WASHINGTON WATCH BRET KINCAID
Discriminating Choices Ask most progressive evangelicals whether they oppose employment discrimination and you’ll get a resounding yes, a response likely grounded in a passion for social justice, inspired by the biblical story, and shaped by the civil rights movements of the last century. Ask the very same people whether the government should require an independent Christian bookstore to hire an openly gay job applicant, and they might very well respond with a resounding no. I suspect this ambivalence is often due, at least in part, to a clash of two cardinal biblical values—religious liberty and employment justice. This clash has been at the heart of the three-decade debate over the Employment NonDiscrimination Act (ENDA). Last November, the House finally passed ENDA, a bill that would add “sexual orientation” to the list of federally protected classes—race, color, sex, national origin, and religion—under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is likely the Senate will vote on it early this year. According to Gallup, almost 9 in 10 Americans now favor equal opportunity in employment for gay persons. Although Americans have been roughly split down the middle over gay marriage, the vast majority appear to believe that employers should not discriminate against gay persons. A majority-rule system would slam-dunk ENDA into the legal code. We live in a democracy, however, in which the majority has no constitutional authority to trump government-protected liberties and rights. But which should government protect when a longstanding civil liberty and a contended civil right clash? Evangelicals offer three kinds of response.
For many conservative evangelicals the answer is obvious: Religious liberty beats sexual liberty hands down, especially when the question is whether to protect gay applicants and employees. Many conservative evangelicals believe that a person’s sexual orientation is a choice rather than genetically determined from birth. Additionally, they take their cue from the Bible’s negative references to gay behavior and the longstanding Christian belief that homosexual practice is immoral.Consequently, they argue that Christian employers should not be forced to hire gay persons. Many conservative evangelicals, however, are equally (or even more) influenced by a strong private-property principle. For instance, Family Research Council Vice President Peter Sprigg argues that “what is most significant about this bill is not...the impact on religious employers [but] the ratcheting up of federal government interference in the free market.” He qualifies his support of laissezfaire for purposes of protecting historically discriminated groups or, in the case of protecting people of faith, if the Constitution specifically requires protection. But people with same-sex attractions do not, according to Sprigg, fall under either of these qualifications. Reformed evangelicals in the Kuyperian tradition view ENDA from a different angle.They believe government ought to protect the authority of the “sphere” of faith-based institutions. Among them there is debate over precisely which institutions should be designated as faith-based but not over whether faith-based institutions have the proper authority to discriminate against gay persons.The Kuyperians believe they do. Stanley Carlson-Thies of the Center for Public Justice (CPJ) recently argued that ENDA proponents should “ditch” the bill, not because it ignores the moral stature of gay persons but because it “fences in” religious liberty. Though some Kuyperians might believe Christian instiPRISM 2008
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tutions on Christian grounds shouldn’t discrimate against gay persons, they believe the jurisdiction of faith should be free from government interference. Progressive evangelicals, who resonate with the nonviolent, social-justice public agenda of Anabaptists, have a strong sympathy for any socially estranged group, partly because their ancestors were also estranged.Their Protestant and Catholic brethren hunted down, tortured, and killed them for their religiously motivated but allegedly immoral practices and heretical doctrine. As a result, these evangelicals were predisposed to be very sensitive to the biblical justice themes about liberation and protection of marginalized people. But Anabaptists were also one of the first groups to seek religious liberty.Thus progressive evangelicals are torn between wanting government to ensure employers can hire according to their faithmotivated consciences and wanting to protect gays from job discrimination. Not surprisingly, many progressive evangelicals believe, like those in the other two evangelical traditions, that ENDA defines faith too narrowly, while other progressives favor ENDA because they worry more about protecting gays from job discrimination.These evangelicals are less confident than conservative evangelicals that homosexuality is a choice, and even if it is a choice, they recognize adherence to a faith is equally a choice, one which enjoys government protection. ESA President Ron Sider says he strongly opposes all forms of gay bashing and insists on the civil rights of everyone, but he believes that ENDA is neither necessary nor desirable. He fears that “ENDA would be one step in a process that may lead to government restriction of the religious freedom to live out what most evangelicals believe with regard to homosexual practice.” ★ Bret Kincaid is associate professor of political science at Eastern University in St. David’s, Pa.