The First Amendment Defense Act. It’s a name that Big Brother would be proud of, seemingly plucked from the bowels of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s “1984.”
The Senate bill is not the bulwark its name suggests but the latest salvo in the ongoing attempt to redefine religious freedom as religious privilege. It does nothing to defend the First Amendment; in fact, it violates it.
To understand just how awful the First Amendment Defense Act is and grasp what a discriminatory disaster it would be for the country, we need to get back to the basics of the First Amendment itself.
The amendment is beautifully concise: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Those six rights — a secular government, free exercise of religion, free speech, free press, assembly, and petitioning your government — have two things in common. First, none is unlimited. Second, though not absolute, all six seek to protect the one absolute right that we do possess: the freedom of thought.
For believers, this means that your right to believe cannot be impinged in any way, but your right to act on those beliefs can. This is where our conflict arises. The conflict is between belief and action. People can believe whatever they like. They are free to believe the voices they’re hearing in their heads are the voice of a god, or that thetans and evil spirits make us sad, or that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. They are even free to believe, as the owner of a Colorado cake shop does, that a guy named Jesus was a carpenter, and that he wouldn’t have made a bed for a gay couple.
But the right to act on those beliefs is by no means absolute.
The First Amendment Defense Act seeks to upend this enduring understanding of our rights. It elevates religiously motivated action to that same plane of absolute protection that has been reserved for the freedom of thought. The bill is not about protecting religious belief; it’s about protecting speech and action based on religious belief.
Yet the act does not extend this privilege to all religious beliefs. Under it, some religious beliefs are more privileged than others. In an unbelievable overreach, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and the other 21 co-sponsors of this bill actually singled out the religious beliefs that they deemed worthy of protection. Only two made the cut:
1. Marriage is between one man and one woman.
2. Sexual relations outside marriage are improper.Singling out specific religious beliefs for entitlement violates, rather than “defends,” the First Amendment.
Read the full story at Religion News Service
