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Questions for Sex-Eradicationists, Lawmakers, and School Leaders

The radical “Equality” Act—the pet project of sex-eradicationists (also known as “trans”-cultists)—is now in the U.S. Senate. The act would force the federal government to treat the nonsensical notion that spirit humans can be “trapped” in the wrong material bodies as if those disordered feelings constitute a reality equivalent to biological sex and one about which no one may make judgments. In other words, the Equality Act would enshrine in federal law a Gnostic superstition.

In addition, when the purported rights of cross-sex impersonators clash with First Amendment protection of the free exercise of religion, the Equality Act says cross-sex impersonation wins. Buh-bye Christian colleges whose students get federal aid. Buh-bye Christian adoption agencies that partner with the government. Buh-bye religious liberty. It was nice knowing you these past glorious 230 years.

If passed, “trans”-cultists will be well over halfway to their goal of eradicating all public recognition of biological sex. There are many reasons we have arrived at this insane, reality-denying, wrong-side-of-history moment, including the fact that citizens are not demanding their elected leaders dialogue on and debate the sandy foundation on which the “trans” cult is built. In the hope that sane people on the political right and left will start demanding such conversations, here is a list of questions that every lawmaker, school administrator, and school board member should have to answer:

1.) If sex and “gender” are two wholly different and unrelated things, with sex being an immutable objective phenomenon and “gender” being a subjective, internal, and sometimes fluid phenomenon, why should restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, prisons, nursing home rooms, and semi-private hospital rooms correspond to “gender identity” as opposed to biological sex which is both objective and stable?

2.) Why is it legitimate for girls to oppose sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male peers who accept their sex (what the left calls “cisgender” boys) but not legitimate for girls to oppose sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male peers who reject their sex? Why should a boy’s subjective feelings about his objective sex affect girls’ feelings or beliefs about undressing or going to the bathroom in front of or near him?

3.) Either biological sex has meaning relative to feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when undressing or engaging in intimate personal acts, or it has no meaning relative to modesty and privacy. If biological sex has no meaning relative to modesty and privacy, why do we have any sex-segregated restrooms or locker rooms anywhere? Why not make all of them co-ed for everyone? If, however, the desire of humans to be segregated from unrelated persons of the opposite sex when undressing, showering, or going to the bathroom is natural, understandable, reasonable, and good, why should some opposite-sex persons be allowed to violate those spaces just because they don’t like their sex?

4.) If cross-sex identifying students should not be required to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share, why should other students be required to use facilities with those whose sex they don’t share? Why should gender-dysphoric boys (or men) be able to use restrooms with only women, but actual biological females are prohibited from being able to use restrooms with only women?

5,) If anatomy is irrelevant to both “gender identity” and privacy, should boys who identify as girls be allowed to shower with objectively female peers or undress in open areas of girls’ locker rooms? If not, why not? If it’s unjustly discriminatory to prohibit gender-dysphoric boys from using girls’ locker rooms—as leftists claim it is–then is it unjustly discriminatory to prohibit gender-dysphoric boys from showering with girls or changing out in the open in girls’ locker rooms as some schools do?

6.) Female teachers and coaches are allowed in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms. Should objectively male teachers and coaches who “identify” as female be allowed in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms as well? If not, why not?

7.) Will school administrations allow those who identify as gender-fluid to choose daily which restrooms and locker rooms they will use? If not, why not?

8.) Should other subjective, internal feelings be reflected in policy and practice? For example, should those who identify as amputees (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder) be allowed to use wheelchairs and handicapped parking spots at school? Should they be allowed to leave class early to have more time to get from one class to another?

9.) Is it unnatural or pathological for girls or boys to object to engaging in excretory functions in a stall next to an unrelated person of the opposite sex doing likewise? If not, should schools respect and honor those feelings through policy that prohibits co-ed restrooms?

10.) Those who identify as “trans” claim their biological sex as revealed in anatomy is unrelated and irrelevant to their “gender identity” (which is a subjective, internal feeling) and that anatomy doesn’t matter when it comes to restrooms, changing areas, and showers. They further claim they want to use restrooms with only those whose “gender identity” they share. So, why do boys who identify as girls demand to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms? How do they know the males using the boys’ restrooms do not “identify” as girls, and how can they be sure that the females using the girls’ restrooms do “identify” as girls? Is it possible that boys who identify as girls are basing their restroom/locker room choices on biological sex (i.e., the female sex) as revealed in anatomy? If so, why are they permitted to do so but objectively female students are not?

11.) If it’s not hateful for gender-dysphoric biological boys to say they want to share private facilities with only biological females, why is it hateful for biological females to say they want to share restrooms and locker rooms with only biological females?

12.) Why is it hateful to believe that locker rooms and restrooms should correspond to one’s objective sex but loving to believe they should correspond to subjective feelings about one’s sex?

13.) Do children and adults have an inalienable and intrinsic right not to share restrooms and locker rooms with persons of the opposite sex?

14.) If restroom stalls and separate changing areas provide sufficient privacy to allow students to use facilities with those whose sex they don’t share, then why don’t restroom stalls and separate changing areas provide sufficient privacy for a gender-dysphoric student to share facilities with those whose “gender identity” they (presumably) don’t share but whose sex they do share?

15.) Leftists argue that the word “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 actually includes “gender identity,” thereby prohibiting discrimination based on “gender identity” in restrooms and locker rooms. If gender-dysphoric boys or men are permitted in girls’ or women’s restrooms and locker rooms based on this reinterpretation, on what basis could other boys or men be prohibited from using women’s restrooms? “Cisgender” boys or men couldn’t be prohibited from using girls’ or women’s restrooms based on their male sex because other objectively male persons (i.e., those who are male but “identify” as women) would already have been allowed in. And wouldn’t prohibiting “cisgender” boys or men from using women’s restrooms based on their “identification” as males constitute discrimination based on “gender identity”?

16.) Leftists argue that separate restrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls are equivalent to separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites. Others would counter that while there are no substantive ontological differences between whites and blacks and that there are no differences that bear on drinking water at fountains, there are substantive differences between men and women. In fact, even homosexuals acknowledge that men and women are fundamentally and significantly different when they say they are romantically and erotically attracted to only persons of their same sex. Further, conservatives argue that the differences between men and women bear directly on the use of spaces in which private activities related to physical embodiment are engaged in. It is these important differences related to physical embodiment as male or female that account for the very existence of separate restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, and semi-private hospital rooms for men and women everywhere. If, however, separate restrooms and locker rooms for men and women are akin to separate drinking fountains for blacks and white as Leftists claim they are, are Leftists in favor of banning them everywhere?

17.) If separate restrooms and locker rooms for gender-dysphoric boys and girls are equivalent to separate restrooms and locker rooms for blacks and whites—as former Attorney General Loretta Lynch once claimed—then why aren’t separate restrooms and locker rooms for “cisgender” boys and girls equivalent to racism? Why aren’t separate restrooms and locker rooms for gender-dysphoric boys and “cisboys” equivalent to racism?

18.) When sex-segregation abolitionists accuse parents who oppose co-ed restrooms and locker rooms of being hateful, intolerant, bigoted, ignorant, heartless bullies, do they also smear children who object to sharing restrooms and locker rooms with peers of the opposite sex?

19.) Do school administrators, teachers, and community members think that Muslims and Orthodox Jews who don’t want their daughters sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male students (or vice versa) are ignorant, bigoted, hateful, and unjustly discriminatory?

20.) Pronouns denote and correspond to objective biological sex—not subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex. So, if staff members, teachers, administrators, or students view the use of opposite-sex pronouns to refer to gender-dysphoric students as lying and for ethical, and/or religious reasons they object to lying, should schools accommodate their objections? Or, should schools—which are arms of the government—compel employees to lie?

21.) Liberal sex and gender researchers Michael Bailey at Northwestern University and Dr. Eric Vilain at UCLA write that 80% of gender-dysphoric boys—and most gender-dysphoric persons are male—will accept their real sex by adulthood. They claim that “it looks like parental acquiescence leads to persistence.” In other words, if parents accommodate their children’s efforts to pretend to be the opposite sex, their children are more likely to persist in their rejection of their sex. Are schools that allow gender-dysphoric minors to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms complicit in helping students persist in their rejection of their sex?

22.) If there is a mismatch between a person’s sex and his feelings about his sex, how can “progressives” be certain that the error resides in the healthy body rather than the mind? If a person has normal, unambiguous, healthy, fully functioning male anatomy but desires to be—or believes he is—female, might this not be an error or disorder of his mind?

23.) If a man “identifies” as “bi-gender” and has appended faux-breasts to his chest while retaining his penis and testes, as many cross-sex identifiers do, should he be to walk about unclothed in women’s locker rooms?

24.) Progressives routinely ask opponents of co-ed restrooms and locker rooms whether single-sex restrooms and locker rooms will require “genitalia police” to determine whether those seeking ingress are in reality the sex that corresponds to the spaces they seek to use. Well, will co-ed restrooms and locker rooms require “gender-identity” police to determine whether those seeking ingress are either the sex that corresponds to the spaces they seek to use or have proof that they have been diagnosed as gender-dysphoric? If not, how will we know if the persons seeking access to women’s restrooms are gender-dysphoric men masquerading as women or are male predators masquerading as gender-dysphoric men?

25.) Some argue that men masquerading as women have been successfully using women’s private spaces for years without women knowing and hence no harm, no foul. This suggests that if women’s privacy is invaded by men but they—the women—are unaware of the invasion, no harm has been done. By that logic, if voyeurs (not to be confused with men who “identify” as women) are able to secretly view women without women’s knowledge, have women been harmed or not?

26.) What is “gender identity”? If it’s defined as subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex, or one’s maleness or femaleness, on what basis do “trans”-identifying children determine their “gender identity”? Do they base their belief that they are the sex they aren’t or their desire to be the sex they aren’t on sex stereotypes, like which toys they play with? If so, is it “arbitrary, socially imposed” sex stereotypes that determine maleness or femaleness, or do biology and anatomy determine maleness or femaleness?

27.) When law enforcement agencies collect and disseminate information on crime, should crimes committed by biological men who pretend to be women be recorded as acts committed by men or by women?

28.) Should government contracts allocated for women business-owners be awarded to biological women only or also to biological men who “identify” as women?

29.) How will biomedical research into health issues that affect primarily women or primarily men be affected when the recognition of sexual differentiation is prohibited?

My hope is that these questions might help jumpstart a spirited conversation and perhaps help eradicate the pernicious and absurd “trans” ideology.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Questions-for-Sex-Eradicationists.mp3


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There Is No Conservative Case For Genderless Bathrooms

Our good friends over at National Review Online recently presented what they say is a conservative case for opening up public restrooms and locker rooms to either sex. Although written by an incredibly smart man—Josh Gelernter—the article seems to miss the nature of the issue itself, and by some margin.

His lead-off was not surprising: Conservatives should be cool with transgender folks doing what they want because “conservatism is the mind-your-own-business ideology.” He calls to the stand Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, who desires that their legislature not consider a trans-bathroom protection bill because “the last thing we need is more government rules.” Putting aside that this feels more like the desire to avoid a nuclear hot potato masquerading as a principled stand, let’s consider the veracity of this line of thought.

First, both rationales are faulty to a fault. Second, Gelernter ricochets quickly from these into endeavoring to show how inadequate the concerns over gender-free bathroom and locker room policies are. It’s easy when you reduce the whole thing down to “It will let predators in” as the primary concern. This is naïve.

De-Gendering Private Spaces Is a New Government Rule

Let’s address the “mind-your-own-business” part first. That is not conservatism. It’s a muscular libertarianism. Good conservatives are more than comfortable telling people they shouldn’t do certain things, and have been for quite some time.

The faithful conservative resists all kinds of behaviors: being a communist, sexual libertinism, creating broken families, not carrying one’s weight, not taking personal responsibility, etc. It’s not conservatives who sport “Don’t Like Abortion? Don’t Have One” bumper stickers on their cars. Conservatism is more like “Work Hard, Be Responsible, and the Newest Ideas Are Not Usually the Best Ideas.” Conservatives conserve. This means conserving the idea that male and female are not subjective feelings, and when opening and removing their clothes outside the doors of their own homes, the sexes should be segregated.

Next, the “we don’t need more government rules” line fails to understand the politics and genesis of this issue. It assumes gender-free restrooms and lockers have always been the rule, and some people now want to come along and put regulations on it. This is not the case, of course. Creating gender-free facilities requires new government rules. This is what the whole thing has been about: municipalities, retailers, and our president telling us we will accept their new regulations…and like it. We were minding our own business and would like for it to have stayed that way.

This Is about Men Seeing Naked Women Without Consent 

This brings us to the last point: Gelernter’s simplistic dismissal of those who have concerns about gender-free facilities. To him, the possibility of predators is anyone’s only concern here.

Women and fathers of daughters know this is not the case. It has to do with the inherent (and higher-order) modesty of women and their protection from the male gaze. He fails to appreciate that according to the rules of transgender politics, these policies mean any person could enter any bathroom, changing room, or locker room and freely do and observe what is done in such places. Anyone.

There is no criteria—medical, legal, physical, or psychological—anyone must meet to be accepted as officially transgender. It is solely up to the person making the claim, and no one can question him or her about it.

Well, many assume, don’t they have to look like the other sex, or at least be trying to do so? Gender orthodoxy demands that no one should have to live by someone else’s assumption of what a man, woman, or any of the other supposed genders looks like or does. They are merely restrictive social constructions enforced by male power that must be cast off.

Thus, the central concern here is that these new policies require that every woman and girl get used to having men invade their male-free sanctuary and violate their naturally strong sense of modesty by simply being present there.

Ask the typical male if he would mind a woman using the men’s locker room. Ask a woman if she would mind a man doing so. It is precisely here that the issue lies. No one has the liberty to violate the modesty of a woman. A good society conserves this important and fundamental human value at all costs. This is the work of the conservative.


This article was originally posted at TheFederalist.com




No-Stress Restrooms at New York College

Well, now, that didn’t take long. Yesterday, I warned about the dystopian cultural landscape that the sexual subversives among us are pursuing with unholy fervor and at breakneck speed. They seek to end all public recognition and accommodation of sex differences. I clearly didn’t issue my warning early enough.

Sexual revolutionaries drunk with anti-cultural power, aided and abetted by bootlicking government and business leaders, are successfully eliminating public recognition of the value and meaning of sex differences. At Manhattan’s uber-regressive Cooper Union College, they’ve leaped ahead a step or two. Rather than allow just gender-confused students and faculty to use opposite-sex restrooms, the Cooper Union administration decided, what the heck, just let everyone use any facility his, her or zir heart’s desire. All sex-segregated restrooms are gone. Nary a one left. Interim president Bill Mea offered this bizarre defense:

When there’s a gendered space, there’s a sense of ownership to that space….When people see someone who [sic] they think doesn’t belong there, it can create stress for everyone. So we thought, let’s just take that away.

Oddly, in the olden days when restrooms corresponded to one’s objective sex rather than subjective feelings about one’s objective sex, I never felt I “owned” restrooms. I didn’t feel I owned women’s restrooms in stores, malls, health clubs, schools, or movie theaters. I used them.

And I’m pretty sure that giving all men free rein to use women’s restrooms is not going to decrease women’s stress.

Mea is correct, however, I did believe some people didn’t belong in the women’s restrooms I used: objectively male people. Still do, as a matter of fact. I “feel” that the objective sex of people matters. It has meaning and value and is the source of feelings of modesty and desires for privacy. I don’t want to be forced to use restrooms, dressing rooms, or showers with those whose sex I don’t share. I don’t think other women or men should be either.

Now restroom signage at Cooper Union offers these distinctions:

  • “Urinals and stalls”
  • “Stalls only”
  • “Single occupancy”

Young’uns, you may not know this, but in the backward, hateful gendered days of yore when objective, immutable sex differences meant something, these restrooms corresponded to (TRIGGER WARNING!) male, female, and faculty respectively (I wonder how many male faculty members will be using the “stalls only” restrooms).

This is coming everywhere, my friends. Culture-destroying movements always start on the fringy edges of society where the feckless live and move and have their being. And then they begin their march to the center.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s time to get those dusty spines out of the attic. Stop all that stooping and groveling at the altar of sexual deviance and irrationality. Stand tall. Be courageous. Speak and act as if you believe your beliefs are in reality true. If you know that being created as male or female has profound meaning, then do something about it.



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Join us this Friday (April 8th) in Orland Park for yet another IFI Forum, this time exploring The Case Against Common Core with Dr. Duke Pesta.  Click HERE for more information.

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A User’s Guide To Free Expression And Bathroom Sanity

Written by Ryan T. Anderson, PhD.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision redefining marriage, LGBT activists shifted their focus to the “T” in LGBT and to eliminating any dissent on marriage. At the federal, state, and local levels, the cultural Left has proposed using government coercion—in the forms of fines, penalties, and regulation—to make all Americans accept a new orthodoxy on sexuality: Boys must be allowed unfettered access to girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and shower facilities; bakers must bake same-sex wedding cakes.

Meanwhile, big business and special interest lobbyists have denounced attempts to limit these initiatives. Republican governors such as Mike Pence of Indiana and Dennis Daugaard of South Dakota have caved to media hysterics and cultural cronyism. Pence watered down his state’s religious freedom law; Daugaard vetoed a bill that would have accommodated transgender students, but not allowed boys in girls’ bathrooms.

My recent book, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” discusses these phenomena in detail. Here are the Cliff’s notes on four types of laws to keep an eye on.

1. Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Laws

These laws have been used to penalize bakers, florists, photographers, and adoption agencies. There is no federal Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) law, and most states and cities don’t have them yet. But LGBT activists are pushing to pass them across the country.

The proposed Equality Act would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to more or less every federal civil rights law that protects on the basis of race, expanding them beyond their current reach and explicitly reducing current religious liberty protections. If made law, the Equality Act would have government treat people who believe we are created male and female, and that male and female are created for each other, as if they were racists.

SOGI laws also force schools, businesses, restaurants, and other places open to the public to allow biological males who identify as women into the ladies’ restrooms. This tramples private property rights, which would say whoever owns the bathroom should be able to set the bathroom policies, be they sex-specific, unisex, or something else. Government shouldn’t force owners to grant unfettered bathroom access based on gender identity, regardless of the safety, privacy, or modesty concerns of owners, employees, and patrons.

Thankfully, citizens are pushing back. When the Houston city council voted to impose a municipal SOGI law, Houstonians organized and collected more than enough signatures to put the issue to a vote of the people. In November, 61 percent of voters resoundingly rejected it. And don’t let the media tell you it’s a city of bigots. Houstonians have elected Annise Parker, a lesbian, as mayor three times. But they drew the line at SOGI and won despite threats of boycotts and retaliation from big business (which proved empty).

Earlier this year a proposed sexual orientation bill died in the Indiana statehouse, partly because its supporters couldn’t stop fighting over the specifics. Gender identity wasn’t specifically included in the bill, SB 344, which made the LGBT lobby unhappy. Moreover, in a bid to broaden support, the bill’s authors tacked on limited religious exemptions as a “compromise.” The prospect of any religious exemptions upset many in the LGBT lobby. In their view, no one should be free to follow his beliefs about marriage in public life if it violates LGBT dogma.

SOGI laws increase cultural tensions, further empower an already powerful special-interest lobby, and impose unjustly on people of many different faiths. At the end of the day, they are both unnecessary and a threat to religious freedom.

2. Bathroom Privacy and Accommodation Laws

SOGI laws are the problem. But what are some of the solutions? One answer is to protect privacy at the bathroom and accommodate transgender students. But LGBT activists don’t like this at all.

Their official policy is that boys who identify as girls should have unfettered access to girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and shower facilities. Anything less than full access to the bathroom and locker room of their choice is, they say, a transphobic denial of civil rights and equality. This extreme position is out of step with the majority of Americans, and utterly inconsiderate of the concerns of the non-transgendered community.

Earlier this year South Dakota crafted an even-handed policy respectful of everyone’s interests. Unfortunately, the governor caved to special interest hysterics. The South Dakota bill would have prevented biological males who identify as girls from using girls’ private facilities in public schools, but it also would have required local school officials to make reasonable accommodations for such students, such as providing access to single-occupancy facilities. A win-win arrangement for everyone, it would have protected all students’ privacy and safety and created new accommodations for transgender students.

Ask yourself: Why do we have gender-specific locker rooms in the first place? It’s because of biology, not because of “gender identity.” Separate facilities reflect the fact that men and women have bodily differences; they are designed to protect privacy related to our bodies. So the South Dakota bill continued the bathroom policy America has always had, while also requiring local schools to find reasonable accommodations for transgender students.

But LGBT activists accused attacked the state of “transphobia.” And big businesses threatened boycotts. As the bill reached the governor’s desk, the head of the Human Rights Campaign warned that “history will not treat kindly those who support this discriminatory measure.”

The Obama administration also wants to be on the Left side of history here. It claims that a 1972 civil rights lawrequires schools to allow unfettered bathroom and locker room access based on “gender identity.” In 2014, the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights announced that Title IX—the 1972 law protecting the equal rights of women and girls in education—now required schools to allow boys who identify as girls into the girls’ bathroom. This unilateral reinterpretation of federal law cannot stand.

The nation is primed for yet another clash in the culture war—this time over school bathroom policy. The South Dakota legislature gave the entire United States an example of how to defuse controversy and craft principled public policy that creates good outcomes for everyone. It should have been signed into law.

We now need leaders to show courage and do the right thing: to stand up to the special interests and protect the rights and interests of all children.

3. Religious Freedom Restoration Acts

Historically, Americans have protected religious freedom by requiring the government to meet a burden of proof before it acts to substantially burden the free exercise of religion. This was the test that the Supreme Court applied under the First Amendment—up until 1990. When the Court turned away from that test, Congress voted in 1993 to reinstate it by passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

Championed by the ACLU and liberal senators Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy, it passed with 97 Senate votes and a unanimous voice vote in the House. President Bill Clinton signed it into law. RFRA bars government from substantially burdening religious exercise unless it can show a compelling interest to do so and does it through the least restrictive means possible.

Twenty-one states have implemented similar laws, and 11 more have constitutional religious liberty protections that state courts have interpreted to provide a similar level of protection. These commonsense laws place the onus on the government to justify its actions in burdening the free exercise of religion.

Over the last 20 years, RFRA-style laws have balanced the fundamental right to religious liberty with compelling government interests. They have protected Native Americans’ freedom to wear headdresses with eagle feathers, Sikhs’ freedom to wear religious head coverings in court, Muslim prisoners’ freedom to grow short beards, and Jewish inmates’ rights to kosher meals.

The federal RFRA protects against federal government violations of religious liberty; state RFRAs protect against state violations. Yet when Indiana proposed a near identical state version of RFRA last year, all hell broke loose. Similar hysterics are now erupting in Georgia and West Virginia over their RFRA proposals.

4. First Amendment Defense Acts

RFRAs create balancing tests that judges use. They protect religious exercise generally, then leave it to judges to determine if government has a compelling interest being pursued in a narrowly tailored way that justifies burdening the religious exercise in any particular case. But experience shows that ideologically driven judges can and do get it wrong. In cases where the risk of neglect or even hostility to the law by judges or government is acute, we can and should single out particular actions for protection and say government may never burden them.

We need both broad protection and specific protections. So, in addition to RFRA, Congress has passed a variety of laws that protect pro-life conscience. In Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court invented a right to an abortion. But after Roe Congress made clear that government cannot require a pro-life doctor or nurse to perform an abortion—that they, too, had rights that required specific protections from hostile judges and bureaucrats.

Likewise, in the Obergefell decision, the Supreme Court redefined marriage throughout America by mandating that governmental entities treat same-sex relationships as marriages. The Supreme Court did not say that private schools, charities, businesses, or individuals must abandon their beliefs if they disagree, but some governments are acting as if it did.

Indeed, there is no justification to force these entities to violate their beliefs about marriage. As Justice Anthony Kennedy noted, traditional beliefs are held “in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world.” Americans who believe that marriage is the union of husband and wife should continue to be free to live and work according to their convictions.

Now, state and federal legislatures should make it clear that no private person or institution should be forced to recognize or help celebrate a same-sex marriage—that is, that they have a right to believe—and live out—what they’ve always believed about marriage: that it’s the union of husband and wife.

The federal First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), and various state bills modeled on it, is a measured, reasonable, commonsense policy. It would ensure that no government agency discriminates against individuals or institutions for following their convictions about marriage as a man-woman union. For example, a government could not revoke their tax-exempt status or deny them government grants, contracts, accreditation, or licenses because of their beliefs. The bill protects freedom and pluralism in the wake of social change—embodying the best of American values.

Protecting minority rights after major social change is also a hallmark of American tolerance and pluralism. Yet as Georgia moves to enact a FADA, big business and special interests are attacking it.

This is yet another example of cultural cronyism. Businesses in Georgia were always free to embrace gay marriage—to bake wedding cakes for gay marriages and make floral arrangements for same-sex nuptials—and many do. But now activists want the government to force everyone in Georgia to do it. They’re threatening boycotts, travel bans, and relocations of businesses if the government doesn’t do as they wish.

Big business—as represented by “individual corporate giants including Hilton Worldwide, Marriott and InterContinental Hotels Group,” the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and the Georgia Hotel and Lodging Association—have all claimed the religious freedom bill would open the door to widespread discrimination.

But if every Hilton, Marriott, and InterContinental hotel in Georgia already hosts receptions for newlywed same-sex couples, why can’t Georgia protect the mom-and-pop bed-and-breakfast or local Knights of Columbus hall that has a different set of beliefs about marriage? This law doesn’t harm minority rights; it protects them in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage.

The hypocrisy of big business lobbying against the law is astounding. They want to be free to operate in Georgia according to their values, but they don’t want small-business competitors to be free to operate according to theirs. If all of the major corporations are already in favor of gay marriage, then this religious freedom law poses no threat. It merely protects the rights of those who disagree.

What to Do Now

America is in a time of transition. Courts have redefined marriage, and beliefs about human sexuality are changing. During this time, it is critical to protect the right to disagree and the civil liberties of those who speak and act in accord with what Americans had always believed about marriage—that it is the union of husband and wife.

Good public policy is needed at the local, state, and federal levels to protect cherished American values. This means SOGI laws must be defeated. Bathroom privacy and accommodation laws should be enacted. And religious freedom should be protected—with RFRAs and FADAs.

These policies would help achieve civil peace amid disagreement, maintain pluralism, and protect the rights of all Americans, regardless of what faith they may practice.


 

Ryan T. Anderson, PhD, the William E. Simon senior research fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation, is the author of “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom.”


This article was originally posted at TheFederalist.com