Why homosexuals need not worry over the Indiana law
By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Mar 31, 2015
It’s fashionable this week to hyperventilate about Indiana’s new law protecting religious freedom. So it was refreshing to see a reasonable, sane assessment in an AP piece that began:
Religious freedom laws like the one causing an uproar in Indiana have never been successfully used to defend discrimination against gays-- and have rarely been used at all, legal experts say.
After reading that lede, you might bet heavily that the next sentence would begin with “But…” You would lose that bet, but only on a technicality. The piece continues…
However….
The AP goes on to observe that times are changing, homosexuals have made enormous progress in gaining social and legal acceptance, and “religious conservatives are now scrambling for new legal strategies to blunt the trend.” It’s tough to argue any of those points.
So, Yes, the climate is changing, and what has been true in the past may not be true in the future. But given the way the winds have shifted—with homosexuals winning and religious conservatives “scrambling”—it’s absurd to suggest that homosexuals have something to fear from the Indiana law.
Such laws have never—repeat, never—been successfully invoked in the past to justify discrimination against homosexuals, AP tells us. But in the past, our courts were far less likely to accept homosexuals’ demands for legal protection. Therefore… There’s only one logical conclusion.
If your basement doesn’t flood during the rainy season, it probably won’t flood in a drought. And that’s why homosexuals have no cause for concern about the Indiana law.
Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.
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Posted by: kwonbbl1 -
Apr. 02, 2015 12:12 AM ET USA
Waiting for the Supreme Court to reveal how Satan is actively working in the country from the Supreme court back yard down to the back-alley streets.
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Posted by: AgnesDay -
Apr. 01, 2015 2:30 PM ET USA
I didn't have any notion that I could compel a baker to decorate a cake with "Congratulations on your abortion." But here we go. It used to be that decency would impel people not to deliberately coerce others into violating their religious beliefs. Maybe we can find out what happened to decency.
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Posted by: Randal Mandock -
Apr. 01, 2015 5:28 AM ET USA
Although I have not read these laws, hearing about them in radio reports gives me the impression that their anti-discrimination clauses provide a back door through state law to attack a church for establishing hiring and firing practices based on sound moral doctrine. In 1992 the CDF stated that "it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account" (n. 11) in employment considerations for certain jobs. The anti-discrimination clauses, as reported, seem to make this illegal.
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Posted by: skall391825 -
Apr. 01, 2015 2:26 AM ET USA
All the huffing and puffing is not about the Indiana law; it's about putting political and social pressure on the Supreme Court to rule that homosexual "marriage", just like the "right" of a mother to kill her unborn (and maybe post-born) child, is a "right" under the Constitution. Lord save us from the evil of liberalism.
