On March 26, Ashton Kutcher tweeted in response to the state-passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act: “Indiana are you also going to allow Christian establishments to ban Jews from coming in?” Apparently confused he added, “Or Vice Versa? Religious freedom??? #OUTRAGE.”
Perhaps not all those responding to the law are such comical straw men, but many educated voices protested inappropriately.
The law echoes its namesake 1993 Federal RFRA, but differs in the following ways: It allows for “person” to refer essentially to an individual, organization or religious group, or a company (the worry here is that for-profit businesses are included); and it uses the unclear language of “burden.”
Those complaining might have missed Section 5, in which the “‘exercise of religion’ includes any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.” This means there is now a state law enabling any “person” to sue for a “burden” pawnable to personal belief.
A Christian may refuse to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding, but the language of this legislation does not support the Christian out of hand. The homosexual may sue the Christian for the burden of discriminating. Who is to say by this definition that homosexuality is not an exercise of religion? The Christian may make a similar claim about belief-based business decisions. It is simply a matter of determining burden in a dispute, a task at which this law only scratches.
President James Danko of Butler University, the institution from which I transferred, declared vague apprehension about the law: “I fear that some of those who advanced it have allowed their personal or political agendas to supersede the best interests of the State of Indiana and its people.”
Incidentally, the law protects the interests of two parties: The state, and its people.
As outlined in Section 8, the government may burden a person, but only if it is the least-restricting route to the “compelling government interest.” That is, the legislation seeks to protect the state as represented by its government, and when expedient, to unburden people of infringements upon their belief-motivated actions.
Danko continued, “No matter your opinion of the law, it is hard to argue with the fact it has done significant damage to our state.” What damage? Danko mentions no specifics. It is curious that Indiana would have already experienced damage given that the law will only take effect as of July 1, 2015, according to the state document. A prophet?
In his piece, “What Makes Indiana’s Religious-Freedom Law Different?” Garrett Epps of the Atlantic conjectured, “this new statute hints most strongly that it is there to be used as a means of excluding gays and same-sex couples from accessing employment, housing, and public accommodations on the same terms as other people.”
Hot on the scent of intolerance, but realizing no language of exclusion exists in the law, Epps covered his intellectual bases attaching Henry David Thoreau’s quote, “some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”
He suggests out of place things, such as the two points of difference from the Federal RFRA, indicate injustice afoot.
There is no trout in this law. The two departures, if problematic, are safeguarded against by the trump card of the government’s compelling interest, and the fact that in every case there is at least one “person” on either side with the ability to make a reasonable case.
Until there is more than a gut feeling, please do not read your fear into the legislation, and make sure that floater is a fish.
