GOP Senator Admits Religious Freedom Means Rejecting LGBTQ People

Sometimes the mask slips

When LGBTQ elders are denied placement in taxpayer-subsidized retirement homes and care facilities because the Christians who operate them refuse to serve members of gender and sexual minorities, is that freedom or oppression? I think the answer is obvious, but Republicans don’t. If you think I’m kidding, please keep reading, because I want to introduce you to three women severely harmed by so-called “Christian liberty.”

Conservative Christians in the U.S. often claim to be persecuted. They say they are rapidly losing individual freedom as they seek champions to defend them. The Alliance Defending Freedom is one such prominent champion. They describe themselves like this:

Alliance Defending Freedom is the world’s largest legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, marriage and family, parental rights, and the sanctity of life. We defend your most cherished liberties in Congress, state legislatures, and courtrooms across the country.

But what are the cherished liberties they claim to defend?

Are Christians in the U.S. really losing the right to practice their faith? Have they lost any individual freedoms at all? If you listen to the ADF, the answer is an emphatic yes. But the deeper you dig, the more you see the freedom Christians complain about losing is the freedom to reject LGBTQ people. They demand the “freedom” to deny us employment, to not sell us goods and services, to exclude us from the taxpayer-funded schools and universities they run, and even to deny us housing — all on sectarian religious grounds.

Sometimes the mask slips and ‘freedom’ snarls at you

As the LA Blade reported two days ago, Virginia Republicans are working hard to push anti-LGBTQ laws through the state senate, but a two-member Democratic majority is stopping them ... for the time being. The details of what VA Republicans demand in the name of religious liberty are instructive and frightening.

Mark Peake, a state senator from Lynchburg, home of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University (which played an outsize role in his election) recently introduced Senate Bill 177, which Peake calls a “religious freedom” measure. The details of the bill look innocuous enough:

Nothing in the Virginia Human Rights Act prohibits a religious corporation, association, or society, or any nonprofit institution or organization operated, supervised, or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association, or society, from taking any action to promote the religious principles for which it is established or maintained.

Challenged during a committee hearing, though, Peake’s mask slipped. He gave a transparent and frightening answer when asked if his bill would allow Christian organizations to deny housing to LGBTQ people and others who don’t meet their religious standards. He showed his fangs and said the quiet part out loud:

“You are correct, what you said is correct. They would be allowed to discriminate against people that they do not feel follow their religious beliefs. This is the whole point of it, is for their religious beliefs, and it gives them the ability to discriminate against people that conflict with their religious beliefs.”

Then he chuckled, saying, “I think that is the substance of this bill.”

Senate Bill 177 is about denying freedom, not protecting it

Peake didn’t mention another charming element of the bill, which adds religiously operated preschools to a list of educational institutions exempt from a state civil rights law that protects LGBTQ people in employment. Apparently, some Christians in Virginia worry they lack the freedom to fire preschool teachers for being LGBTQ.

The mind boggles, but the housing issue is the critical one.

In case you don’t understand the implications, let me lay it on the line. Christians in Virginia want the freedom to refuse LGBTQ people admission to the nursing homes, retirement communities, co-op apartments, and homeless shelters they run, often with heavy taxpayer subsidies.

This isn’t hypothetical. Denial of housing to LGBTQ people is a serious problem in the United States, almost always because Christian institutions spending taxpayer dollars refuse to serve LGBTQ people. Human Rights Watch laid out the scope of the problem in a comprehensive 2018 report, but let me put three vulnerable human faces on the problem.

Lisa Oakley denied long-term nursing care

When 68-year-old U.S. Army veteran Lisa Oakley needed long-term care in Colorado, dozens of nursing facilities denied her a bed because she is transgender. Several of them cited Christian faith as grounds to refuse to house and care for Lisa. All the facilities that rejected her, including the private Christian ones, were heavily taxpayer subsidized.

Lisa finally found a facility willing to meet her needs, but only after SAGE, an LGBTQ elder-advocay organization went to bat for her and lawyers threatened lawsuits.

Lesbian couple denied an apartment in assisted-living community

When married lesbian couple Mary Walsh and Bev Nance made the tough decision to sell their home and seek assisted living, the only facility in their hometown that could meet their medical needs rejected them. The retirement community, which approved their application before learning they were lesbians, cited Christian beliefs as the basis of their rejection. The privately operated facility is not overtly religious and relies heavily on taxpayer money to operate. They don’t enforce a religious test for acceptance or expect residents to participate in worship, but lesbians need not apply. Mary and Bev had to move far out of town and away from their lifelong network of friends.

Does any of the following sound like freedom to you?

Let’s get back to the Alliance Defending Freedom. What religious “freedoms” do they fight for? Let’s talk about what freedom means to these self-described champions of “Christian liberty.”

• ADF is fighting to keep books by or about LGBTQ people out of school libraries. I thought book banning was the opposite of freedom. It’s certainly antithetical to the values of liberty I learned as a child, ironically in Christian schools.
• ADF has a track record of fighting for criminalization of same-gender sex at home. They are fighting to criminalize homosexuality abroad right now. Freedom? Pardon me while I cough.
• ADF is fighting to criminalize women who choose abortion. That’s not freedom, it’s a restriction of freedom.
• ADF is waging court fights all over the country to defend Christian organizations that turn away LGBTQ people.
• ADF is fighting for a taxpayer-funded United Methodist adoption agency in Tennessee that refused to work with a Jewish couple and dashed the hopes of a child who had finally found a forever home.
• ADF is fighting for the same agency as it sues the Biden administration over rules that require federally funded adoption agencies to serve LGBTQ people equally.

So freedom means wielding faith as a sword to hurt people?

That appears to be the common theme in the work ADF does, and it appears to be the principal claim U.S. Christians make when they say their liberty is infringed.

They complain they don’t have the right to discriminate against people, usually LGBTQ people, and that they should have it, even when they are providing services paid for substantially or primarily by U.S. taxpayers. Usually, they don’t say it so clearly. Often, they obfuscate with flowery language about liberty and sacred American traditions.

Sometimes, though, the mask slips. That just happened in Virginia. Will you please note that Senator Mark Peake just said the quiet part, the hateful part, out loud?

James Finn is a former Air Force intelligence analyst, long-time LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, a frequent columnist for the LA Blade, a contributor to other LGBTQ news outlets, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].

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