'Religious Liberty' and the Anti-LGBT Right

In recent years, the LGBT rights movement has witnessed a sea change in American attitudes toward the gay community and, along with it, a series of dramatic policy and legal victories — most notably marriage equality — that would have seemed unthinkable just a decade ago.

Yet, while the majority of Americans support LGBT rights, these gains have produced a strong backlash.

The hardline religious-right groups that have long relied on the use of demonizing falsehoods to justify discrimination against LGBT people have not simply folded their tents and walked away.

Rather, they have used their large megaphone to create a dangerous new narrative that portrays Christians who object to homosexuality on biblical grounds as victims of religious persecution. This idea is particularly compelling to millions of evangelicals who see themselves and their values as being under siege in a rapidly changing society.

Across the country, these opponents of LGBT equality are working to persuade state legislatures to pass laws known as Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs) — statutes that ostensibly allow individuals to deny goods and services to LGBT people on the basis of their religious beliefs.

They are named and loosely modeled after the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

But that law was intended as a shield to protect religious liberty. These new laws, such as the one enacted and then modified under intense public pressure in Indiana last year, are intended as a sword to promote discrimination against the LGBT community in the public sphere.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby added a powerful tailwind to the RFRA movement. The 5-4 ruling allowed a large, family-owned corporation to opt out of a requirement under the Affordable Care Act to provide its employees with insurance coverage for contraceptives because of the owners’ religious beliefs.

The new RFRAs are being championed by extreme religious-right groups that — as these profiles reveal — want to reverse the recent progress toward equal protection under the law for the LGBT community. If they had their way, the country would return to the era when gay people remained in the closet and the government claimed the right to say what could go on between consenting adults in their bedrooms.

These groups are clever — and cynical.

They know that, as Americans have grown more accepting of LGBT people, they can no longer rely on discredited stereotypes to stymie the march toward full equality. So they have wrapped their bigotry in the cloak of religious freedom.

The public should not be fooled.

Religious liberty is a cherished constitutional value, enshrined in the First Amendment. But, as earlier efforts to offer biblical justification for slavery and Jim Crow segregation have taught us, religious liberty should not be used as an excuse to discriminate.

The danger of these laws goes far beyond the way in which courts may ultimately balance them with statutory and constitutional protections against discrimination. The peril also lies in the atmosphere of bigotry and discrimination that will be created by legitimizing the very idea that LGBT rights threaten religious liberty.

The reality is that few cases of discrimination will ever find the ear of a sympathetic lawyer, and even fewer will find their way into a courtroom.

Most people who face discrimination on a daily basis have nowhere to turn. That’s why we must push back against these laws and this false narrative.

It’s why we must expose them for what they are — excuses to discriminate against other Americans for who they are and who they love.

And, it’s why we must expose the groups behind these laws as extremists that despise the LGBT community.

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TUPELO, MISS.
FOUNDED: 1994
CURRENT PRESIDENT: TIM WILDMON
FULL EXTREMIST PROFILE: American Family Association

Methodist minister Don Wildmon, father of the current president, originally founded the American Family Association (AFA) as the National Federation for Decency, focusing on television programming and pornography. Over the years, the group expanded its mission and reach to include “combating the homosexual agenda” through various means, such as publicizing companies with pro-LGBT policies and boycotting them. The crudest of the groups described here in terms of its bigotry, AFA has long equated homosexuality with pedophilia and claimed that the “homosexual agenda” will bring the downfall of American (and, ultimately, Western) civilization. Typical of its gutter language, a 2004 AFA Journal article claimed gay influences are leading to a “grotesque culture” that will include “quick encounters in the middle school boys’ restroom.”

AFA spreads its message through its website and various projects — the American Family Radio Network (almost 200 stations broadcast its programming), its online One News Now, and the monthly AFA Journal. It currently lists 10 state affiliates, all of which are involved in state-level policymaking.

AFA is also stridently anti-choice and has a history of its leadership making racist statements about Muslims, immigrants and others. This is particularly true of AFA radio host Bryan Fischer and President Tim Wildmon. Among other things, Fischer has argued that “[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.” A year earlier, he blamed welfare for “destroying” the African-American family by rewarding people who “rut like rabbits.” In 2012, Wildmon asserted that Islam “is, in fact, a religion of war, violence, intolerance, and physical persecution of non-Muslims.”

AFA closed its “law center” in 2007, but it still files amicus briefs and involves itself in messaging and framing of “religious freedom” through its Action Alerts, website and radio programming. It also exhorts its supporters to contact state legislators to “stop threats to religious liberty.” Its Indiana chapter was heavily involved with the early 2015 passage of that state’s RFRA (later amended), and is currently just as heavily involved with legislation in that state that would deny protections to transgender people.

WASHINGTON, D.C.
FOUNDED: 1983
CURRENT PRESIDENT: TONY PERKINS
FULL EXTREMIST PROFILE: Family Research Council

The Family Research Council (FRC) was the brainchild of evangelical activist and psychologist James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family (FOTF). It was created in 1983 under the direction of Gerald Regnier, a former top official with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and then became a project of FOTF under Christian Right activist Gary Bauer in 1988. Four years later, in 1992, FRC was spun off from FOTF as an independent entity. But it continued its work against abortion and LGBT rights and in favor of “the Judeo-Christian worldview as the basis for a just, free, and stable society.” FRC today is one of the most powerful of the far right’s advocacy groups, with contacts throughout federal and state governments.

Incendiary rhetoric about the LGBT community from the group is common. In 2012, Perkins told a gathering of the far-right Oak Initiative: “Those who understand the homosexual community – the activists – they’re very aggressive… . They’re intolerant, they’re hateful, vile, they’re spiteful … engaged in activity, behavior, and an agenda that will destroy them and our nation.” Perkins and FRC have consistently portrayed LGBT people as sick, evil, perverted and incestuous. Perkins has even gone after the “It Gets Better” campaign, an initiative meant to give LGBT students hope for a better future, describing the program as “disgusting,” part of a “concerted effort” to “recruit” children into the gay “lifestyle.” The group also has published proven falsehoods about gay people. In 2010, for instance, the FRC website said, “While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.”

FRC employs a number of “policy experts” whose “research” has allowed the group to be extremely active politically in shaping public debate on issues like abortion and LGBT rights. Its research fellows and leaders often testify before Congress and appear in the mainstream media. FRC also works at the grassroots level, conducting outreach to pastors in an effort to “transform the culture.” FRC filed an amicus brief, along with Focus on the Family, in Lawrence v. Texas, supporting Texas’ sodomy law. Its legal counsel on the brief was Robert George, who has called for “national rebellion” against the legalization of same-sex marriage.

The group is also heavily involved and invested in the current right-wing battle over “religious liberty.” It has filed numerous amicus briefs in various cases, published articles, written op-eds, and sponsored the Center for Religious Liberty, which is currently headed by attorney and Navy veteran Travis Weber. In 2012, FRC hosted an hour-long webcast called “The Threat to Religious Liberty Around the World.”

ORLANDO, FLA.
FOUNDED: 1989
CURRENT PRESIDENT: MATHEW “MAT” STAVER
FULL EXTREMIST PROFILE: Liberty Counsel

The Liberty Counsel was founded more than 25 years ago by conservative activists Mathew “Mat” Staver — an attorney and former dean at Liberty University School of Law — and his wife, Anita. The organization, which maintains a close affiliation with Liberty University (founded by the late evangelist Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Va.), bills itself as a nonprofit litigation, education and policy organization that provides legal counsel and pro bono assistance in cases dealing with religious liberty, “the sanctity of human life,” and the family. The group claims 10 lawyers on staff and about 300 volunteer attorneys around the country. Like many of the groups described here, Liberty Counsel filed an amicus brief supporting laws against sodomy in Lawrence v. Texas.

Over the years, Liberty Counsel has become known for the virulent anti-LGBT rhetoric of its spokespeople, who have linked homosexuality to pedophilia, claimed that it is a perversion that will destroy Western civilization, and asserted that same-sex marriage will spread disease. Staver’s 2004 book, Same-Sex Marriage: Putting Every Household at Risk, is a litany of demonizing anti-LGBT myths that makes similar claims and describes LGBT people as a danger to children. Last year, after the Boy Scouts decided to allow gay Scout leaders, Staver said the organization had become a “playground for pedophiles.” In 2013, staff attorney Steve Crampton said: “When you consider that the life of the average homosexual is not controlled by reason, not controlled by the will, it’s really a life controlled by this lust, this passion, that has kind of overwhelmed them, and so you have kind of the essence of a lack of self control.”

Liberty Counsel has represented opponents of same-sex marriage and those who oppose bans on the pseudoscientific and harmful practice known as “ex-gay” therapy, which claims to “cure” homosexuality (already, four states have banned the therapy for minors). One of Liberty Counsel’s more high-profile current clients is Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in June 2015. The ACLU sued on behalf of one of the couples Davis denied a license to, and Liberty Counsel took up her case. Davis was found in contempt of court and served a few days in jail. She continues to be used as a religious freedom rallying cry for the Christian Right.

Another of Liberty Counsel's high-profile clients is virulently anti-LGBT pastor Scott Lively, who is best known for a book, The Pink Swastika, which alleges that gay men orchestrated the Nazi Holocaust. Currently, Lively is being sued in the United States for human rights violations by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Sexual Minorities Uganda, an African LGBT group. The suit alleges that Lively’s speeches in Africa and his meetings with lawmakers who were considering Uganda’s proposed “kill the gays” bill incited criminal violence against Ugandan LGBT people.

Liberty Counsel has also intervened in state disputes over same-sex marriage, claiming that recognizing such bonds or issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples violates the religious rights of people who object to homosexuality. To that end, the organization has represented magistrates in North Carolina who objected to issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In Alabama, it is working to support probate judges who resist issuing such licenses in defiance of federal law.

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