Mike Johnson is back at it again, trying to pit LGBT people against people of faith.
After his bill to expand the definition of religious liberty to include discrimination against the LGBT community failed last year, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Bossier City, is attempting to exploit the wounds of LGBT people and people of faith again.
Johnson’s Pastor Protection Act, or HB 597, seeks to clarify that pastors do not have to solemnize marriages that “violate a sincerely held religious belief.” This bill is redundant with existing law that already provides this protection.
But now that LGBT people can marry whomever they love, religious conservatives like Johnson believe this bill is necessary. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, and this right includes “the right of churches and other houses of worship to decide which religious marriages they will host,” according to the ACLU of Florida.
Allowing same-sex marriage doesn’t change your rights under the First Amendment.
Yet this bill isn’t just happening in Louisiana — it was proposed in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas. In all of these states, the “Pastor Protection Act” was introduced after or in anticipation of LGBT people gaining the right to marry.
This bill is largely symbolic, but it can do damage if it becomes a Trojan horse, as in Georgia. After the Georgia bill passed the House with language mirroring HB 597 in its current form, the state Senate morphed it into the First Amendment Defense Act, with broader religious protections for pastors and “an individual or organization that refused to recognize a same-sex marriage,” according to ThinkProgress.
FADA goes beyond a pastor solemnizing a marriage. The bill would allow hospitals to refuse to operate on transgender people because their very existence could be deemed a religious violation.
According to a 2010 survey from Lambda Legal, 8 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual respondents said they had been denied health care due to their sexual orientation, and almost 27 percent of transgender and gender-nonconforming people said they had been denied healthcare because of their gender identity.
LGBT people are already denied everyday services guaranteed to straight people. We don’t need a legal shield for people to discriminate against LGBT people.
This legislation in its current form may seem harmless, but Johnson introduced the bill during a time where conservatives are trying to use religious liberty as an excuse to weaken LGBT couples’ new right to marry. Context is everything here.
In its current form, this bill draws LGBT people in a symbolic fight over an unnecessary law and allows Rep. Johnson to say, “See, you opposed the rights of pastors’ religious freedom all along.”
Meanwhile, Johnson already proposed a similar version to Georgia’s FADA last year, granting businesses and hospitals the religious right to discriminate against LGBT people.
Johnson already tried to pass the Trojan horse last year, so why should LGBT people have to trust him now?
He offered legal services under the group “Freedom Guard” to any public official who refused to issue a same-sex marriage license, according to NOLA.com | The Times Picayune.
Mike Johnson has been a proud footsoldier in enshrining discrimination against LGBT people into law. And while his latest effort may seem benign, his record should give any person pause about the bill’s real intent.
Johnson’s latest piece of legislation only seeks to pit LGBT people against people of faith, with no legal justification. This symbolic fight deepens the wounds LGBT people have with people of religious beliefs who have traditionally rejected them.
Religious legislation such as HB 597 doesn’t seek to include LGBT people in the faith community but reinforces the idea that LGBT people aren’t welcome. And while it may be symbolic, that makes this legislation all the more shameful.
Michael Beyer is a 22-year-old political science senior from New Orleans, Louisiana.