We are in the second year of a fight over religious liberty and who needs protection from what at the state Capitol.
But this year is not a replay of last year, because no two political confrontations are alike. Alliances change. Circumstances, too.
Most would say the biggest difference is a U.S. Supreme Court that has edged ever closer to constitutional protection for gay marriage. Pending high court arguments, plus a decision likely this summer, have lent a certain air of desperation to both sides of the cultural struggle.
But there is another, fresh factor this year that has been largely overlooked. His name is Pope Francis – though it is unlikely that our House speaker will demand that the pontiff apply for a lobbyist’s badge. Francis is no Grover Norquist.
Defeat of last year's religious liberty bills came at the hands of Georgia's largest corporations – Delta, Coke and Home Depot. Their opposition remains, but is more subdued this year because of business interest in House Bill 170, the $1 billion transportation funding bill. This has worried gay and lesbian activists to no end.
What they may fail to recognize is that supporters of S.B. 129, this year's surviving religious liberty bill, are also weaker than they were last year. Official Catholic support, so prominent 12 months ago, has disappeared.
In 2014, the Capitol lobbyist for the Georgia Catholic Conference testified at hearing after hearing in favor of bills that claimed to be nothing more than a state version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, designed to protect people of faith from government. This year, the Catholic lobbyist has been silent.
Last year, supporters waved a letter of endorsement from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. On Wednesday, a spokesman said the USCCB doesn’t involve itself in state legislation.
Over the last dozen years, as their numbers have ballooned to 1.1 million in Georgia, Catholics have become important allies with conservative Protestant denominations in Capitol fights over such issues as abortion and biomedical research. Which has made Catholic absence in the religious liberty fight more than obvious.
Early this month, supporters of the religious liberty effort gathered in the Capitol to call for passage of their legislation “without amendment” – a reference to an unsuccessful Senate attempt to add language making it clear that S.B. 129 was not intended to permit discrimination against gay couples.
Sponsorship of the event was a declaration of membership in the movement. By the Georgia Baptist Convention, several conservative African-American churches – some of them quite large, and conservative movement organizations like Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition and the Liberty Institute.
Though it is no small thing, Southern Baptists are now the only mainline denomination standing squarely behind this year’s religious liberty effort.
What has happened on the Catholic side? Since his election as pope in 2013, Francis has focused on shifting the tone of Catholic debate on social issues, homosexuality included. He has been especially sensitive to the parents of gays and lesbians. “We have to find a way to help that father or that mother to stand by their son or daughter,” the pope told an Argentine journalist late that year.
In Atlanta, Archbishop Wilton Gregory took that statement to heart. Late last summer, Gregory began meeting with a small group of parents of gay and lesbian children.
In October, Gregory wrote of his experience in the archdiocese newspaper: "I assured them that the Church must welcome all of her sons and daughters—no matter what their sexual orientation or life situation might be—and that we have not always done so with a spirit of compassion and understanding.
“I spoke of the distinction that our Church makes between orientation and behavior, which admittedly needs re-examination and development.”
Gregory’s de-escalation of the debate over homosexuality includes this year’s crop of religious liberty legislation. On Tuesday, a spokeswoman said Gregory and Bishop Gregory Hartmayer of Savannah both support a state version of RFRA as a “framework for evaluating freedom of religion claims.”
“However, the bishops oppose any support or implementation of RFRA in a way that will discriminate against any individual,” she added.
A stronger statement of outright opposition had been made earlier that day by Rabbi Joshua Heller of Congregation B’nai Torah in Sandy Springs, one of largest and most conservative synagogues in metro Atlanta.
“In a society where faith is the litmus test to decide who may live among us as neighbors, who may work at or patronize our places of business, then we are all at risk,” Heller said.
That Catholic and Jewish sentiment matter at the state Capitol – and matter a great deal — is evidence that gay marriage isn’t the only cultural shift currently at play in Georgia.
State Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, the sponsor of S.B. 129, is a Catholic, by the by. He said he appreciated the willingness of the Georgia bishops to endorse the RFRA framework.
“I share their commitment to ensuring that it continue to be used to shield people of faith from mistreatment at the hands of the government – and not for any other purpose,” McKoon said.
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