The American religious right is more determined than ever to discriminate - and that may be a good thing. It means that the privileged can no longer overlook the impact of prejudice. They no longer have the luxury of overlooking it or dismissing it as something that’s none of their concern.
Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian college in Illinois, announced last week that it was dropping health insurance for all its students rather than comply with Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Under the compromise offered by the Obama administration, religious employers that object to birth control can notify their insurer, who then provides it to covered individuals without involving the employer, but Wheaton argued that even having to state their objection was an intolerable violation of their religious conscience - a claim that would undoubtedly lead to chaos if it were widely accepted.
Along the same lines, since the US supreme court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in Obergefell v Hodges, some county clerks and probate judges in conservative states like Kentucky and Alabama have have announced that they’ll no longer issue marriage licenses to anyone, gay or straight, rather than face a discrimination lawsuit they’d be certain to lose for turning away a same-sex couple.
Even before landmark rulings like Obergefell, religious groups were engaging in this massive-resistance strategy. Catholic charities have shut down in both the US and the UK, ending services like adoption assistance and foster care, so as not to have to give benefits to same-sex partners of employees or consider same-sex couples as prospective parents. Catholic schools are also notorious for firing popular gay teachers and principals in the face of protests by students - and some are responding by making their morality clauses even more draconian.
These tactics echo the civil rights era, when some municipalities shut down their public schools entirely, as well as other public accommodations like pools, rather than desegregate them. In the same way, today’s religious conservatives are so determined to continue discriminating against women and LGBT people that they’re willing to deprive everyone of rights and privileges rather than grant equal treatment to people who, in their eyes, don’t deserve it.
In a strange way, this is a sign of progress. These decisions may well mean that more people are being materially deprived than would otherwise be the case. But it also means that the costs of that discrimination are being spread across all of society, borne by everyone equally, rather than being concentrated on politically less-powerful demographics. For a politics that’s based on justice and empathy, that’s good news.
It’s human nature to not care about injustices that don’t directly affect you. When it’s only same-sex couples, for example, who face rejection at the county clerk’s office, it’s easy for straight people to ignore their plight. When it’s only women who are denied access to standard and necessary reproductive healthcare, it’s easy for men to dismiss it as not their problem. But when members of the majority feel the sting of unfair deprivation for themselves, they’ll gain a more intimate perspective on how prejudice hurts – and, we can hope, they’ll be more willing to support democratic means to abolish it and to create a fairer society for everyone. Ideally, of course, people would be willing to do the right thing just from hearing about the mistreatment of others, even without experiencing it personally, but this comes in a close second.
Too often, religion is thought of as a purely benevolent and positive force, despite the role it has played in justifying harmful prejudice and the ongoing denial of equal rights. But these hardball massive-resistance tactics, this stubborn desire to enforce their will despite the collateral costs, brings people face to face with the anti-human side of religious morality in a way that’s a lot harder to overlook. Atheists have long made this criticism, but ironically, it’s the religious conservatives themselves who are lending it greater weight and force.
