Motus Mentis

This ruction about Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act is deplorable for many reasons — not least of which is the fact that Indiana’s law is nothing unusual, and resembles very closely similar laws in other states (including, for example, Connecticut, whose governor has ostentatiously called for a state-spending boycott of Indiana, and Illinois, where young Barack Obama voted ‘yes’ to a very similar bill). The Indiana statute also is more or less the same as the 1993 Federal RFRA — which was introduced by Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy, passed the House on a voice vote, was approved by the Senate 97-3, and was proudly signed into law by Bill Clinton.

So why the fuss now? It’s because the law, which was originally imagined to preserve the religious freedoms of marginalized minority groups (the Federal law’s original aim, for example, was to protect ritualistic use of peyote by American Indians), is now being used to defend the religious liberties of Christians who refuse to get in line behind same-sex marriage and other left-wing causes. Observant Christians, you see, aren’t a protected class in liberal America; indeed, they are increasingly seen (and rightly so!) as stubborn obstacles to the Left’s withering assault on traditional American culture. On this new cultural battlefield, laws like Indiana’s become nothing less than enemy fortifications, and so they must be shelled and degraded with all the heavy artillery the media can bring to bear.

Amid all the agitation, there’s a more general question I’d like to ask: what are laws for? Given that, as citizens under the coercive power of the State, our behavior is constrained, and our liberties affected, by our laws, then presumably there ought to be some explicable rationale for every law we create. Generally speaking, it seems reasonable to imagine that the enactment of any new law has as its aim the prevention of some harm or evil that the State has a legitimate interest in eliminating. (If you have a better short description of what laws are for, our comment-box is open.)

The ‘evil’ that seems to dominate the Left’s rhetoric regarding these RFRA laws has, apparently, to do with discrimination against homosexuals, and in particular against homosexual marriage. The cases that we have already seen have involved same-sex couples who sought out the services of Christian bakers and photographers for their weddings. The businesses refused, because for them to participate in a celebration of something they consider morally wrong would violate their religious beliefs and affirmations. They paid a heavy price for this principled stance: their lives were upended, and at least in the case of Elane Photographers, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, they lost their business.

Did this have to happen? Of course not. There are lots of photographers in Albuquerque, and I’m sure that a homosexual couple pretty much anywhere in America can easily find somebody who’d be happy to photograph their wedding.

So who was harmed here? Who would have been harmed if Elane Photographers had simply been allowed to turn down the job? If there is an ‘evil’ to be detected and prevented here, it seems to me that the destruction of a couple’s livelihood, or conversely the public humiliation of innocent citizens by forcing them to violate their religious beliefs under crushing coercion, is a far greater ill than the minor inconvenience of having to call a different photographer to shoot your wedding, especially when it would have been easy to find others who would have been proud and happy to do so. And that’s the harm that these RFRA laws are intended to prevent. The problem now, though, as noted above, is that all of a sudden they are protecting people whom the Left would rather see harmed.

One last thing: as good as it is to see these religious-freedom laws offering some protection for dissent against the Left’s cultural juggernaut, I’m sorry that they only seek to protect dissent on religious grounds. I’m not a religious person, but I have, nevertheless, moral convictions that I feel as strongly about as any churchman. It would be nice if they were considered worthy of protection also.

P.S. Gratifyingly, I see that just today Arkansas has passed a similar law. Nice to see a little backbone.

P.P.S., April 1: I spoke too soon — looks like Arkansas is chickening out.