The only thing worse than having one’s freedom stolen is being duped into giving it up. This presidential election season, both candidates endanger Americans’ freedom of conscience. The Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, and the Democratic candidate, Hillary R. Clinton promise to protect their own orthodoxies by punishing dissenters. This should alarm every American, because how a government treats dissenters is what differentiates democracies from dictatorships. To preserve freedom for future generations, we need to reject both candidates’ dangerous thinking. Instead, we should choose to honor the consciences of all, especially those with whom we disagree.
The genius of the First Amendment is that it gives the individual both an offense and a defense. The Free Exercise Clause recognizes a person’s right to actively live out their religious beliefs—an offense. The Establishment Clause recognizes a person’s need to be free from government imposition of religion—a defense. Restraint on our government’s ability to establish orthodoxy protects our right to dissent. It ensures that we can to be true to our own consciences. As any imprisoned dissident can attest, one man’s orthodoxy is another’s blasphemy. However, both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton are too eager to punish dissenters from their own orthodoxies.
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Mr. Trump treats all Muslims as members of a suspect class because of the actions of a tiny minority. He declared “I think Islam hates us” and then proposed banning all Muslim immigration and increasing surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods and mosques. The Left’s failure to name violent jihad undermines our national security. But, Mr. Trump’s vilification of an entire religious group is not the solution. He has proposed what is essentially a religious test for citizenship.
At a time when our success in countering terrorism depends upon the efforts of all Americans, we need a leader who will honor a patriot like slain U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan. We need a leader who will protect us from Orlando shooter Omar Mateen. We need a leader who will recognize the contribution of Mateen’s friend Mohammed A. Malik, who warned the FBI of his radicalization. In short, we need a leader who will distinguish between people on the basis of their actions not their identities. And we need a commander-in-chief who will respect citizens of all faiths. Instead, Mr. Trump proposes policies that are a form of collective punishment. In Mr. Trump’s America, Muslim-Americans will only become acceptable when they cease to be Muslim.
No one who cares about freedom of conscience should endorse the treatment of any group as a “suspect class.” In our courts, several religious groups have expanded First Amendment protections, including Catholics, Seventh-Day Adventists, the Amish, and Muslims. By the same token, when citizens allow their government to trespass against the rights of one group, in time it will trespass against all. President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission Dr. Russell Moore warns that a government can which puts mosques under surveillance today can treat Bible studies the same way tomorrow.
Mrs. Clinton’s orthodoxy is cultural (not quasi-religious). In her America, individual autonomy over personal identity (particularly sexual and gender) is orthodoxy. To suggest that gender is biological or that not all sexual preferences contribute to the common good is to dissent. And dissent will not be tolerated. It took only days for the Left to force Caitlyn Jenner to recant support for traditional marriage.
Mrs. Clinton began deriding those with traditional beliefs about sexuality while she was serving as Secretary of State. In 2011 she compared them to supporters of slavery stating what was “once sanctioned by God” is now “properly reviled as an unconscionable violation of human rights.” Her use of the term “unconscionable” begs the question: whose conscience? Is Mrs. Clinton’s conscience to become the standard for all ?
At a recent fundraiser, Mrs. Clinton called Mr. Trump’s supporters an “irredeemable basket of deplorables” who are “not America.” One wonders how much a President Clinton would honor the rights of those whom she deplores. Recent comments by Martin R. Castro, head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, suggest that in the future “deplorables” may have to prove that they deserve First Amendment protections. In a report on gay rights ironically named “Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties,” Mr. Castro wrote ” ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.”
Both Mr. Castro and Mrs. Clinton view dissenters from their orthodoxy as un-American and undeserving of rights. If Mr. Trump would have Muslims abandon their religious identity, Mrs. Clinton would have her opponents abandon their core beliefs.
When the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito predicted a day when those with traditional beliefs would self-censor for fear of “being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.” All Americans, including supporters of same-sex marriage, should find this prospect alarming. If a government can silence one group’s beliefs, it can silence any group’s beliefs. Gay Americans should speak out for the rights of those with traditional views on sexuality. Christians should speak out for the rights of Muslims. Each one of us should speak up for the rights of others, even if it that means dissenting from the orthodoxies of our own groups.
The drafters of the Declaration of Independence believed that our freedoms are inalienable because our Creator (not the government) endowed them and because all men are created equal. Now, we are faced with a choice between two candidates who are far too eager to enforce their own orthodoxies by denying the rights of their opponents. No matter which one of them is elected, we must guard one another’s freedoms. In the end, they will be our own.
C.W. Oak is an attorney who defends freedom of conscience for all. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
