Faith leaders call on Obama, Congress to reject controversial religious liberty report
(DN) – Four churches filed a lA diverse group of religious leaders, including the chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ ad hoc committee on religious liberty and the presiding bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have called on President Barack Obama and Congress to reject the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ recent report on religious freedom law.
“We wish to express our deep concern that the commission has issued a report, ‘Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Non-Discrimination Principles with Civil Liberties,’ that stigmatizes tens of millions of religious Americans, their communities and their faith-based institutions, and threatens the religious freedom of all our citizens,” reads the group’s letter, sent Wednesday to President Obama, Senate President Pro Tempore Orrin Hatch, R- Utah, and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
Released last month, the commission’s report offered a grim view of efforts to balance religious freedom protections with local and state anti-discrimination measures.
“The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance,” wrote commission Chairman Martin R. Castro in a statement attached to the report.
Castro and the seven other commissioners, who are legal experts of varying political and professional backgrounds, struggled to find a path forward from ongoing debates over religious exemptions to samesex wedding ceremonies and the rights of LGBT students enrolled at religiously affiliated colleges.
“Federal and state courts, lawmakers and policymakers at every level must tailor religious exemptions to civil liberties and civil rights protections as narrowly as applicable law requires,” the commissioners wrote.
In their letter, interfaith leaders acknowledge that religious freedom is a difficult concept to translate into law.
“We understand that people of good faith can disagree about the relationship between religious liberty and anti-discrimination laws in our country, and how that relationship should best be structured,” they write.
However, they argue that the tone of “Peaceful Coexistence” was inappropriate and offensive because, at times, it paints people of faith as roadblocks to a fair and just society.
“We are one in demanding that no American citizen or institution be labeled by their government as bigoted because of their religious views. … That is precisely what the commission report does,” the letter reads.
The letter’s 17 signatories include the Most Reverend William E. Lori of USCCB; Bishop Gérald J. Caussé of the LDS Church; Sheikh Hamza Yusuf Hanson of Zaytuna College; Russell Moore of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; and other religious freedom advocates.
Growing divide
The faith leaders and other religious freedom advocates behind the new letter were distressed by how far religious liberty has fallen in the eyes of some policymakers.
And they are right to worry about the status of conscience rights protections moving forward, said Douglas Laycock, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School and expert on religious freedom law.
Laycock wasn’t a cosigner of the letter, but he, too, blasted the report for making no effort to balance the competing rights of religious freedom and nondiscrimination.
“It simply said the nondiscrimination interest always wins,” Laycock wrote in an email. “There is a rigid and often hateful intolerance on the nondiscrimination side of these issues, and this report is a product of that.”
The report came after three years of trying to reach a consensus on the appropriate legal response to situations in which nondiscrimination law and religious freedom are in conflict. Commissioners consulted with 11 expert panelists, reviewed public comments and studied related laws and rulings, such as the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
“Peaceful Coexistence” includes the commission’s briefing, which is about 25 pages in length, and an additional 275 pages of statements, rebuttals and responses, some of which characterized the report as a flawed attempt to address and resolve ongoing conflicts.
“I voted in favor of these findings and recommendations only because this report has already been delayed for over three years, and was concerned that a ‘no’ vote from me would be used as an excuse to further delay the report,” wrote commissioner Peter Kirsanow, a Republican, in his lengthy response to the report.
A key theme of the report is that religious freedom, one of the core principles guiding American democracy, is a difficult concept to translate into policy.
“The law allowing religious exemptions from otherwise applicable laws has not followed an even course,” note the commissioners.