With the Equality Act heading to the Senate, religious liberty has been trending on Twitter— and not in a good way. So here’s a little reality check from Chaplain Susan's archives:
Religious liberty is NOT the liberty to impose your religion on everybody else.
Religious liberty is NOT the liberty to impose your religion on everybody else.
The First Amendment protects us from any laws “impeding the free exercise of religion” thus guaranteeing that each and every American has the liberty to believe — or not believe — absolutely anything he, she or they chooses about what God wills or intends, blesses, or condemns.
It also — thank God — protects the rest of us from any other American imposing those beliefs on us.
For example:
And nobody’s religious liberty is under attack when the answer is “equal protection isn’t equal protection unless it equally protects everybody equally.”
The First Amendment is doing its job protecting our religious liberty. And anybody who tells you otherwise needs to do a little remedial reading of the Ninth Commandment. (I’ll save you having to look it up: that’s the “Thou shall not bear false witness” one.)
- A Jew has the religious liberty to keep a kosher kitchen — but not to take away your ham sandwich.
- A pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic had the religious liberty to abstain from meat on Friday — but not to confiscate my pot roast.
- And an Evangelical Christian has the right to believe that God doesn’t bless same-sex marriages - but not to deny equal protection to the marriage of the lesbian couple next door.
And nobody’s religious liberty is under attack when the answer is “equal protection isn’t equal protection unless it equally protects everybody equally.”
The First Amendment is doing its job protecting our religious liberty. And anybody who tells you otherwise needs to do a little remedial reading of the Ninth Commandment. (I’ll save you having to look it up: that’s the “Thou shall not bear false witness” one.)
And it you're a person of faith, make your voice heard -- loud and clear -- to your Senator. If we don't stand up and speak out the only faith-based narrative they will hear is from those trying to hijack the Holy Scriptures we hold in common and use them as a weapon of mass discrimination against LGBTQ people.
Our voices are nothing less than a vaccine against the toxic theology that relegates LGBTQ Americans to second-class citizenship -- and if ever there was a time to raise those voices it is now as we continue to work for "herd immunity" against the viruses of homophobia and transphobia that infect our nation.
Ready. Set. Go.
Equality Act Action Alert
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