Twelve Republican senators and every Democratic senator will forever be to blame when the Biden Justice Department weaponizes the new “Respect for Marriage Act” to harass, threaten, and punish people merely for following their long-established faith convictions.
Not a single one of them deserves to serve another day in public office. They have ripped to shreds the First Amendment’s religious-liberty protections.
SENATE PASSES LANDMARK BILL PROTECTING SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
From Democrats these days, such attacks on the free exercise of religion are expected. From Republicans, not so much. So let’s start by naming, and never forgiving, the 12 Republicans who voted so egregiously. They are Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard Burr and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Todd Young of Indiana.
Here’s why their votes were so egregious. The Marriage Act for the first time not only mandates recognition, in federal law, of same-sex unions — something, of course, far less controversial than it was even 15 years ago — but also explicitly creates a “private right of action” in federal courts to enforce that recognition. It does not, however, protect faith-centered organizations from forced participation in acts related to those unions that violate their long-held faith beliefs. An amendment adopted by the Senate that purports to provide such protections is pathetic window dressing, entirely inadequate for protecting myriad exercises of religious beliefs.
The Family Research Council has produced a six-page document explaining all the ways the amendment falls woefully short of, or even harms, the necessary protections for religious liberty. Most egregiously, it protects only those entities “whose principal purpose is the study, practice, or advancement of religion.” This does absolutely nothing to protect individuals exercising their faiths in the ordinary course of business, such as the famous cake artists, photographers, and web designers who happily service homosexual people but stop short only at serving homosexual weddings.
Even explicitly faith-based adoption agencies conceivably could be subject to sanctions or perhaps loss of charitable status in the federal tax code, because, while they have chosen their child-placement missions as an expression of their faith, a judge could decide their principal mission is not the advancement of religion but the placement of children.
Those most harmed by this lack of protection won’t be the agencies themselves, but the needy populations they will no longer be able to serve if they are forced out of business because their religious beliefs won’t allow them to recognize marriages between same-sex couples. For example, when Illinois cracked down on Catholic Charities in 2011, it forced the shuttering of nearly 5,500 foster homes in the next eight years.
These 12 Republican senators could be responsible for the elimination of charitable services for literally millions of people of the Justice Department and bad judges use the language of the new marriage act to force people to do what their faiths will not allow.
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Three Republican senators — Utah’s Mike Lee, Florida’s Marco Rubio, and Oklahoma’s James Lankford — offered separate amendments to the bill that would have allowed the official federal-law recognition of homosexual unions to go forward, but with added and far more adequate protections for faith-based objectors. The Senate rejected all three amendments. Without those amendments, the bill stands as an open invitation to a massive legal and financial assault on people of traditional faiths.
Twelve Republicans now have joined what should be called the Authoritarian Caucus. Their votes are egregious violations of, or perhaps divorces from, their constitutional obligations.
