At a hearing before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on The State of Religious Liberty in the United States, Christian Right activists failed to answer questions on the Bible’s support for slavery and their rationalization of discrimination against gay and lesbian people. During the hearing on June 10, the advocates called before the panel were reluctant to admit that religion has in fact been used in the past to justify slavery, especially by quoting text from the Bible.

“Actually, I've heard that argument made a lot, and it's something I'm trying to look into on my own,” said Kim Colby, lawyer with the Christian Legal Society, before crediting Quakers and evangelical Christians with leading the abolition movement.

Additionally, Mathew Staver, dean of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University School of Law, credited Christians with ending slavery.

“If you look at the abolition movement, it was really a movement that rose out of Christian beliefs,” he said.

However, things got a more complicated when Jerrold Nadler, Congressman and attorney, asked why needing insurers to cover abortion and contraception, which Christian advocates oppose, is considered any more of a restriction on religious liberty than needing insurers to cover blood transfusions, which some other religions oppose.

“It could be similar, but I think it's also fundamentally different,” said Staver, coming as close as he could to admitting the cases were parallel.

Even though he said that the difference lies in the fundamental beliefs of many Christians when it comes to the “creation or destruction of innocent human life,” he evaded the point that other religions are also entitled to the protection of their fundamental beliefs. Likewise, he refused to see any similarity between a photographer who refuses services to gay and lesbian couples on religious grounds and a priest who says his religion forbids him from celebrating the wedding of Jews or African-Americans. Staver said the first example was based on religious belief while the second on civil rights laws.

In the beginning of the hearing, Staver said that states should not be allowed to prevent “conversion therapies” to treat people who are gay and later, he avoided answering a question related to Russia’s anti-gay laws. He said, “I don't know what you've read; I haven't spoken on the Russian law anywhere.”

However, his strong support for Russia’s anti-gay laws can be heard below:

Photo Credit: Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Photo by Stephanie Snyder - Cronkite News