A Reflection on Atlantic Live’s LGBTQ Summit: Why Religious Liberty and LGBTQ Rights Are Not at Odds
Given our deep commitment to this issue, the summit panel titled “Religious Liberty” was disappointing. It featured only one panelist: Kristina Arriaga, the executive director of the Becket Fund. In case you don’t know the Becket Fund, it’s a legal group that represented Hobby Lobby in its successful bid to refuse its employees insurance coverage for contraception they are legally entitled to because Hobby Lobby’s owners claimed it was against their religion.
During her talk, Arriaga used friendly language and spurious statistics to try and put a sympathetic face on her flawed view of religious liberty. But her positions were clear. She argued that religious liberty allows businesses to deny service to same-sex couples, even when state law prohibits that discrimination. She also argued that doctors can refuse trans-related healthcare to trans people.
Agenda from the summit.
Real religious liberty, though, is quite different from what Arriaga depicted. Freedom of religion is a fundamental right, but no one has the right to use that as a weapon against others. Standing with the LGBTQ community is not anathema to religious liberty – the religious liberty enshrined in our Constitution allows you freedom of conscience and exercise, not the license to steamroll the rights of others under the guise of religion.
That’s why it was disappointing that the Atlantic took the Becket Fund’s definition of religious liberty at face value. Many religious denominations and advocates for religious freedom, like Americans United, vigorously defend against the Becket Fund’s understanding of religious liberty. By presenting the view of only the Becket Fund, the Atlantic bought into a false, but all-too-common dichotomy – that religious liberty and LGBTQ rights are fundamentally at odds. They aren’t. Real religious freedom ensures that religion is no excuse to harm others. Moreover, religion and faith are central to the lives of many LGBTQ people, and many religious traditions embrace LGBTQ equality.
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