Twisting Religious Liberty Into Religious Discrimination

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roy-speckhardt/twisting-religious-libert_b_5489714.html

Roy Speckhardt
Executive Director, American Humanist Association

Posted: 06/13/2014 6:20 pm EDT Updated: 06/13/2014 6:59 pm EDT Print Article

Is a business owner's religious belief more important than an employee's right to health care? That's the question the Supreme Court is considering in the Hobby Lobby case, which serves as an example of how corporations are trying to use their owner's religious beliefs in order to discriminate against their own employees free from criminal or civil penalties. When I spoke at a Capitol Hill briefing on the subject yesterday, I pointed out that if Hobby Lobby's attempt to distort religious liberty into a discrimination weapon is successful, it may have massive implications on the U.S. labor market and for religious rights in general.

Americans of all religions and of no religions should recognize that religious liberty will only persevere if we understand that the right to believe as one sees fit is paramount, it's not up to governments to become thought police. But when people act on what they perceive to be the duties of their faith, such actions cannot interfere with the rights of others. For when it does interfere, it ceases to be religious liberty and becomes religious imposition.

If religious liberty becomes simply the right to act on one's prejudices free from consequences, those of minority worldviews will find themselves in a situation similar to those faced prior to the founding of America. Humanists, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and other religious and irreligious minorities will face increased discrimination, whether from their neighbors, or from businesses, or from government officials. Similarly, members of marginalized secular groups such as those in the the LGBTQ community may be harassed for what others perceive as "sinful" qualities related to who they happen to love. In addition, government officials could outright refuse to work for the interests of religious and philosophical minorities because of their belief that those minorities are heretical and should be opposed.

Does this defense of religious liberty seem strange coming from an atheist? Nonreligious Americans are regularly mistaken as opponents to religious liberty. But those who make this mistake forget that true religious liberty must include not only the ability to practice a particular faith, but also the option to not believe as one sees fit. Humanists, atheists, agnostics, and non-theists of all types are therefore extremely invested in the concept of religious liberty, as without it we'd be unprotected from the whims of the religious majority.

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