Religious liberty and conscience rights are certainly worth defending against an increasing liberal onslaught. A female wax technician should never be forced by the state to wax a transgender woman’s testicles. Nor should a Christian baker be forced to endorse messages he doesn’t believe in. All have the First Amendment right to be free from compelled speech, and that right doesn’t disappear when we begin to engage in business.
But our support for religious liberty and freedom of conscience doesn’t negate our ability to also support reasonable accommodations and rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Of course, conservatives shouldn’t support wide-ranging, radical bills such as the House Democrats’ Equality Act, which would crush freedom of religion and redefine biological sex out of existence. Yet there’s no reason conservatives can’t support common sense, reasonable anti-discrimination protections — on the rare occasion that’s actually what Democrats propose.
At first glance, this seems to be what some Democratic Virginia state legislators are working toward. After taking over both branches of the state legislature in the recent off-year election, Virginia Democrats now are setting their legislative agenda. They’ve introduced gun control bills, a resolution supporting the Equal Rights Amendment, and, importantly, a bill to outlaw housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
This anti-discrimination bill, House Bill 3, was introduced by Delores McQuinn, a Democrat from Richmond. While the specifics remain to be seen, this is the kind of thing that, at least conceptually, conservatives should be willing to support.
Right now, it’s legal in 28 states for people to be denied housing on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. That doesn’t mean this is actually very common, it may well not be, but gay and transgender people deserve legal protections nonetheless.
We can and should defend the right of religious business owners to decline specific services that involve creating messages they disagree with (such as baking a cake for a gay wedding) and their right to not be forced to provide services that violate their conscience (such as forcing a Catholic doctor to provide cross-sex transition treatments). Yet no one should have the right to put up a metaphorical “no gays allowed” sign in their apartment complex. Renting someone a property is by no means a compelled endorsement of their lifestyle. Indeed, to deny them access to housing is an unjustifiable act of discrimination.
The definition of “public accommodation” is very hotly debated, and conservatives are right to resist liberal attempts to expand anti-discrimination laws to infinity. But if anything is to count as a “public accommodation” at all, surely residential rentals must be it. This is the type of compromise conservatives should be open to, for if they make no compromise at all, the inevitable tide of increasing gay acceptance will end up with a legislative result in which conservatives have no say.
To maintain our pluralistic society, we need to strike a balance between gay rights and the rights of religious individuals. For that to happen, both sides will have to compromise — and housing anti-discrimination legislation offers a good place for conservatives to start.
