Chelsea Langston

On March 3^rd, Georgia’s Republican Governor Nathan Deale spoke out, on religious grounds, against a religious freedom bill passed by the state Senate. The First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), as the Georgia bill is called, “prohibits discriminatory action against a person who believes, speaks, or acts in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such marriage.”

Proponents of Georgia’s FADA bill and proposed legislation like it in other parts of the country care deeply about what they legitimately see as a vulnerable area for religious freedom. After Obergefell, the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage in every state in the country, individuals and institutions that espouse an orthodox belief on marriage and sexuality have real questions about how such a decision impacts their capacity to continue to live according to their bedrock beliefs. FADA, if passed, would undeniably help address some of these concerns. FADA would ensure that faith-based schools are able to hire employees that abide with their religious standards about marriage. FADA would safeguard a religious child-placement agency’s freedom to continue serving children according to their faith precepts by putting them in homes with a married mother and father. FADA would also enable a faith-based social services agency that partners with the government through grants to continue to do so without compromising its religious identity in its employment policy.

FADA’s objectives of protecting the freedoms of organizations and people who hold orthodox views on sexuality and marriage are sincere and valid. But Christians are no longer writing the dominant script in public opinion or public discourse. The good intentions of the faithful are often met with vitriolic accusations of bigotry. This may not be a fair assessment, yet individuals and institutions of faith cannot ignore that this is a prevailing perception in our culture.

“Religious freedom” increasingly is viewed negatively by the public as a “license to discriminate” and a “means of getting what you want.” In such a climate as this, lawmakers have a responsibility, now more than ever, to consider the public perception implications of proposed legislation. Legislatures should work to create legislative language that is narrowly tailored to the legislative objective and carefully balances the civil rights of all parties involved.

In practice, in addition to all the very important areas of freedom for faith-based organizations discussed above, Georgia’s FADA would also allow religious persons (including individuals, businesses, and organizations) to discriminate against anyone who has engaged in sexual activity outside of a traditional man-woman marriage, including single mothers, gay and transgender youth, victims of human trafficking, and other vulnerable and marginalized groups of people.

There are legitimate circumstances when a religious entity should be able to take such sensitive matters into account: consider the employment decisions of a religious school. But limited instances are hardly the same as an apparent blanket permission. Especially in today’s polarized climate, a bill that asks for sweeping exemptions for religious actors without extending an olive branch to the other side by ensuring legal protections as appropriate to LGBT persons runs the risk of reinforcing the reputation of “American religious freedom” as an evangelical-only, self-interested cause.

Georgia’s FADA bill, although well-intentioned, should better differentiate between different circumstances of differential treatment based on religion. For many, FADA appears to create a trump card deeming as acceptable virtually all discrimination based on a sincerely held religious belief that sex is meant for a man-woman marriage. By failing to make a distinction between, for example, religious hiring by a religious organization and nondiscrimination in services provided by the organization for eligible recipients, FADA misses a vital opportunity to engage lawmakers and the public in the difficult and nuanced yet important discussion of how not all differential treatment based on faith is the same, nor is all of it wrong.

This is problematic because it puts the public, and the governor, for that matter, in a position to choose all or nothing: discrimination based on religion has to be all bad or all good. Many businesses, including Starwood Hotels and Resorts, have come out against such broad stroke discrimination in the name of religion. Therefore, FADA’s overly broad language actually has the potential to hurt Georgia’s economy and create further the political divide.

Georgia’s FADA, and proposed laws like it around the country, are being interpreted by the public as perpetuating the myth that discrimination by people and institutions of faith against people with different views and expressions of sexuality is a zero-sum game: you either have to be for it in all instances or you are against it. Given that choice, many Americans, including some conservative governors worried about their states’ reputation and continued economic viability, will choose the latter.

So what kind of compromise is Governor Deale looking for? The right kind of compromise will recognize that there is a place for protecting bedrock faith precepts and practices of faith-based organizations, while being careful to protect other vulnerable people at the same time. Georgia’s FADA could be a stepping stone in the right direction if state lawmakers and the governor can come to a compromise on how to protect some of the fundamental faith freedoms FADA encompasses while also stopping invidious discrimination against other marginalized and vulnerable groups.