For the sake of progress and right, Georgia must consign its version of religious freedom legislation to a deep tomb. And ensure it remains sealed there forevermore.
To do otherwise is to raise too risky a proposition that the moral wrong of discrimination will once again surface – clearly stamped with government’s approval. That prospect would batter Constitutional guarantees of liberty as surely as the bill’s proponents contend that freedom of religion is somehow currently under attack.
The Georgia General Assembly must tread lightly in this delicate and treacherous work of balancing conflicting understandings of individual rights. If lawmakers get it wrong, they risk doing much more harm than good. This is a time for conservative politicians to remind themselves of the dangers of government meddling.
Consider the now well-battered states of Indiana and Arkansas, which chose to pass religious freedom laws. It takes only the most cursory of glances at the predictable economic fallout thundering down this week on Hoosiers and Razorbacks to see the potential for damage that lies ahead if Georgia persists in pursuing a similar path of divisiveness, and not collaboration.
For both these reasons, the Legislature on its final day today should let the Georgia Religious Freedom Restoration Act die. It should remain buried for good.
And lawmakers should likewise resist the temptation to unpack Senate Bill 129 in 2016 and once more parade it forth during what is certain to be yet another divisive election year. One where political opportunists on both sides will be angling for a way to divert attention from serious, pressing issues – particularly ones that may actually cost real money and intellectual capital to solve. The seductive diversions that are religious liberty bills consume little money or thought, and they build nothing but division and mistrust. This matter is far too serious and fundamental to this nation’s founding precepts for the unsavory to shamelessly seek easy political points. This bill is an unwelcome answer to a question Georgians never asked. Instead, how about adequately addressing their demands to live in a state with world-class infrastructure and successful schools?
It is undeniable that the U.S. Constitution rightly enshrines the establishment, and free exercise, of religion. Our nation’s foundational framers were brilliant in that regard. They left religious judgment to God – not government. Which is precisely where it should be. Creator-endowed unalienable rights such as The Declaration of Independence’s “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” are left to secular governments to defend with all the zealotry required to keep such rights secure.
That’s too easily lost when arguable religious precepts are trotted out to support new religious freedom legislation. One popular blogger this week likened the media to “agents of Satan” for daring report on blowback against such laws in other states. It was accompanied by a sermonette on the evil of homosexuality. He deserves praise for making plain the real reason for the fervor to pass the bill, despite protestations that no such sentiments were afoot.
Said commentator’s rant sorely missed the broader point, we believe. Pope Francis, in a 2013 discussion of gay Catholics, famously remarked, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”
Jesus himself warned against hardness of heart, just as he preached on the torment of hellfire that awaited unrepentant sinners. The Apostle Paul, in the Book of Romans, wrote that, “There is none righteous, no, not one.” Pretty plain, that. More bluntly, Luke 6:42 warns, “Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in they brother’s eye.”
These are matters best left to debate and interpretation in houses of worship, and not halls of legislative assembly. For it is inescapable that disputes over Biblical precepts will remain with us always. And that’s okay in a secular society that welcomes practitioners of many faiths, or no faith at all.
Georgia and this nation should hew to the wisdom of this time-tested separation of church and state.
If nothing else, the promises of economic blowback threatened against Indiana this week should make the best path plainly apparent – and the risks of falling away from it easy to fathom.
The South, and Georgia, should know better. We went to war against our own nation in bloody, futile defense of an old order whose failings and abhorrence history came to plainly reveal – and judge.
A century later, the Southland was again on the erring side of history in violently opposing the inevitable end of legalized racial segregation.
Birmingham and its government actors like Bull Connor learned this lesson too late to stave off economic detriment that resulted from their obstinacy. Atlanta, and its penchant for tolerance, won the day.
We can’t forget any of that in pondering Georgia’s future. Do we want to be a vibrant, welcoming, world-class capital and state? Or a provincial, failing backwater divided by barbed wire of religious differences?
It is impossible to be both in the age of a diverse, global economy and its instant, incessant transfers of news, information and insights. We must choose.
As Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has suggested, stubbornly wielding the religious liberty cudgel will not bode well for Georgia’s tourism-driven economy. The last thing we should want is to lend government’s power to that snarky Dixie bumper sticker: “Welcome to the South — now go home.”
