Phantom Menaces and Rights Squabbles

I'm afraid I let loose a bit too much yesterday, knocking down (well, as much as one can on a short blog) some of the logical/theological inconsistencies riddling the "Manhattan Declaration"--the recently released salvo by a group of Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical conservatives.

In the interests of critical generosity, I should note one piece of rhetorical ground on which I think the Declaration isn't as vulnerable as some of my liberal-progressive comrades seem to believe. One site I viewed gave a fairly thorough rundown of the Delcaration's many problematic features. The commentary led, however, with an allegation to the effect that the religious right was once again "hijacking" civil rights language. While I have a lot of problems with their stances, I don't think that they're misusing civil rights language--at least no more than any liberal-progressive group does.

I assume that the reviewers meant the Declaration authors' section about "Religious Liberty." That section, the third major point (after the "culture of life/anti-abortion" section and the "marriage culture/anti-gay" sections), begins with a brief reaffirmation of the wrongness of religious coercion. The point, however, isn't "don't force conversions" but "government shouldn't prevent people from expressing disapproval of abortion and glbt identities." The authors castigate "those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a
right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated
around these practices be recognized and blessed by law" (6). Mind you--this bears repeating--the Declaration offers no proof that anyone seriously asserts a right to kill the aged and disabled. These are phantom menaces, conservative-Christian boogie-men lumped together with doctors who endorse a woman's right to choose in order to make abortion (all abortions, apparently, performed for any reason, even to save the life of the mother) seem horrible.

The authors go on to cite several anecdotes that purport to illustrate a general decline in religious liberties--mainly religious organizations who have their tax-exempt status threatened for not complying with anti-discrimination statutes. Against such a threat, the authors promise civil disobedience, a la Martin Luther King, Jr. "Unjust laws degrade human beings," write the authors. Thus laws that are unjust must not be obeyed.

Of course, by "unjust laws," the authors mean "laws that remove the privileged status granted to religious organizations when said organizations choose to claim exceptions to the rules everyone else has to follow." To receive tax-exempt status, a charity organization must not, for example, refuse to serve members of a particular race, religion, creed--or (in some instances) sexual orientation. A private charity is of course free to follow the dictates of its conscience and not serve, say, communist Baptists. It cannot, however, claim federal recognition or receive the unearned privileges regularly extended to faith-based organizations if it does so.

Thus there is a bit of, well, disingenuousness in the Declaration's claim to being discriminated against because of their choice to discriminate. Tax-exempt status is always already a special regard, not an essential right of religious organizations. If it were a right, then religious organizations would be able to discriminate against anyone for any reason.

Clearly, though, the Declaration's authors consider the removal of tax-exempt status for, specifically, discriminating against heterosexual-only policies as of the same species of oppression as prosecuting people for expressing disagreement with pro-gay-inclusion policies. Again, the authors cannot point to any kind of grand campaign to force pastors to marry gays or lesbians; none exist. Another phantom menace. The authors' bold statements that they will not be forced to bless homosexual unions, then, strike me as so much hot air.

Nevertheless, beneath the big read devils they put on display, the authors do locate a legitimate conflict. They are correct, for instance, in framing their disagreements as a conflict of differing conceptions of civil rights. The state's protection of the right to religious expression does conflict with other rights--the right to equal treatment under the law, for example, or the right to autonomy of self. For instance, were the state to declare (as it has not in most cases) that same-sex couples have the same set of rights as married couples, this declaration--this new definition of rights--would in fact violate the religious convictions of many people. Moreover, by recognizing the right of same-sex couples to be married, the state basically prioritizes the protection of that right above the hetero-only conviction.

To be sure, making same-sex marriage legal does not mean that rights to religious expression are therefore nullified; people who believe in hetero-only marriage do not face the choice of ceasing that belief or being prosecuted. What such people lose is instead the expectation (which they may have thought of as a right) that the state match their faith-based convictions about sexuality. Expressing their beliefs may not win them a night in the Birmingham jail, but neither will it win them approbation from government. Indeed, if they want to access government funds or if they wish to serve as a representative of the state, they must set aside their faith convictions insofar as those convictions violate the government's official stances.

Example? If the government recognizes same-sex marriages as equivalent in every respect to heterosexual marriages, then no judge or justice of the peace (or clerk granting marriage licenses) has the right to deny same-sex couples the documents or recognitions heterosexuals enjoy. The civil servant in question loses the right to both be employed and express their religiously based discrimination at the same time.

In this sense, then, the government's establishment or recognition of some rights (e.g., a woman's right to choose abortion, same-sex couples' rights to marriage protections) does result in a practical reshuffling of rights priorities. Religious convictions may not prevent the state or its representatives from enacting its protection of other rights. A conflict does in fact exist.

The easy response to this conflict--the response taken by the liberal-progressive reviewer I mentioned above--is simply to say that the Declaration's authors are simply misusing the whole notion of rights, fabricating some fake right to have the state endorse their anti-gay or anti-abortion attitudes.

I disagree.

More tomorrow,

JF