In 2013, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) began examining how federal courts have handled claims on religious exemptions and now, in 2016, they prepared a report which didn’t solve much of the disagreement. A part of the report says: “Religious exemptions to the protections of civil rights based upon classifications such as race, color, national origin, sex, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity, when they are permissible, significantly infringe upon these civil rights.”
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is a bipartisan, independent commission of the United States federal government, created in 1957, that is charged with the responsibility for investigating, reporting on, and making recommendations concerning civil rights issues in the U.S. No more than four of the eight-member commission can be from the same political party.
The commission’s chair, Martin R. Castro, sees the terms “religious liberty” and “religious freedom” as code words for discrimination. He wrote in his statement that, today, as in the past, religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality. Lawsuits that involve anti-discrimination policies and religious liberty claims, such as bakers who have refused to provide services for same-sex wedding ceremonies or employers who don’t want to sign off on health insurance coverage that includes contraception services that they find immoral, have highlighted the need to define those areas more precisely.
Many religious and conservative voices are not happy about the final result in the report. Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, called the USCCR’s report a “logical, moral and political disaster.” The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called Castro’s statements shocking and reckless. One member of the commission, Peter Kirsanow, pointed out that the biggest source of friction here comes from trying to reconcile secular and religious world views, which are inherently different. In the secular worldview, Kirsanow wrote in a statement, an individual’s sexual behavior is an “act of self-creation and something that goes to the deepest level of their identity.” The religious worldview holds that the morality of a person’s conduct depends on whether it conforms to divine law, which some people of faith believe exists over and above laws created by humans.
The USCCR’s report also includes the following statements: “Religious exemptions from nondiscrimination laws and policies must be weighed carefully and defined narrowly on a fact-specific basis”; “Third parties, such as employees, should not be forced to live under the religious doctrines of their employers” and “A basic right as important as the freedom to marry should not be subject to religious beliefs.”
To conclude, both supporters and opponents of USCCR’s report, may agree at least on one thing: this debate won’t end soon and one report is not sufficient to solve the disagreements that have been present for years.
Photo Credits: Alliance Defending Freedom
