Understanding the Religious Freedom Restoration Act

Описание: Understanding the Religious Freedom Restoration Act

Hemant Mehta (http://www.friendlyatheist.com,   / hemant   ,   / friendlyatheist  )


Over the past few weeks, we've seen these controversies in Indiana and Arkansas involving laws that could allow religious discrimination against gay people.

There's so much misinformation out there about what the bills do, why they needed to be introduced, etc. So I wanted to actually just cover the background of what's happening. Let's make sure that when we argue about this law, we're fully educated about it.

This is going to be super-simplified. I know. I am skipping over some details in order to give you a better overview of everything, but I urge you to go look up details for yourself.

Let me go back to 1990. Oregon had a law banning possession or use of peyote, a hallucinogenic drug. It applied to everyone. But a couple of Native Americans, who happened to be drug counselors, were fired for using peyote. Not only were they fired, they got no unemployment benefits. So they sued.

Their argument was that using peyote is part of their religion. So, really, they were fired for exercising their religious freedom.

The question the courts had to decide was: If there's a law that applies to everyone, can you make some religious exemptions to it?

The Supreme Court said no. The law is the law. No exceptions. And that made sense, especially because these Native Americans were fired, they said, for reasons that had nothing to do with their faith.

But that spooked a lot of religious people who thought this decision might come back to haunt them.

So a few years later, Congress decided to lass a law carving out those exemptions. Because if your religion says you have to do something, the government shouldn't be able to tell you otherwise. That was the religious freedom argument.

They passed a law, with bipartisan support, called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act -- let's call it RFRA. Bill Clinton signed it into law in 1993.

RFRA said legitimate religious exceptions to the law are okay... unless the government can show it has a really good reason for saying otherwise, like a public safety issue, and they're doing it in the least restrictive way possible.

For example, if you're a Muslim prisoner who wants to grow a beard because your religion says you're supposed to... but the prison says you can't have a beard because you might hide something in it... the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year using a law similar to RFRA that that's not a good enough reason by the government. Let the guy have a short beard. It's okay.

But if you're a Quaker and your religion says you shouldn't pay your taxes because they go to support war and you oppose war for religious reasons... that doesn't matter. The government has a pretty good reason to make you pay your taxes.

And then, after some other legal battles, states starting passing their own versions of RFRA to account for their laws. When Barack Obama was a state senator, he signed Illinois' version of the bill into law.

Before I move on, I should point out that there are groups who think RFRA is a bad idea altogether because it says you can break the rules if you're compelled by your faith... but if you just have strong feelings about something, you're out of luck.

That gives religion a special place in our government and, for that reason, some church/state separation groups want it repealed completely.

Now let's jump to last year. Remember the Hobby Lobby case in the Supreme Court? Hobby Lobby's owners said Obamacare forced them to provide abortion pills to their employees (not true) and that went against their religious beliefs! We want an exemption from the law.



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