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"The Same Thing, but Different"--Prof. Hadley Arkes in The Catholic Thing
By The James Wilson Institute •
Posted on Mar 24 2015
Prof. Hadley Arkes, writing in The Catholic Thing, examines the DC City Council's resolutions from early 2015 that target the policies and character of conservative and Christian organizations. Some excerpts:
"A snapshot of our times: The band that calls itself the City Council of Washington, D.C. passes two measures, reflecting the local ethos, growing more assertive. One is the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act (RHNDA). This bill would go beyond the familiar bars to discrimination based on “sexual orientation” and bar discrimination based on “reproductive health decisions.” A person working, say, for a Catholic institution could not be fired because she had an abortion, and yet more than that: a teacher could not be fired even though he openly derided and denied the moral teaching of the Church on this matter."
"The second bill, the so-called Human Rights Amendment (HRA) would repeal the Armstrong Amendment of 1989. That Amendment sought to preserve the freedom of religious schools in the District to refuse to recognize, fund, or promote the homosexual life. The Armstrong Amendment reflected the authority still retained by Congress over the District of Columbia, an authority fixed in the Constitution. For over forty years now, there have been arrangements for home rule, but with Congress preserving the authority to veto bills like RHNDA, which test the willingness of a national authority to consent to measures that could never pass the national legislature."
"The opponents of the bill have rightly raised the alarm over 'religious freedom.' True enough, but the assault on freedom contained in these bills would have been turned away in the past based on axioms that do not require any mention of religion. Those axioms involve the freedom of a legitimate, private association to preserve its own integrity."
"Now the curious thing is that these arguments have been made – the other side has been amply alerted to the fact that this kind of legislation would undermine their own freedom to preserve groups dedicated to abortion and gay rights. And yet, the sounding of that argument has not deterred them in the least."
"The other side refuses to concede in the first place that an association that rejects their position on gay rights and abortion can possibly be a legitimate association. They insist on the rightfulness of their position. But if our side does not contest the substance of that claim – if it does not contest the rightness or justification of those policies – all it can do is seek an exemption on the basis of religious “beliefs,” which claim to be valid only for the persons who hold them. In this way, our side is forced to salvage its interests by detaching itself from any claim to the moral ground of our position."