O Come All Ye Hateful: One Nation, Trapped under God

With the recent SCOTUS decision conferring recognition of a theoretical website designer’s right to discriminate against LGBT customers, comes another expected upset. This decision adds another layer to an insidious tower built on LGBT-rights degradations. Each piece of this tower represents a win for a pair of religious minorities (Evangelicals & Catholics), whose presence in America in particular, has consistently run amok against legal equities for queer people. To add insult to injury, the headline-breaking cases that have fortified this group’s offensive are often the product of test-case fishing. The perpetrators of this hunt take form in the Alliance Defending Freedom, a predatory Christian legal advocacy group. In the past few years alone, their success rate in gaining the GOP Supreme Court’s favor has cost the civil rights of several minority groups. Namely, women and queer people. Whenever a case that involves the recognition of a “freedom” is brought by this group, the sought after outcome always comes at the sacrifice of a minority group. This is a legal red flag. Not only because a minority group suffers a curtailment of their civil rights, but also due to their ironic use of the term freedom. Genuine strides in individual freedom do not require the sacrifice of another’s. Civil rights are not a zero-sum equation. Or at least, that is not how they’re suppose to be. But in the eyes of predatory advocacy groups such as ADF, Christians with conspicuous business practices must emerge as the only benefactor.

Those who cater to the requisites of ADF’s agenda may believe their fight to be truly righteous. In asserting an inability to freely reject customers who “force” them to act contrary to their sincerely held beliefs, they expose their own shortfalls in legal understanding. Free Exercise is a fundamental right in this country. I do not begrudge those who seek to exercise that right. But this group’s supporters do not even attempt to persuade those whose rights come at the expense of their victories the indignity of masking their true intention. That intention being their ultimate goal: a free license to shield them from the generic applicability of anti-discrimination statutes. These statutes, which goal is to address the historic legal deficiencies for several minority groups, are put in place not to spite those of the Christian faith, but serve as a genuine remedial measure. Cases such as 303 Creative emerge on the basis that such statutes supposedly force Christians to act contrary to their sincerely held, religious beliefs. Call me a radical, but if your sincerely held beliefs cause tension with anti-discrimination measures, should you not be questioning how sincere those beliefs are? Instead, people continuously prove to be disappointing. Rather than examining their belief’s conspicuous tendency to disparage disadvantaged groups, they dig their heels in. Then again, it’s more seductive for one to delude oneself into thinking it’s the anti-discriminatory statutes that are out to get you. That it’s the heterosexual, white Christian community that are truly the victims of American culture. With this perspective serving as a moral compass, it would appear that there’s something discriminatory in these laws after all…the discrimination against Christian-run businesses and their “pious” owners.

“…and whether a man can blow another man beneath the comfort of his own linens.”

But let’s not coddle ourselves in fantasy. There is no, such thing, as discrimination against Christians in America. Despite the threshold of Americans identifying as Evangelicals potentially being as low as 6% of the US populace, or Catholics constituting 21%, an undeniable fact remains. This nation’s laws were founded on the bedrock of Christian philosophy, and all the adverse civil rights teachings that dwell within it. In our past, Christianity was a formative motivator in the construction of past laws that justified slavery practices, denial of women’s right to vote, legalized segregation of public schools, criminalization of recreational drug use, and whether a man can blow another man beneath the comfort of his own linens. Disgraceful to say the least.

With the goals of foundations such as ADF in mind, a perverse understanding of how their religious beliefs are apparently infringed by anti-discrimination statutes hibernates. The belief that should they abide by these general applicable anti-discrimination laws, they sacrifice the autonomy to exercise their religious freedom. But show me the case where a Christian has been barred from attending Sunday service, attending midnight Christmas mass, seeking spiritual guidance from religious leaders, or any similar instance has stemmed from these perceived antagonistic statutes. There are none. The reason for this is an obvious one. The right to freely exercise their religion is not the pivotal goal of these predatory suits. Rather, it is a devout right to discriminate against the very groups their faith has historically kept under its heel. The Supreme Court’s current majority has executed its solemn vow more in line with the role of an Evangelical priest, as opposed to an objective auditor of constitutional merit. In doing so, Evangelical and Catholic plaintiffs has been ordained with unconstitutional blessings to exempt themselves from the rest of the US populace in complying with federal and state anti-discrimination laws. Unlike a vast majority of Americans who fall within some category of minority status, the Supreme Court’s majority gives the phrase “In God we Trust” a whole new meaning.

I would implore those who support missions of foundations such as ADF to contemplate why Christ’s second coming has yet to arrive. Is not a surprise He has chosen exile than the frigid shelter built on the foundation of your unholy campaigns? When will his self-proclaimed children embody the light they desperately seek? If the trajectory of these predatory Christian plaintiffs persists, the warmth of his light will surely continue to allude you. Just as your campaigns have sought to have civil protections allude the recipients of the very communities your faith has disparaged.

This Supreme Court’s past sessions have sadly painted the existence of civil rights as a zero-sum game. Despite the readily available avenue for constructing a constitutional cohabitation of free exercise and civil protections, the current Court’s makeup has served as an agitator. It’s difficult to see a path forward where the current majority can return to its intended role as a constitutional referee. The claim that the high court is suffering from a legitimacy crisis is not an exaggeration bemoaned by angsty progressives. Its claim emerged from an unprecedented shift in objectively favoring a specific, minority religious subset with a history of distorting minority groups and their civil protections. Until a restoration of disinterested analysis can occur, however unlikely with the current makeup, the fight for all to be equal under law will continue for many years to come.