(Dobbs) Are The Morality Police At The Door?
We've seen abortion rights reversed. Are gay rights next?
Look at these two headlines, both from a single day last week:
“Putin Signs Law Banning Expressions of L.G.B.T.Q. Identity in Russia”
… and…
“Indonesia Outlaws Sex Outside Marriage”
The backstory on Russia is, it is now illegal to disseminate “information aimed at the formation of nontraditional sexual attitudes.” In case that’s not clear, “nontraditional” means anything but straight. It’s not a new idea in Russia. For a decade it has been illegal to spread such “propaganda” to minors. Now though, it’s illegal to spread it to anybody. No one will be celebrating Pride Day any more in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Not openly. Not unless they want to end up behind bars.
The backstory on Indonesia is, a unanimous Parliament, increasingly driven by the religious right— the Islamic right— has updated the nation’s criminal code, not only outlawing sex outside of marriage, but criminalizing co-habitation by couples who aren’t married. Violators can go to jail for up to half a year. As if it makes everything okay, the governor of the Indonesian resort island of Bali tried to reassure the world, “Bali tourism will not be affected by new criminal code.” But that doesn’t lighten the load for gay Indonesians. Because they will be most vulnerable to the new law when it takes effect, according to civil rights activists there, they are most likely to be the ones who end up behind bars.
But what does any of this have to do with any of us? At first glance, nothing, especially with the President signing the “Respect for Marriage Act” on Tuesday, guaranteeing protection for same-sex (and interracial) marriages. It is encouraging that with bipartisan sponsorship in the Senate, 12 Republicans joined all 50 Democrats to pass it. In the House, it got 44 Republican votes.
But that’s not the whole story. While 12 Republican senators voted for the act, 38 voted against it. In the House, while 44 were in favor, 169 were opposed. One conservative congresswoman from Missouri argued, “This bill only serves to further demonize biblical values.” Left unsaid: opposing it demonizes fellow Americans.
So here’s the connection: whether at home or overseas, the morality police of the religious right are alive and well. Where they have their way— places like Russia and Indonesia— people who are gay and trans face not just discrimination, but a prison sentence. And it’s not just Russia and Indonesia. In almost 70 nations around the globe, half of them in Africa, some form of gay life is a crime.
Here at home, it’s not. But when you see that there are still segments of society that don’t want LGBTQ Americans to have the same rights straight Americans have— as those negative votes in Congress bear out— you can’t blame citizens who are gay and trans for wondering whether the morality police might come for them next.
It doesn’t sound paranoid after a bulletin last week from the Department of Homeland Security. Citing online forums in which users have encouraged violence against gays and praised the mass murderer at the gay-friendly Club Q last month in Colorado Springs, DHS says the U.S. is in “a heightened threat environment.”
The tide keeps turning.
For the past couple of decades, while the odium never disappeared, it turned toward the welfare of same-sex couples. Civil unions, sanctioned marriages, survivor rights when a partner dies, eventually the adoption of children too. But now, with Republican rhetoric referring to the LGBTQ community as “groomers and abusers” as survivors from Club Q testified yesterday in Congress, and after the recent passage of anti-gay and anti-trans laws in several states— there have been more than 340 such bills, according to Representative Carolyn Maloney, from Florida to South Dakota, from Montana to Mississippi— the tide is turning back. Books with gay references are banned, law-abiding citizens are accused of pedophilia because they’re gay.
And now, depending on an upcoming decision at the United States Supreme Court, the tide might get even rougher. This headline, also from that same day when the Russia and Indonesia news came out, can’t be a good omen:
“Supreme Court Seems Ready to Back Web Designer Opposed to Same-Sex Marriage”
What that means is, your rights might be in jeopardy if you’re gay. Probably not to the point they’ve reached in Russia and Indonesia, but right-wing conservatives would like to chip away at what’s been won.
To be sure, the case of this Colorado web designer is not cut-and-dried. It’s a clash of civil rights versus religious rights.
The civil rights are clear: we have Constitutional protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation. If those protections prevail, the web designer cannot refuse to design a wedding website for a gay couple even if they ask her to include a message that conflicts with her religious faith. During courtroom arguments Monday, liberal Justice Elena Kagan hypothesized the message, “God blesses this union.” The designer has left no doubt: she doesn’t want to write something like that if she herself doesn’t bless it.
The religious rights are clear too: we cannot be forced to say words, or to write words, that are at odds with our religious convictions. A Muslim cannot be forced to read the Torah. A Jew cannot be obliged to pray to Jesus. A Christian cannot be compelled to chant from the Koran. Seen that way, it’s an argument about freedom of speech: what we’re free to say, and what we’re free not to say.
So on several levels, this case is complicated.
In a similar case more than four years ago, a baker— also in Colorado— said his religious convictions compelled him to turn down a gay couple who wanted a wedding cake. The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment’s protection of speech and religion gave him that right. The Court’s majority said that if ordered to make the cake, the baker would be subjected to “a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated his objection.” True, but that’s only half the story. By upholding his right not to bake the cake, the Court subjected the gay couple to a clear hostility toward their sexual orientation. In other words, a clear hostility simply because they’re gay.
Now, in the case of the web designer, what the Court has to do is walk a fine line between rights that might not coexist. And the complications go even deeper than that, for an underlying if unspoken issue is prejudice: if the web designer won’t work for a gay couple planning a wedding— whether it’s based on her religion or some other set of moral values— she has an implicit prejudice against gays.
That itself is not illegal, but imposing it on clients in a business open to the general public might be. That’s what the Supreme Court has to decide, which leads to the most complicated part of all: if the Court’s conservative majority rules in favor of the web designer and affirms that she has the right to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, how do they avoid the Pandora’s Box it opens? If they rule for her, do they open the door for other kinds of discrimination? Even conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett sees the pitfalls: “However we decide this case,” she said during oral arguments, “obviously applies to others.” Others who could face discrimination based on their race, their color, their disability, their national origin, their religion, their gender.
Don’t forget, when Roe v Wade was struck down back in June, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion, “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”
Griswold is the case that established a couple’s right to use contraceptives. Lawrence was a ruling that decriminalized anal and oral sex. Obergefell legalized same-sex marriage. Would the newly-minted “Respect for Marriage Act” even survive against that?
It is not far-fetched to see this current case as the next step in putting Americans with “nontraditional sexual attitudes,” as the new Russian law puts it, in a different category from straight Americans. And in delimiting their defense against discrimination.
And although the scale is different, that would put us in some sort of alliance with Indonesia and Russia and those other oppressive nations around the world where if you’re gay, you’re something less than a first-class citizen. It’s not an alliance I would choose for my nation.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
spot on right, Greg. Thank you. There are times I think that Margaret Atwood well-anticipated our dystopian present.....