The U.S. Supreme Court might make the decision on the constitutionality of Mississippi’s law protecting sincerely held religious beliefs that are opposed to gay marriage. And with such a key issue, that’s only fair and right.
In my mind, protecting the 1st Amendment rights of Christians who are opposed to homosexuality is the most important free speech issue of our time. In a short span, public opinion has completely flipped on the issue, where a majority of Americans now approve of gay marriage. And protecting the rights of the minority, who might hold views that the majority doesn’t like or even finds repulsive, is a dearly held ideal in American democracy.
Today anyone who speaks out against gay issues will soon find they have a target on their back, especially in the free-wheeling world of social media. I’ve experienced a little bit of that myself after writing a column defending House Bill 1523 soon after it passed in 2015. I tried to write a fair, reasoned piece based on my Bible-based convictions, but many commentators seemed to just want to attack me as a bigot without trying to refute the ideas I presented. I offered all of them space on the editorial page, but no one took me up on the offer. I wish they had; both sides of every issue need to be fully debated by people passionate about them. That’s the best way we have of arriving at the truth.
Here’s where we stand:
After initially being blocked from taking effect by a federal judge, House Bill 1523 is now law in the state after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals out of New Orleans last month dismissed a lawsuit opposing it based on a technicality.
A three-member panel of the appeals court did not address the constitutionality of the law itself, but instead found that the people who filed the suit did not have standing because they had not suffered any discrimination themselves from the law.
“It was a simple standing question – it has nothing to do with the merits. You have to show some specific injury. You can’t just say, ‘I don’t like this law,’” Jim Waide, a veteran Mississippi attorney in civil rights cases, was quoted as saying by Mississippi Today.
But in making a decision based on that technicality, the 5th Circuit seems to be intentionally avoiding the issue, waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to act. If the nation’s high court does indeed decide to hear the case, what it will rule is not clear. The 5-4 majority that found a constitutional right to gay marriage in 2015 still exists.
Many critics of Mississippi’s law say it addressed a non-existent problem because no one could point to any specific cases in this state where a Christian store owner, for example, was sued for declining to provide wedding services for a gay couple (although it has happened in other states, including Colorado, where the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case related to that). Others have also said it wasn’t needed because the 1st Amendment already protects all religious beliefs.
My response to that is that up until now the 1st Amendment has, but that doesn’t mean it always will. The sweeping power of the gay rights movement coupled with the Supreme Court’s willingness to discover a constitutional right that didn’t appear to exist for the first 239 years of the nation’s history scared many devout Christians. It was important for the state government to show that it supported those people in our state.
Now whether the law will be allowed to stand needs to go before the Supreme Court. It should confirm the free practice of religion, even religious beliefs others find noxious.
