to hire a Muslim janitor or motor vehicle licensing officials to deny a driver’s license to divorced person.

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Social workers who oppose homosexuality could refuse to counsel members of the military, said Central Michigan University professor and social worker, or they might turn them away based on religious beliefs that support pacifism and oppose war.

LGBT Protections Excluded from Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act

At the same time the legislation was approved on a fast-track schedule, a companion bill that would have extended protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered individuals under the state’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act couldn’t muster enough votes to clear the House Judiciary Committee.

Michigan Civil Rights Commission spokeswoman said the group is concerned the legislation would “undermine the protections provided in Elliott-Larsen.”

But Pastor Stacy Swimp, a vocal opponent against same-sex marriage, said LGBT protections don’t belong in Elliott-Larsen.

“No one from the LGBT community has ever had fire hoses turned on them by the police department, they have never had to drink out of an LGBT water fountain,” he told the House Judiciary Committee. “There is no record of LGBT – homosexuals, lesbians – being forced to sit at the back of the bus in an LGBT section.”

Lonnie Scott of Progress Michigan said the proposed legislation is unnecessary because “religious freedom rights … are already enshrined in the U.S. Constitution” according to newnownext.com. The legislation, Scott said, is merely “a farce created by conservative lawmakers for the sole purpose of appeasing their far-right donors and the religious right.”

Opposition “Way Overblown”

But for all the opposition, the proposal has legions of supporters.

University of Virginia Law professor Douglas Laycock, a legal scholar and religious liberty advocate, told The Lansing News/MLive criticism against the bill is “way overblown.”

“It hasn’t happened anywhere else – not at the federal level or the 19 states that have these kinds of laws,” he said. “The courts have generally held that preventing discrimination is a compelling government interest.”

William Wagner, a constitutional law expert who supports the bill, said objections to the bill aren’t valid. “This is about asserting a religious belief against a government action,” he said. “The question is, are we still going to be tolerant of religious communities.”

Ari Adler, Bolger’s spokesman, said opponents to the act are concocting “wild claims.”

“Governments always have sufficient justification to prohibit physical violence, prevent discrimination based on race, ethnic origin, or sex, and protect public health,” Adler said. “Suggestions that people will suddenly be able to ignore existing laws are nothing more than scaremongering tactics without any basis in reality.”

The Michigan Senate has two weeks to approve the bill before the lame-duck session adjourns.

Federal RFRA Stems from Oregon Peyote Dispute

The federal RFRA has been in existence for more than 20 years. President Bill Clinton signed it after the Oregon Supreme Court ruled unemployment benefits could be denied to Native Americans who used peyote in their religious practices.

In recent times, the RFRA was cited by Hobby Lobby in its assertion that Obamacare violated religious freedoms with birth-control provisions.

Earlier this year, Arizona Republican Gov. Jan Brewer shot down similar legislation because she said it went too far. In her veto message, Brewer said she supported religious freedom, but said the legislation didn’t address specific concerns in which a business owner’s religious liberty had been violated.

She said the legislation was “broadly worded and could result in unintended and negative consequences.”