You can’t have both religious freedom and religious dominance – Patheos

A Friendly Atheist headline directed me to a righteous rant on religious freedom.AOC: The GOP Only EverInvokes Religious Freedom When It Wants to Justify Hate, the headline read. It seems that during a hearing in the U.S. House last week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the following:

There is nothing holy about rejecting medical care of people, no matter who they are, on the grounds of what their identity is. There is nothing holy about turning someone away from a hospital. Theres nothing holy about rejecting a child from a family. Theres nothing holy about writing discrimination into the law, and I am tired of communities of faith being weaponized and being mischaracterized, because the only time religious freedom is invoked, its in the name of bigotry and discrimination. Im tired of it.

Huh, I thought. Huh.

Ive long been tired of the way the Right talks about religious freedom, but Ive rarely seen the problems with the Rights religious freedom framework stated so simply and directly. The only time religious freedom is invoked, its in the name of bigotry and discrimination,AOC said. And you know what? Its true.

Here, Ill make a list of evangelicals religious freedom claims.

Are you sensing a pattern? I sure am.

I grew up in a conservative evangelical home in the 1990s and early 2000s, and I dont remember hearing a lot about religious freedom. My impression, based on my own experience, is that religious freedom took off as a catchphrase on the Right at the same time that LGBTQ rights became increasingly accepted by the mainstream. From where Im standing, calls for religious freedom look more like a claim developed specifically to discriminate against LGBTQ people than anything else.

It also makes a handy argument for denying people health insurance that covers contraceptives, of course. Still, overall, religious freedom claims primary target seems to be LGBTQ individuals.

See, Im not sure the Right is actually as full-throated in its support for religious freedom as it claims. After all, what does the Right not include in its catalogue of religious freedom? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Recall that those evangelicalsthe conservative ones Im talking aboutstill want to put Christian prayer back in school, because were a Christian nation, dammit. That is not a religious freedom argument. Its a religious dominance argument. This wing of evangelicals doesnt believe in religious freedom for anyone but Christians.

Remember, these are the same people who argue that our founding fathers established our country as an explicitly Christian nation and call openly for Christian preference. These are the same people who want school board meetings and city council meetings to open in Christian prayers. They dont want religious freedom. Thats just a smokescreen they use to justify their bigotry. What they want is religious dominance.

AOCs comments remind us that this issue isnt all that complicated. Its actually really, really simple.

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You can't have both religious freedom and religious dominance - Patheos

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