An Uncivil Report on Civil Rights

The United States Commission on Civil Rights recently issued a report titled, “Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties.” This report was three and a half years in the making. It releases the findings from a briefing held on March 22, 2013. 

One wonders what they were actually doing during this time. One thing is certain. They were not reconciling nondiscrimination principles with civil liberties. 

I realize that is a very brash statement. I would not have said it except for the plain language of the Report itself. “The Commission endorses the briefing panelists’ statements as summarized at page 21 of the Report.” This bland sentence announces a wholesale and one-sided endorsement of those who oppose any religious exemptions to SOGI laws, and a complete rejection of the arguments for any religious accommodations. 

Lest the reader miss their point, they repeat the seven points that they endorse: “1) schools must be allowed to insist on inclusive values, 2) throughout history, religious doctrines accepted at one time later become viewed as discriminatory, with religions changing accordingly, 3) without exemptions, groups would not use the pretext of religious doctrines to discriminate, 4) a doctrine that distinguishes between beliefs (which should be protected) and conduct (which should conform to the law) is fairer and easier to apply, 5) third parties, such as employees, should not be forced to live under the religious doctrines of their employers, 6) a basic right as important as the freedom to marry should not be subject to religious beliefs, and 7) even a widely accepted doctrine such as the ministerial exemption should be subject to review as to whether church employees have religious duties” (26).

Fathom the chutzpah of telling a Roman Catholic, for whom marriage has been a sacrament for centuries before America was in diapers, that marriage can no longer “be subject to religious belief.” Notice the dismissive claim that religious doctrines are unstable and ever-changing. Catch the delicious irony that the Commission teaches a “doctrine” that denies religions the right to teach doctrine. According to this “doctrine,” only what is privately believed in the heart “should be protected,” every other conduct, including teaching and living out these beliefs, “should conform to [our] law.” Shiver at the menacing accusation behind the phrase, “pretext of religious doctrines.” It’s hard to imagine a paragraph dripping with more contempt for religion and the faithful.

With the stated goal of “reconciling” two positions, the Report started out on the right track. The first 22 pages lay out two respective positions, together with their legal and philosophical justifications. But then, instead of offering any discussion on how these two complex and divergent positions might be reconciled, the Commission jumps the tracks and immediately gives a full and unqualified endorsement to one position over the other. This does not bode well for those seriously seeking reconciliation. 

All this leaves the reader to wonder, is no reconciliation possible? Or was no reconciliation desired? There is plenty of documentation available to explore this question. For though the entire report is only 27 pages, the full document released by the Commission is nearly twelve times that. The additional pages include 120 pages of written statements from those who testified at the March, 2013 hearing. These can help you understand the technical, legal and philosophical arguments involved. But it is especially the 141 pages of comments from the commissioners themselves that give the greatest insight into their bias against compromise and middle ground. 

Take, for instance, the statement of Martin Castro, the Chairman of the Commission: “today…religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality.” As Chairman Castro sees it, there is no middle ground to be sought. If you have religious reasons for objecting to the insertion of sexual orientation and gender identity language into existing civil rights laws, your religion is a mere pretext for illegal discrimination. You are an outlaw and no religious exemptions should be afforded you whatsoever. 

Castro is not alone in his attitude. Three other Commissioners join him in labelling Religious Freedom Restoration laws as, “thinly-veiled attempts to turn back the clock, …motivated by animus” (33). After a reference to “persons of faith, and of good will,” they feel compelled to add this ominous footnote: “Despite Obergefell’s nod to the existence of good faith religious opinion against same sex marriage, religious objections to same sex intimacy will ultimately retain no more respect than religious objections to racial integration and inter-racial intimacy” (40).

By now, you may be asking: what then becomes of the religious understanding that I and my co-religionists have held for our entire lives and for countless generations before? The Commission has a clear and uncompromising answer for you: “2) throughout history, religious doctrines accepted at one time later become viewed as discriminatory, with religions changing accordingly” (26). There you have it. Change accordingly, or else.

They specifically justify this stance by saying, “religious doctrines that were widely accepted at one time came to be deemed highly discriminatory, such as slavery, homosexuality bans, and unequal treatment of women, and that what is considered within the purview of religious autonomy at one time would likely change.” But is this true? Have entire religions changed their doctrines about male and female, homosexuality, or slavery? Hardly.

For starters, what the Commission derides as the “unequal treatment of women,” the vast majority of Christians throughout the world (both male and female) practice simply as an all-male clergy. Which churches, exactly, does the Commission think have changed on this point? Have the Roman Catholics, the Greek Orthodox, Lutherans, or Evangelicals? Obviously not. Neither do L.D.S. have female bishops, nor Jews, female rabbis, nor Muslims, female Imams. 

To be sure, there is internal dissension found in some parts of these communions. But is it the place of a government commission to judge which party represents the entire religion and which has departed from it? Isn’t this precisely the governmental establishment of one denomination over another which caused our forebears to seek religious freedom in the New World and to guarantee it in the First Amendment?

As for slavery, it borders on mendacity to suggest that Christianity, as such, ever enjoined it. True, some misguided Christians attempted to construct a case for slavery from the Bible, and due to secular entanglements, the church sometimes muted her objection to slavery. But throughout the shameful history of slavery, principled Christians invoked the ancient doctrines of Christianity against the slave trade. Chief among these anti-slavery doctrines was that mankind is directly created by God in His own image. Can anyone really imagine the end of slavery without the theology of the Declaration of Independence: “we hold that all men are created equal”? 

And that brings us to the most troubling aspect of this Report. If the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has its way, it will use the formidable power of U.S. law in a bid to force all churches to stop being churches and become agencies of the state. If successful, what institutions will remain to stand up for their fellow human beings as Wilberforce and the abolitionists did against the slave trade, as Bonhoeffer, Niemoeller and the Pope stood against Hitler’s holocaust, or as Russian Orthodoxy stood shoulder to shoulder with Lutherans against the communistic purges of Stalin and Lenin? 

In the cruelest irony of all, the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, is laying the groundwork to dismantle that one institution which has historically served as the last wall of defense for the civil rights of all men against the tyranny of government-sanctioned religions.