In Theory: Does religious freedom take precedence over other rights?

On Jan. 16, President Donald Trump marked Religious Freedom Day, a custom of U.S. presidents since 1993.

“Religious diversity strengthens our communities and promotes tolerance, respect, understanding and equality,” the president’s proclamation stated, commemorating the date in 1786 that Thomas Jefferson helped establish the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.

Trump, like other presidents before him, used the opportunity to comment on international and domestic political issues such as terrorism and “forcing people to comply with laws that violate their core religious beliefs without sufficient justification.”

As if to underline the president’s words, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced two days later that it would create a division within its Office of Civil Rights granting healthcare workers the right to refuse services based on religious objections.

“Never forget that religious freedom is a primary freedom, that it is a civil right that deserves enforcement and respect,” the office’s director said.

Q. Is religious freedom a “primary freedom” that supersedes others, including those of patients seeking medical treatment?

Religious freedom is a primary American freedom. It may not be a freedom in other places, but it’s still hard to imagine that any human conscience could be genuinely controlled by a government, apart from willful compliance. So, here we have some people of faith, whose moral compass commands boundaries, and I think it not unreasonable to try and accommodate them to some measure. There may always be those who test the system by starting contentious religions and making impossible demands upon their employers just to sue or make a point, but surely it won’t be the norm.

This week’s question asks whether or not one’s religious freedom would supersede the needs of someone else’s medical care, but I don’t believe this is a legitimate contention. Surely in a medical facility there will be plenty of people who have no qualms with being in charge of the one or two duties a conscientious objector might direct toward them. And in such cases where a job requires some task that would compromise a candidate’s conscience, then that stipulation should be made up front, before hiring. I don’t think it wrong to give a job to someone who is on board with the full program of business, but to unfairly discriminate when some small religious concession could be made for an otherwise perfect employee would be wrong.

There are many evils in this world of which the people have no perception. To kill unborn children is a privilege, some say, and to engage in sexual activity others frown upon is their new normal, and free speech has become something to denounce and a thing over which to riot. However, now there is some measure of reprieve on the rise for the keepers of faith. There will be no more rubbing their noses in the pile and being punished for not loving it; at least, that’s the hope. It’s all a matter of what Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” (Luke 6:31 MEV).

Rev. Bryan A. Griem

Tujunga

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None of our Constitutional rights take precedence over the others nor does our freedom of religion allow us to impose our beliefs on others. Theist and free thinker Jefferson would in no way have intended the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which became the Establishment Clause prohibiting an official U.S. religion, to allow healthcare workers to deny needed services that are in their job description to provide.

Taking Trump’s vision to its logical conclusion, picture the madness of workers deciding what part of their jobs they can refuse to perform, based on their own religious beliefs. Blood transfusions? Serving hospital meals containing pork? And why limit it to healthcare?

This new division within HHS’s Office of Civil Rights is really about allowing workers to refuse to assist with legal abortions and to not treat gay, lesbian and transgender people at all. The Trump administration is seeking to define “assist” to include scheduling appointments or working as a janitor in the facility. We can only imagine where it could lead.

Roberta Medford

Atheist

Montrose

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Just as science fiction movies reflect, by accident, as much of the time in which they are made as they do of the future they intend to portray (a nice example is “Minority Report,” which is set in 2054 but contains many technologies that came into being within 10 years of its 2002 release, though it begins with a man picking up something called a “newspaper” off his lawn), our laws and our language, as vital, scalable, and structured as they are, are generated as a result of very specific and topical needs. Our Bill of Rights, preceded by Jefferson’s and James Madison’s remarkably similar legal founding documents of Virginia, was written by people with personal or familial knowledge of specific intra-Christian religious persecution (as well as of occupying soldiers living in colonists’ homes, carrying weapons that took more than a minute to load and fire a single shot, and thus the basis for the Second and Fourth amendments). To our founders, religious freedom was tied to freedom of assembly and not to specific practices, reflecting their forebears’ flight from England.

Furthermore, the deist slaveholder Jefferson already knew full well the necessary separation of church and state.

Masquerading discrimination against those seeking abortions or those with non-mainstream gender identities as “religious freedom” is as clever as it is deceitful, disingenuous and ungodly.

Marty Barrett

President

Unitarian Universalist Church of the Verdugo Hills (UUVerdugo)

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Religious freedom is indeed a primary freedom. A truly free society does not force its citizens to violate this God-given right as they participate and serve in society according to the dictates of their faith and conscience. The number of practical issues this concept applies to is very limited in real life, the elective procedure of abortion no doubt being the primary one. Frankly, I would prefer to be treated by a medical professional who is guided by a strong internal sense of morality rather than one who is willing to make compromises of conscience to make a buck or just keep his or her job. But even if our government fails to protect working people of faith, I am confident that God will protect them as they put his laws first. Daniel’s three friends served king Nebuchadnezzar faithfully, but their faith prohibited them from bowing down before the idol he created. When they failed to do so at his command, the pagan king condemned them to be thrown alive into a burning furnace as punishment that they might be executed. They responded: “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and he will deliver us out of your hand, o king. But even if he does not, let it be known to you, o king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up” (Daniel 3:16-18). The king threw them into the fire but God was with them, and kept them unharmed. After they were taken out they didn’t even smell like smoke. God never changes, and his people will not be overthrown as they obey him before all others.

Pastor Jon Barta

Burbank