As Republicans and social conservatives are fond of claiming in a metaphorical sense: Religious freedom is “under attack” in America. So one month after the actual mass murder of LGBT people in Orlando, House Republicans will mark the moment Tuesday with hearings on a bill designed to protect religious folks from the “attack” on their freedoms. The First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) would grant special rights to religious folks to discriminate against LGBT Americans if they view marriage as "the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.” Ian Millhiser writes:
In that sense, [FADA] closely resembles a Mississippi law that a federal judge halted earlier this month, in part because it extends special treatment to individuals with anti-LGBT religious beliefs.
Under, the core provision of FADA “the Federal Government shall not take any discriminatory action against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with” a religious objection to marriage equality or a faith-based belief that sexual relations must be reserved to a marriage between people of the opposite sex. [...] The government cannot deny tax subsidies to religious objectors who discriminate against LGBT people, or deny them a grant or benefit, or, under a catch-all provision, “otherwise discriminate against such person.”
FADA, in other words, requires the federal government to actively subsidize anti-LGBT individuals, at least if those individuals would otherwise qualify for a subsidy if not for their opposition to marriage equality.
If you wonder where someone gets the idea that LGBT people are ungodly lesser human beings, look no further than the GOP-led House that’s advancing this bill with 170 Republican co-sponsors and one Democratic co-sponsor, Illinois Rep. Daniel Lipinski. If Republicans had even an ounce of respect for the 49 people who were murdered at the gay night club in Orlando, they would shelf this bill immediately because it so clearly targets same-sex couples for discrimination. The First Amendment, btw, was never meant to guarantee the right to discriminate against certain groups in the name of religion.
As Millhiser notes, the Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down efforts to justify religiously-based racial and gender discrimination. The high court has also overturned efforts to single out gays and lesbians for discrimination, beginning with the Romer v. Evans ruling in 1996.
FADA, moreover, does not simply try to wrap itself in a Constitution that does not exist, it violates the Constitution that does exist outright.
In Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court struck down a Colorado state constitutional amendment forbidding civil rights protections for gay men, lesbians and bisexuals. The amendment, Justice Kennedy explained for the Court, violated the Constitution because it transforms sexual minorities into a legal underclass. “Laws singling out a certain class of citizens for disfavored legal status or general hardships are rare,” Kennedy wrote. “A law declaring that in general it shall be more difficult for one group of citizens than for all others to seek aid from the government is itself a denial of equal protection of the laws in the most literal sense.”