Rabbi Jason Miller quite aptly points out the pitfalls of Michigan’s pending “Religious Freedom and Restoration Act” which would serve as a license for legalized bigotry. When I discussed the US Supreme Court’s decision in favor of Hobby Lobby in my essay “Mask Slippage,” I stated “Let this revealing behavior that has emerged since the SCOTUS decision be a clear warning to secular people that many religions are simply biding their time until the opportunities arise to recapture their dominance over those who are not of their ilk.” It seems “biding time” is ending.
This emerging trend is also ringing alarm bells for an intelligent spokesperson from a faith that has endured centuries of vicious persecution at the hands of Christians, only more recently supplanted by fascist ideologies. We secularists—who stand in opposition to theists’ exercising their tendencies to discriminate against those not sharing their beliefs—thus might find allies in aware members of religions that have been subject to such intolerance—especially when it has historically been carried out legally under the auspices of governmental bodies endorsing such grotesque inequities. From The Inquisition to The Holocaust, this is not new behavior.
While the Michigan bill does not allow any particular religion hegemony, the past has shown that when such legal channels exist often one form of belief dominates others. In the meantime, allowing for state-sanctioned inequity provides opportunity for further abuses that all who favor justice should find reprehensible.
—Magus Peter H. Gilmore
