POLITICS
Conservatives Disagree on LGBTQ Rights Compromise
Fierce pushback against effort to forge approach even with broad religious carve-outs
BY DUNCAN OSBORNE
While the conservative proponents
of potential compromise legislation
that would bar discrimination
based on sexual orientation
and gender identity will likely face resistance
from the LGBTQ community, it is possible that
the fi ercest opposition to such legislation will
be among conservatives.
“Some of these folks are really serious people
within the religious hierarchy,” said Tim
Schultz, president of the 1st Amendment Partnership,
a group that advocates for religious
freedom. “Some are going to oppose it because
it’s a kind of prudential mistake. A smaller
group will oppose this as a kind of heresy.”
For several years, some on the right have
been saying that conservatives should agree
to enact legislation that would extend antidiscrimination
protections to include sexual
orientation and gender identity as protected
classes while offering exemptions for religious
institutions and their affi liates and businesses
that have religious objections to serving or employing
LGBTQ people.
Under the rubric of Fairness for All, which
remains undefi ned, a small number of religious
conservatives have argued for this compromise
position. There is currently no federal legislation
that embodies this approach, though
Buzzfeed News reported in May that such legislation
was being written. With the exception of
Utah in 2015 , proponents have had no success
in enacting state legislation that would grant at
least some protections to LGBTQ people with
exemptions for religious conservatives and institutions.
“We’re at the early stages of this, real early
stages,” Schultz said. “Everybody views this as
a multi-year process… We expect to have conservative
critics and liberal critics.”
While the LGBTQ community has had recent
successes with marriage, conversion therapy
bans, and adding gender identity to existing
state anti-discrimination laws , the community
has not recently added new states, except for
Utah, to the jurisdictions that bar discrimination
based on sexual orientation and gender
identity. The advocates for Fairness for All say
their approach ends confl ict and lawsuits and
advances at least some of the interests of all
parties.
“Those of us who have worked on the Fairness
for All concept believe that the Church
and religious institutions need to be protected
in their convictions (i.e. Religious freedom),
while simultaneously affi rming civil rights for
all persons regardless of their sexual orientation
or patterns of life,” Dennis Hollinger, a professor
of Christian ethics at the Gordon-Conwell
Theological Seminary in Massachusetts,
wrote in an email.
Since Utah, Shirley Hoogstra, president of
the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities
(CCCU), and Leith Anderson, president of
the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE),
have been meeting with peers in an effort to
drum up support. The boards of both groups
quietly passed motions backing Fairness for
All last year.
While Fairness for All has been opposed by
some conservatives from the start, that opposition
exploded into public view in 2016 after the
CCCU and NAE positions became more public.
Seventy-fi ve “prominent religious and thought
leaders” issued a statement titled “Preserve
Freedom, Reject Coercion” opposing all “SOGI
laws,” measures that ban discrimination based
on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Those laws “threaten basic freedoms of religion,
conscience, speech, and association;
violate privacy rights; and expose citizens to
signifi cant legal and fi nancial liability for practicing
their beliefs in the public square,” the
signers wrote. “We therefore believe that proposed
SOGI laws, including those narrowly
crafted, threaten fundamental freedoms, and
any ostensible protections for religious liberty
appended to such laws are inherently inadequate
and unstable.”
That opposition has continued into 2019,
with right-wing political groups, such as the
Heritage Foundation and the Family Research
Council, taking up the cause. Public Discourse,
an online journal produced by the right-wing
Witherspoon Institute, has published at least
two pieces opposing Fairness for All in 2019.
That site is edited by Ryan Anderson, a senior
staffer at the Heritage Foundation and a signer
of the 2016 statement.
“It is defi nitely true that many of the signatories
of that document are opposed to Fairness
to All,” Shultz said. “A lot of the verbiage in that
document is basically about the idea that sexual
orientation laws are bad, they’re coercive.
I would say that that is an accurate description
of them… They can be used for coercive
purposes.”
The LGBTQ community’s stance toward religious
exemptions has generally not been favorable.
Currently, the community is pressing the
Equality Act. That federal legislation, which
passed the House in May, adds sexual orientation
and gender identity to the Civil Rights Act
of 1964. That law has limited religious exemp-
C-SPAN.ORG
Tim Schultz, president of the 1st Amendment Partnership, favors a
compromise measure establishing federal LGBTQ rights that would
include religious carve-outs but acknowledges that a number of
leading social conservatives have strong objections.
CCCU
onservatives Shirley Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges &
Universities, has brought her group into the conversations about a
compromise on LGBTQ rights nationally.
➤ FAIRNESS FOR ALL, continued on p.5
September 26 - October 9 4 , 2019 | GayCityNews.com
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