Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. For His Moral Ideals Rather Than His Politics

In commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Peniel E. Joseph, the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts University, said in a 2014 article:

King emerges as a talented individual whose rhetorical genius at the March on Washington helped elevate an entire nation through his moral power and sheer force of will.

The March on Washington was when King delivered his famous 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. Joseph goes on:

Yet missing from many of the annual King celebrations is the portrait of a political revolutionary who, over time, evolved into a radical warrior for peace, justice and the eradication of poverty. During his last three years, King the “Dreamer” turned into one of the most eloquent, powerful and scathing critics of American society. King lent his moral force and power to anti-poverty crusades that questioned the economic system of capitalism and called for an end to the Vietnam War. . . . King’s powerful rage against economic exploitation and war is often overlooked when we think of him as only a race-healer.

The "moral power" of King's famous "Dream" speech in Washington was actually the moral power of the Founding Fathers resurrected. In that speech, King reminded Americans of the ideals laid down in the Declaration of Independence—the philosophic blueprint for the constitution and the new nation—and called on Americans to fully live up to those ideals. “In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check,” King said.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Yet, King's Dream was to be corrupted by an inner contradiction. In his later years, King questioned the legitimacy of capitalism and turned to what he termed "democratic socialism," a hybrid of two evil systems (democracy and socialism) that repudiates the very ideals he espoused in his speech.  In a supreme irony, King unwittingly aligned with the political ideology of America's first encounter with Democratic Socialism, the Confederate Slavocracy.* Therein lies one of the great American paradoxes—the clash between King the moral force and King the political revolutionary.

When the Founders drafted the Declaration of Independence, they laid down the radical principles that would give birth to capitalism. These 55 brilliant words—the opening lines of the second paragraph of the Declaration—sum up the essence of capitalism:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

When King reaffirmed those ideals—that all men are created equal, possessing inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness protected equally and at all times under a government of objective law rather than of men—he was really, though apparently unwittingly, affirming the foundational principles of capitalism.

Capitalism is the system based on individual rights, rights-protecting government and the only kind of equality consistent with justice—equality of individual rights before the law. Because of these principles, Capitalism is the only social system that banishes exploitation and war, because individual rights banishes aggressive or initiatory force from human relationships—particularly aggressive force by government against the people. Under capitalism, exploitation is replaced with voluntary trade to mutual benefit among individuals, a win-win in which individuals trade value-for-value and get better together. Capitalism liberates every individual to think and act on his own judgement and work to lift himself from poverty, and protects those who take up that life-affirming challenge from would-be exploiters who don’t. And under capitalism, war is replaced with peaceful coexistence among nations based on that principle of trade.

So why would King uphold the moral principles of capitalism in his most famous speech while repudiating it in his politics? It's obvious that King didn't understand capitalism or fully grasp the moral implications of the Declaration of Independence that he so eloquently honored.

He undoubtedly viewed the America of the 1960s as capitalist, when in fact what America had was a mixed economy; a mixture of economic freedom and government controls—that is to say, an economy corrupted by heavy political interference, which included the virulently anti-capitalist Jim Crow segrgation laws. America in the 1960s was just emerging from a time when large segments of blacks were legally oppressed and hence unable to enjoy “the riches of freedom and the security of justice” that is capitalism. Blacks, King failed to understand, were not victims of capitalism but of statism.

King’s legacy includes an end to state-sponsored segregation and oppression—a monumental achievement. But his democratic socialist political policies also “succeeded,” strengthening and entrenching the mixed economy in America, which he mistakenly perceived as capitalism—the result being, in turn, to reduce economic opportunities for many poor but ambitious people, including African-Americans.

To his credit, King explicitly opposed full-blown socialism, which he believed leads to communism, a system that he correctly understood "forgets that life is individual." But he wrongly believed that "Capitalism forgets that life is social," leading him to his hybrid democratic socialism. He failed to see that capitalism, by leaving individuals free to pursue their own values in the absence of physical coercion, provides the only proper moral foundation for both individual flourishing and robust benevolent social interaction. That moral foundation, rational egoism, is implicit in the Declaration of Independence, which defends the inalienable rights of every individual to pursue his own happiness.

Thus is the paradox of Martin Luther King.

Commentators like Joseph urge us to elevate his politics to at least the level of his ideals. That, of course, would be an impossible contradiction. But ideas are where the real power lies. Since ideas are the driving force of human events, Martin Luther King, despite his politics, remains one of my heroes. Standing in a line that includes John Locke, the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Ayn Rand, among others, King reaffirmed America's Founding ideals at a crucial point in American history. That, to me, is his real legacy contribution to America. For that, I am grateful to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

HAPPY MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY!!

* [See Randy E. Barnett, Our Republican Constitution, Chapter 4 “How Slavery Led to a More Republican Constitution.” See George Fitzhugh, "Centralization and Socialism." See especially C. Bradley Thompson, America's Revolutionary Mind, Epilogue, Page 359-386: Thompson documents the "common intellectual heritage" of 19th Century pro-slavery intellectuals and 20th-21st Century Progressives.]

Related Reading:

Martin Luther King: An 'Authentic American Hero'—or Not?

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Fundamental Principle of America

“I Have a Dream”: Martin Luther King Urges Consistency to Founding Principles

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal—Ayn Rand

Martin Luther King: Right On Racial Justice, Wrong On ‘Economic Justice’

Who Represented the ‘American Institution’ -- Martin Luther King or His Enemies?

Fighting Anti-Private Discrimination Laws: The Role of Principles in the Fight for Freedom

Thanks to Anoop Verma’s Facebook group “For the New Intellectuals,” I came across a 2010 article concerning a subject I’ve written substantially about—the ongoing controversy surrounding anti-discrimination laws targeted at the private sector.

Then-U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul’s remarks relating to Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act six years ago was the subject of a Reason.com column by Cathy Young titled Racism, Civil Rights, and Libertarianism. Paul “opined that privately owned establishments should be able to decide whom to serve without government interference,” but after a firestorm of criticism “Paul quickly clarified that he would neither advocate nor support a repeal of the Civil Rights Act clause banning discrimination by private businesses.”

But “libertarian TV journalist John Stossel fanned the flames on Fox News by not only defending Paul's initial remarks but explicitly suggesting that that portion of the law should be repealed,” Young reported.

Young defended Stossel against Leftist attacks. Stossel's viewpoint “is neither inherently racist (he has stressed that he would never patronize a restaurant that excluded blacks) nor "repugnant," Young writes. “It is an intellectually consistent and legitimate, if moot, argument.”

It is on this last point, that Stossel’s argument is “moot,” that Young goes wrong, in my view. Young continues:

But while the libertarian argument against anti-discrimination laws is certainly not racist, it sometimes seems uncomfortably naive (in 1964 or today) about the social realities of Jim Crow. As some strong champions of free markets, such as legal scholar Richard Epstein, have pointed out, racial segregation and discrimination by private businesses in the South was not simply the result of owners' personal choices but of powerful societal pressure as well as coercion by state governments. Businesses that refused to discriminate were targeted for officially sanctioned or condoned harassment and intimidation.

Would "whites only" business practices have crumbled fast, as some libertarians believe, if the federal government had limited itself to dismantling the public foundations of segregation? Or was bigotry too pervasive, too deeply entrenched in minds and morals? The latter seems more likely. Moreover, for generations this private bigotry had been not only enabled but fostered by public policy, from slavery onward. Writing in The New Republic, John McWhorter, an insightful, iconoclastic black commentator, defends Paul's and Stossel's right to express their unorthodox views but also asserts that "the social rejection of racism was driven in large part by the head start, authority, finality, and even the drama of the legal banning of segregation."

Most likely, over the long haul, overt discrimination against blacks in the private sector would have become socially unacceptable and mostly extinct. But could American society have afforded to wait?

Young answers “no”:

To answer "yes" is to underestimate the urgency of the issue, the evil of Jim Crow. Segregation was not merely an inconvenience or a violation of abstract principle but the systematic degradation of American citizens who were black.

It's fine to discuss the intellectual merits of free-market and free-association arguments against the ban on private discrimination. But the reminder that 50 years ago, such obscene practices were not only condoned but socially approved in large parts of this country should shock our conscience as Americans. A dispassionate or glib attitude on the subject is not a good way to win people over.

There are two crucial points I want to challenge Young on.

First:

It’s entirely possible that the targeting of private discrimination in the 1964 Civil Rights Act sped up the crumbling of private discrimination against blacks. But there is also evidence that the dismantling of the public (legal) foundations of segregation is all that was needed.

One example is the breakdown of Major League Baseball’s “color line,” which was accomplished by just four men; Jackie Robinson and Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey, and Larry Doby and Cleveland Indians Owner Bill Veeck. Baseball was free of legally mandated Jim Crow segregation laws, and this freedom was all these four courageous individuals needed. From 1947 on, baseball progressively integrated despite major cultural bigotry. No forced integration laws were needed.

Rosa Parks offers another angle on the racial progress without violating freedom of association—the legal front. Her defiance challenged a segregation law, and she won. Her Supreme Court victory helped ignite the mid-Twentieth Century Civil Rights Movement, which gained steady public support leading up to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Her case sought to demolish a forced segregation law, not erect forced integration laws. And that was on the heels of Brown vs. Board of Education, which overturned segregation in the government schools without forcing integration on private schools.

I would argue that the social trend toward racial justice was well under way before 1964. Furthermore, this social progress made possible the Civil Rights Act of 1964, not the other way around. Politics never leads. Politics follows because it is a reflection of social trends. The 1964 Civil Rights Act could not have even been proposed, let alone passed, without major social support. And pass it did, by huge margins: 61% of Democrats and 80% of Republicans voted for the legislation—and some who opposed it, such as Barry Goldwater, voted against it on the same liberty principle upheld by Stossel, not pro segregation grounds. Can anyone seriously claim that that level of congressional support for desegregation and racial justice could have been achieved without popular support?

There is a reason why the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964 rather than earlier: It could never have passed until the culture was ready for it. Desegregation and black voting rights in the South were just as big an issue 20 years earlier. But FDR wouldn't enforce either because that would have threatened his 1944 reelection [Easterly, p.94]. It took two more decades of social activism before politicians deemed it safe to legislate an end to legally imposed segregation and, a year later, pass the Voting Rights Act.

To me, the history of the fight for black political equality proves that rights-violating mandates against private discrimination were not needed. We wouldn’t have even needed the 1964 Civil Rights Act if not for the corrupt 1896 Supreme Court Ruling Plessy v. Ferguson, which set back racial integration for 60 years. Once legal coercion supporting segregation was removed—including the covert kind like police neglect that allowed lynchings and other criminal attacks on blacks to run rampant, “officially sanctioned or condoned harassment and intimidation” of private businesses that “refused to discriminate,” and artificial legal barriers to voting—a now-freer American society in general would have rapidly broken down racial barriers, and any remaining pockets of bigotry and discrimination would have succumbed to enormous social and economic pressure to dissolve, or been marginalized into irrelevance. That the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed at all is proof that the rights of association-violating Title II of that Act—the Injunctive Relief Against Discrimination in Places of Public Accommodation—wasn’t needed.

Progress on both the social and legal fronts was on the move. Full restoration of freedom, including government protection of rights to public protest and boycott, are all that were needed to ignite rapid progress. This is not to deny the “social realities of Jim Crow” or the extent to which  bigotry was “pervasive [and] deeply entrenched in minds and morals” of the culture. But neither should we underestimate the winning power of the convergence of reason, courage, freedom, and principled action.

Which leads to my second, even more important, point:

If Young is going to accuse opponents of anti-private discrimination laws of “a dispassionate or glib attitude,” then the same could be said of her dismissal of the power of principles. She writes:

Yes, post-1964 civil rights law has generated real problems. Legally mandated colorblindness has evolved into legally mandated race preferences to remedy discrimination. Anti-discrimination law has expanded to more and more protected categories, to the point where a gym can be held liable for dismissing a fat fitness trainer.

Curbing these excesses is a worthy goal. But calling for a repeal of the ban on discrimination in the private sector is both utopian and reckless. . .

The expansion of anti-private discrimination law “to more and more protected categories” is a concrete demonstration of the power of principles in action. There is simply no way anyone can argue that government must legally “protect” us from discrimination—i.e., force others to associate with us against their will—based on race but not based on gender, religion, physical or mental capacities, sexual orientation, economic status, or any other category some activist group chooses to come up with. And since discrimination is almost impossible to prove without the ability to read minds—overt discrimination like “No Blacks Allowed” signs is virtually extinct—the only way to “prove” discrimination is through circumstantial evidence like statistics, which leads directly to “legally mandated race preferences” and other types of quotas, like the Title IX gender quotas that are killing men's college sports programs..

Young seems glib about the ease of “curbing these abuses.” But on what grounds can one fight these abuses? There is no way to fight the “abuses” without taking the moral high ground. On what basis does Young claim that blacks are a “protected” group but fat people are not? There is no way to take the moral high ground without zeroing in on the moral principle the “abuses” violate—the right to freedom of association. There is no way to uphold freedom of association while making exceptions based on your own personal preferences. Rights are moral principles, and moral principles, by definition, are inviolable. Once you accept that government may violate freedom of association in one category, however noble the cause, the principle is rendered moot and the rights violations inevitably multiply like malignant cancer cells, even infecting an employer's’ ability to hire. There’s no logical way that you can assert that a black man has the right to force a white merchant to serve him while denying the right of a same-sex couple to force a Christian-owned banquet hall to cater a gay wedding. Either political rights are inalienable, or they are not. Sooner or later, those seeking to “curb” the “excesses” of anti-discrimination laws will have to confront that fact, or the cause is hopeless.

It’s understandable that the black oppressed minority (and many of their supporters) would jump at the chance to take the shortcut of law to end private racial segregation. They waited a long time for justice. But even if we concede that Title II was instrumental in speeding up the progress toward racial equality before the law—indeed, even if we concede that it was a worthwhile temporary measure—we’re still left with the very serious erosion of our inalienable right to freedom of association that is the legacy of Title II. The erosion of our associational liberties cannot be addressed and corrected without overturning all anti-private discrimination laws, especially including Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And that cannot be accomplished without fighting for the essential principles of individual rights that underpin liberty.

Related Reading:

Title 2: Government vs. Private Action

Does rescinding laws banning private discrimination make a moral statement in support of bigotry?

Gay Marriage Rights vs. Anti-Discrimination Laws

There is No Parallel Between the Private Right to Discriminate Against Gays and Jim Crow Laws

Obamanomics and the Ghost of Title 2

How to Overcome Bigotry in a Free Society

'Religious Freedom Restoration' Laws and Tim Cook's Misunderstanding of America's Founding Principles

Indiana’s controversial new Religious Freedom Restoration Act is another bad fix for a problem created by bad law to begin with. 

The impetus for religious freedom restoration laws (RFRLs) is the increasing, and proper, nationwide legal recognition of the individual rights of gay people, especially the legalization of gay marriage. This trend clashed with many biblical dogmas that consider homosexuality to be a sin. The result has been increasing instances of private businesses running afoul of anti-discrimination laws by refusing to serve gay couples because of the business owners’ religious beliefs.

Proponents claim the Indiana law protects religious liberty, not give private businesses the right to discriminate against gays for religious reasons. But there’s no getting around it. RFRLs intend one thing; to carve out exemptions from anti-discrimination laws for religious people as such laws relate to gays. The issue is clear-cut: Either a businessman can refuse to serve gays in conformance with his religious teaching, or he can’t. Supporters of RFRLs won’t acknowledge the obvious, and the stench of hypocrisy hangs over them. Religions never objected to anti-discrimination laws intended to outlaw discrimination based on race, national origin, gender, or religious affiliation. Only when gays were added to the list of “protected groups” did RFRLs arise.

Proponents’ disingenuousness sidesteps the basic problem: Anti-discrimination laws targeting the private sector violate the right to freedom of association, which encompasses the right to discriminate in one’s private associations. If not for anti-discrimination laws, RFRLs would not be “necessary,” because private business owners would not be forced to contract with gays against their religious convictions. Repeal of anti-discrimination laws, not enactment of dishonest RFRLs, should be their focus.

But opponents of RFRLs also get it wrong. In response to Indiana’s law, Apple CEO Tim Cook declared in a Washington Post op-ed that Pro-discrimination ‘religious freedom’ laws are dangerous. He writes:

There’s something very dangerous happening in states across the country.

A wave of legislation, introduced in more than two dozen states, would allow people to discriminate against their neighbors. Some, such as the bill enacted in Indiana last week that drew a national outcry and one passed in Arkansas, say individuals can cite their personal religious beliefs to refuse service to a customer or resist a state nondiscrimination law.

Others are more transparent in their effort to discriminate. Legislation being considered in Texas would strip the salaries and pensions of clerks who issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples — even if the Supreme Court strikes down Texas’ marriage ban later this year. In total, there are nearly 100 bills designed to enshrine discrimination in state law.

Cook views anti-discrimination laws and anti-gay marriage laws as moral opposites. In fact, they are two sides of the same rights-violating coin. Cook goes on:

These bills rationalize injustice by pretending to defend something many of us hold dear. They go against the very principles our nation was founded on, and they have the potential to undo decades of progress toward greater equality.

Men and women have fought and died fighting to protect our country’s founding principles of freedom and equality. We owe it to them, to each other and to our future to continue to fight with our words and our actions to make sure we protect those ideals. The days of segregation and discrimination marked by “Whites Only” signs on shop doors, water fountains and restrooms must remain deep in our past.

But Cook has a fundamental misunderstanding of American ideals. Yes, we should continue the fight to protect the ideals of freedom and equality. But first, we must learn what freedom and equality actually mean.

America is a nation Founded on the principle of individual rights. Rights protect freedom of action in the social context, so long as one’s actions don’t violate the rights of others; i.e., involve the initiation of physical force against another. Critically, rights do not guarantee anyone's conception of moral action, just action. A “right” to act only in ways the government approves of is not a right, but a special privilege. A government with the power to dictate personal morals, and to recognize rights only of select groups, is not a legitimate government. It is a dictatorship.

That said, the purpose of rights should not be construed primarily as protecting immoral actions. Some may indeed exercise their rights irrationally and/or immorally, but such instances are side effects of rights’ primary purpose. The individual right to act free from the coercive interference of others is a necessary social condition of human life and flourishing, because life requires action in support of one’s life. The purpose of rights is to protect constructive, life-enhancing action, despite the fact that some actions may be destructive.

As I wrote in response to the Liberty Ridge Farms case in New York, “Every individual has a right to live by his own moral standards, even irrational ones, so long as his actions don’t violate the rights of others. But this issue is not primarily about freedom of religion and conscience; rather, it is about freedom of association and contract.” Freedom of Association resolves both the marriage equality and religious freedom issues. Gay people have a right to marry. Private businesses have a right to do business with whom they please. Both are forms of contract, and freedom of contract is a  fundamental extension of freedom of association. Freedom of contract does not include the right to coerce others into any contract.

Importantly, “equality” under American principles means equal protection of individual rights—including rights of association—under the law. Equality then forbids legally enforced segregation (E.G, Jim Crow and Separate but Equal doctrines). But equal protection under law also forbids legally-enforced integration. Equality and freedom in American terms means equal protection all private individuals’ right to freely associate, or not, in his private dealings with other people. This includes Christian businessmen’s right not to serve gay couples (and to accept the consequences, such as public scorn and loss of sales and profits due to boycotts by disapproving potential customers). If the equality that Cook upholds as a Founding American ideal means anything, it means that it is just as wrong for Tim Cook to impose his values on Christian businesses by legally forcing them to serve gays against their conscience as it is for the government to impose Christians’ standards on gays by legally banning gay marriage. If the freedom that Cook upholds as a Founding American ideal means anything, it means the freedom not to associate with whom one prefers not to associate with.

Personally, I oppose religious freedom restoration laws because such laws carve out a special exemption to anti-discrimination laws only for religious people, and because in any event freedom of religion is not the fundamental issue. Freedom of association is the fundamental issue, and under that principle anti-private discrimination laws are the problem. Fully and consistently upholding individual rights, and specifically the right to freedom of association, resolves the conflict without violating either the rights of the religious or the rights of gay people.

Anti-gay bigotry, as with all bigotry is disgusting and ignorant. But laws banning private discrimination is no more the American way than prior laws enforcing segregation were. The proper way to overcome irrational discrimination is not through law (i.e. force) but through reason and persuasion. Private action under First Amendment principles, such as speaking, writing, boycotting, public protests, and making an example by your own actions—as Cook is doing with Apple’s strong anti-discrimination business policies and culture (which Cook explains at length in his article)—is an intellectual power that no coercive power of law can match. Indeed, anti-discrimination laws would not have been possible without first defeating bigotry and prejudice in the broader culture. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was a consequence, not the start, of the Civil Rights Movement, which was winning the moral battle against anti-black bigotry on the battleground of ideas. The spontaneous national outcry against the Indiana law—and the rush by Indiana (and Arkansas) lawmakers to amend their religious freedom laws in response—proves the point. In the absence of anti-discrimination laws, bigotry could never gain a foothold in today’s culture. Public outcry would tamp it down wherever it arose. Discriminating businesses, while free to operate, would be marginalized into insignificance and even bankruptcy under withering public condemnation and economic competition.

Cook is wrong on his key point. “[T]he very principles our nation was founded on” do not include turning the government into a morality dictator. Rights protect freedom, because freedom is a fundamental requirement of human nature. But there is a bright moral line between something being legal and something being moral. Legality signifies implementation of an underlying political principle, not a moral sanction of all particular actions that may be taken under that principle. Freedom of association does not mean “pro-discrimination,” even though some may use that right to irrationally discriminate, any more than freedom of speech means “pro-Nazi,” even though some may use that right to advocate evil ideas. Freedom of association simply means freedom of association, just as freedom of speech simply means freedom of speech. We shouldn’t allow our revulsion against bigotry to water down and undermine our sacred rights. Bigotry should never be granted that kind of status.

I sympathize with Cook’s moral outrage with laws that masquerade as protections for religious freedom, but effectually sanction discrimination against gays. But I also understand religionists who believe their freedom to practice their religion in a non-rights-violating manner, however irrational and immoral that practice, is under attack. The resolution of this conflict requires upholding everyone’s individual rights equally, including the right to freedom of association.

Related Reading:

The False Alternative of Religious Rights vs. Gay Rights—Michael J. Hurd

Two Views on Religious Exemptions from Anti-Discrimination Laws

Does rescinding laws banning private discrimination make a moral statement in support of bigotry?

Is RFRA Unconstitutional?—Sasha Volokh, Washington Post

How to Overcome Bigotry in a Free Society

Gay Marriage: The Right to Voluntary Contract, Not to Coercive “Contract”

Archbishop's Misplaced Charge: Gay Marriage is a Threat to Freedom of Religion

My October 5 blog post for The Objective Standard concerns a New Jersey Archbishop's seemingly senseless assertion that "the legalization of gay marriage would threaten religious freedom." This was easy to debunk, and that's what my post does. Please read Archbishop's Claim that Gay Marriage Threatens Religious Freedom is a Threat to Religious Freedom.

There is an interesting sidebar to this story, however. This is an educated man, Archbishop John J. Myers, that made this claim. What was his thinking? The article I cited for the TOS blog post didn't give Myers' reasons for his claim, so I decided to do some digging. I looked for the text of Myers' official statement, which I couldn't find. Fortunately, fellow TOS blogger Ari Armstrong did, and in the text, Myers gives his reasons.

On page 15 of his Pastoral Statement, Myers states:

If our society enshrines a “civil” right to “marry” someone of one’s own sex, then any persons or groups that believe otherwise will be seriously disadvantaged in law and in fact.

What is the nature of these “serious disadvantages” Myers offers as proof of his contention that gay marriage threatens religious freedom? Let us examine them, point by point.

“Already we hear public officials and news organizations refer to those of us who hold the conjugal view of marriage as ‘bigots.’”

Do I detect a bit of defensiveness here? Or does Myers view the Church as above the free speech rights of others? Those who hold this “conjugal view of marriage” have the same free speech rights as their critics, and can use those rights to counter the charges and defend their viewpoint. What’s wrong with a little healthy public debate? Perhaps Myers senses--on some level--that the critics are, “in fact,” right. In any event, the right to freedom of speech and expression in no way conflicts with freedom of religion. In regard to gay marriage, this is a non-issue.

“States like Illinois and Massachusetts have made it impossible for Catholic Charities to provide adoption services.”

On this subject, the New York Times reports:

Roman Catholic bishops in Illinois have shuttered most of the Catholic Charities affiliates in the state rather than comply with a new requirement that says they must consider same-sex couples as potential foster-care and adoptive parents if they want to receive state money.

The bishops have followed colleagues in Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts who had jettisoned their adoption services rather than comply with nondiscrimination laws.

The government’s proper role here is to provide the legal framework that protects the rights of all parties, including the children, not to provide the funding. The culprit is government funding, which gives it direct control of the process by setting conditions for that funding. But, the impropriety of state funding aside, as long as the Church takes government money, it must abide by its conditions--conditions it presumably could have escaped by providing its own funding. (One can also argue that opponents of same-sex marriage are taxpayers too, which means their rights are being violated by being forced to support gay parenthood in contradiction to their beliefs. But these conflicts are inherent in the nature of taxpayer funding of anything.)

“Hotel managers, photographers, owners of reception halls, etc who hold to the view of marriage as a conjugal partnership have had legal or civil actions taken against them.”

The problem here are laws such as Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which ban “discrimination” in the private sector. Anti-discrimination laws related to proper governmental functions is appropriate, but the government must be neutral in regard to private associations. Owners of private establishments and businesses have a right to contract--or not--with whom they please, whatever the reason, just as people have a right to patronize--or not--whichever businesses they please. The right to freedom of association, like freedom of speech or religion, is absolute, so long as no one's rights are violated. The government has no right to dictate who you must associate with, just that you can freely choose your associations.

“How long would the state permit churches, schools or parents to teach their children that homosexual activity is contrary to the natural law if homosexual marriage were a civil right?  Already in Canada and other democratic nations “hate speech” laws have been used to harass or even arrest clerics who preach the Biblical message of marriage.”

It’s a bizarre stretch to believe that the American government would attack churches in this manner, given this country’s separation of church and state doctrine that forbids taxpayer funding of religion. Private schools that receive some form of government funding--ex., government vouchers--would undoubtedly have to comply with the strings attached. Public schools are, well, government schools. When we allowed tax-funded, government run public schools--or taxpayer subsidization of education in any form--we allowed government to determine what is taught. Will that intrusion into children’s education eventually extend right into the home? With government’s near monopoly on education, homosexual issues are the least of our worries.

All of Myers’ alleged religious freedom infringements are no such thing. The Church is a victim of government funding and private sector anti-”discrimination” and “hate speech” laws, which violate the rights to property, freedom of association, and freedom of speech, respectively. There is no fundamental conflict between the right to religious freedom and the right to gay marriage. These conflicts of rights only arise when government improperly intrudes in private affairs, and it is those rights-violating government policies, not gay marriage, against which the Church should be fighting.

These government intrusions do not excuse Myers’ assault on gay marriage, as two wrongs—or three or four—don’t make a right.

My conclusion, as I stated in my TOS blog post:

Freedom of religion means freedom not only to practice religion but also to be free from the imposition of others’ religious beliefs. The Catholic Church’s fight to keep gay marriage illegal violates this principle and the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses by attempting to impose its religious dogma on everyone else.