Indiana’s widely-hated “religious freedom” law couldn’t have a better friend than Megyn Kelly. She vigorously defended the law not once but twice on Fox News prime time last night.
A fierce backlash has sprung up against the law that many experts (but not Kelly!) think will lead to discrimination against the LGBTcommunity.
First, on The O’Reilly Factor, Kelly parroted right-wing talking points (as did other Fox hosts) that the law is just like a federal law and those passed by many states. Therefore, Kelly argued, there’s no need to worry about LGBT discrimination.
KELLY: You know, the person who doesn’t want to photograph the gay wedding or provide the flowers to the gay wedding, they’ve all lost (in court). The gays and lesbians win, and the person objecting on religious grounds loses… even in the states that have a law like Indiana’s.
As Kelly continued, she first feigned objectivity by citing “what the people defending the law in Indiana say” but soon clearly became a defender herself.
KELLY: What the people defending the law in Indiana say is, Indiana’s simply doing what 19 other states in the union have done, what the feds have done: a law that was passed at the federal level that Bill Clinton signed, that was passed unanimously in the House and that received, I think it was a 97-3 vote in the U.S. Senate. So when it was established at the federal level, the entire country agreed that was fine, they wanted to provide folks who were trying to object to doing something on a religious basis just an avenue to object, that’s all.
…This law is not that controversial but people who, I think, want to prove their bona fides on gay and lesbian issues are exploiting it. And it’s sort of like Ferguson. You know, you can be against racism and not have to use a case to establish your bona fides as against racism or as pro gay rights and pro lesbian rights.
And who would know better about being against bigotry than Megyn Kelly? The woman who is racially obsessed with with Eric Holder, who has a visceral animosity toward the Ferguson protesters, who gloated over the exoneration of Darren Wilson (while waving off the findings of systemic racism in the Ferguson police department) and who “assured” her viewers that Santa is white?
In the following hour, Kelly undercut her "the law is not anti-gay" contention by hosting extremist Tony Perkins to defend the Indiana law on her own show. Perkins has floated the idea of a Christian “full-blown revolution” if the Supreme Court upholds gay marriage. His Family Research Council has been listed as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Yet Perkins frequently gets a friendly platform on The Kelly File.
Guest Mark Hannah advocated against the law – when he had the chance to speak.
Kelly listened quietly as Perkins attacked “the lunacy of the left” for its outrage. She repeatedly interrupted Hannah as he tried to make his case.
Furthermore, Kelly’s assertion that the law mirrors other laws is at odds with many, including 30 law professors, who are experts in religious freedom, and even her own Fox News colleague Bret Baier. Think Progress explains:
Every other Religious Freedom Restoration Act applies to disputes between a person or entity and a government. Indiana’s is the only law that explicitly applies to disputes between private citizens. …This means it could be used as a cudgel by corporations to justify discrimination against individuals that might otherwise be protected under law. Indiana trial lawyer Matt Anderson, discussing this difference, writes that the Indiana law is “more broadly written than its federal and state predecessors” and opens up “the path of least resistance among its species to have a court adjudicate it in a manner that could ultimately be used to discriminate…”
Media Matters noted that Kelly’s misleading defense of Indiana’s controversial “religious freedom” law is just the latest example of why she’s become homophobia’s best ally at Fox. She’s right up there in the bigotry department, too.
Watch it below, from last night’s The O’Reilly Factor and The Kelly File shows, via Media Matters.
As to the Jews not working on the Sabbath, that’s already protected under Federal employment guidelines and even US Supreme Court rulings. Employers MUST “accomodate” the religious practices of their employees to the best of their abilities. While it’s not allowed for an employee to simply refuse to work if scheduled for a religious day (whether the person’s Sabbath or a holiday), an employer cannot terminate an employee if he or she can get a co-worker to cover for that shift. An employer can fire a employee who routinely takes off their “religious day” (with or without having that shift covered) since the employee was hired fully understanding the employment schedule. Now, an observant Jew would not seek employment that would conflict with Shabbat (which is one reason you probably won’t find many Jews working for Chik-Fil-A; while Sunday’s a guaranteed off-day, they might be harder pressed to be off between sunset Friday and sunset Saturday—the official Shabbat) and many devout Christians are able to find jobs which will let them have off Sunday (or Saturday for the Seventh-Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses I believe). I work for the Postal Service and many of my co-workers are very devout (though not many are scary-devout) Christians, there are a number of jobs (which must be bid on and awarded by seniority) where you can be off your Sabbath; for those who can’t get that day off, most take jobs which will allow them to attend services before or after work.
Other cases have involved work attire especially with Christian women who won’t wear slacks because they consider slacks to be “men’s attire”—a truly odd proscription for the Bible since both men and women wore robes and clothing didn’t really take on specific male/female functions until centuries after the Bible’s current form was finalized (hell, it was only the late 19th/early 20th centuries when children’s clothes started becoming gender-specific; boys might still be wearing “dresses” up to about age 5 and no one thought anything about it). Even today, the visible garments you see traditional monks and nuns wearing LOOK pretty identical (a relic of the early Christian era in terms of clothing). When you see period clothing for ancient Rome or Greece, many men are wearing floor-length togas—just like the women. Employers aren’t allowed to force women to wear slacks or jeans if there aren’t job safety issues; a telephone or cable company can’t require female employees to wear slacks if they work in the office doing customer support or sales BUT a woman who wants to do repair work can be required to wear slacks/jeans since a skirt or dress can pose safety issues (e.g., a skirt could get caught up in power equipment) and safety trumps religious values.
Back in 1989 (IMS), a couple of men in Oregon were fired from their jobs because of their use of peyote. Now, it should be noted the men were members of the Native American Church which sanctions the use of peyote in religious rituals. Unfortunately, peyote just happens to be a “controlled substance” and the mere possession is a felony UNDER FEDERAL LAW (just like heroin and morphine), not to mention Oregon state law (which, of course, generally follows Federal laws). And the men’s claims for unemployment were denied because of the “drug use” (it should also be pointed out this is not an unusual circumstance; employers are generally allowed to fire drug-using employees, especially those who refuse “counseling”—if something’s a part of your religious practice, it’s unlikely you’re going to get counseling for it or go to rehab—and most states will not pay unemployment benefits to “drug users”). Since the men “sincerely believed”* their peyote use was a religious requirement, they filed suit and the case eventually went to the US Supreme Court (Employment Division v Smith). When the final case (this went through a series of other trials) reached SCOTUS, the Court’s ruling was a bit of a shock. From the Wiki article: “In earlier rulings, the Court had deliberated that the government could not condition access to unemployment insurance or other benefits on an individual’s willingness to give up conduct required by their religion. However, the Supreme Court did not find that this principle also applied when the conduct in question is justifiably prohibited by law. For the first time in an unemployment compensation case, the Court found against the believer and for the state.”
The majority opinion was written by none less than Antonin Scalia.
RFRA was then passed by Congress in 1993 but, in City of Boerne v Flores, SCOTUS ruled that RFRA was unconstitutional and could not be applied to the states (somewhat ironically, the Boerne case involved a Catholic bishop who was denied a building permit to expand a church located in a “historical district”—Congress then managed to pass another law which would allow, or mandate if you will, religious organizations to get around such silly things as zoning laws).
FWIW, Oregon’s current law regarding peyote largely disallows prosecution if the peyote is being used for religious practices and doesn’t cause harm to the user or others around him.
*The use of quotes around “sincerely believed” wasn’t meant as “scare quotes” but rather to point out the terminology being used by many people trying to get around providing services by LGBTs.