Recently, there have been several headlines floating around the news and on social media concerning president-elect Donald Trump’s plan to support Congress’s First Amendment Defense Act in 2017.
In verbatim, this act “prohibits the federal government from taking discriminatory action against a person on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that: (1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or (2) sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”
Ian S. Thompson, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union, claimed that it would, if passed, "open the door to unprecedented taxpayer-funded discrimination against LGBT people."
I am terribly devastated as I read this, for we can no longer hope that discrimination towards the Queer community will be conveniently forgotten by Trump’s administration in his first 100 days.
Senator Ted Cruz first cosponsored this bill when it was introduced in 2015, reporting to Buzzfeed News that “the prospects for protecting religious freedom are brighter now than they have been in a long time. Luckily the bill hasn’t gotten far enough yet. With Trump’s approval, however, it is tragically inevitable.
While Cruz and other republican supporters of the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) claim its necessity on the grounds of “religious freedom,” they neglect the holes in their argument that so transparently display bias towards their religious preferences and towards discrimination against the Queer community.
In an article from NBC News, journalist Mary Emily O’Hara writes that “FADA allows individuals and businesses to sue the federal government for interfering in their right to discriminate against LGBTQ people.”
Jennifer Pizer, Law and Policy Director at Lambda Legal, and quoted in this article, reports that FADA "invites widespread, devastating discrimination against LGBT people."
Pizer, along with countless other opponents of FADA, is trying to illuminate the blatant bigotry imbedded in this bill. "It's an unconstitutional effort…” she says, “…to turn the clock back to a time when unmarried mothers had to hide in shame, and LGBT people had to hide, period.”
Elaborating, Pizer explains how "this proposed new law violates both Equal Protection and the Establishment Clause by elevating one set of religious beliefs above all others and by targeting LGBT Americans as a group…"
O’Hara writes that “Ironically, the language of the bill positions the right to discriminate against one class of Americans as a "first amendment" right, and bans the government from taking any form of action to curb such discrimination.”
As someone who can clearly see the issues at stake here with FADA and the dangerous complications that arise in pursuit of religious freedom, this bill terrifies me. All the instances of progress that have been made over the last eight years in the push towards equal rights for the Queer community are now threatened. FADA is truly disastrous, cruel, and offensive.
If you’d like to read more about FADA, this info sheet answers some FAQ-type questions, but as you can see, it is very clearly biased towards the protection of religious freedom.
Furthermore, to read more about FADA’s discriminatory and intolerant practices, this additional article goes into well-informed detail about what this act will now allow. Writer Jay Michaelson even lists examples of the discrimination that will soon become legal.
