The reaction by the religious right to the
passage of a gay-rights law in Illinois has been predictably loud
and aggrieved. But the law’s critics have universally zeroed
in on one key argument: a claim that churches and religious
institutions will now be forced by the government to hire gays and
lesbians.
They’re wrong.
Their fears were inflamed not long ago when
the law’s chief Senate sponsor, Carol Ronen, D-Chicago, was
quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times saying, “If that is their goal, to
discriminate against gay people, this law wouldn’t allow them
to do that. But I don’t believe that’s what the
Catholic Church wants or stands for.”
The Illinois Family Institute issued a press
release claiming that the law would mean “churches,
synagogues, mosques, religious schools, and religious businesses .
. . will now have to disregard their faith and religious teaching
to embrace an irreligious and amoral mandate by
government.”
The opponents have also repeatedly quoted a
brief analysis by Ungaretti & Harris employment-law attorney
Nicholas Anaclerio that concluded: “[W]hile adding another
protected status to Illinois’ Human Rights Act, the measure
may ultimately force courts to consider and balance its ban on
sexual orientation discrimination with State and Federal
constitutional safeguards of religious freedom.”
Anaclerio’s analysis has been passed
around on the Internet and has even come to the attention of the
Catholic Conference of Illinois. The Conference’s executive
director, Robert Gilligan, says he would like to see “some
additional protections spelled out” for churches that believe
homosexuality is immoral.
Gilligan says he has been in contact with
several state legislators who have offered to introduce an
amendment to the gay-rights law to take churches out of the
equation but says no decision has yet been made.
“People working for the church should be
leading their lives in accordance with the church’s
teaching,” Gilligan says, posing the question of what would
happen if someone living an openly gay lifestyle was working in a
church-owned child-care center, a school, or even in a church
itself. “Could they argue they’re protected?”
This is a legitimate question because
religious liberty is specifically spelled out in the U.S.
Constitution. And it’s also legitimate because if the General
Assembly just passed, and the governor signed, an unconstitutional
bill on behalf of such a controversial minority, there could be
hell to pay at the polls next year. Even though several Republicans
voted for the bill, the GOP could use the issue to pound Democrats,
even those who didn’t vote for it. This will happen anyway,
but toss in an outrageous infringement on the freedom of churches and
religious institutions, and . . . oy!
Still, this church issue is much ado about
nothing.
The state’s Human Rights Act
specifically and clearly exempts religious institutions from all of
the state’s employment-discrimination laws. This means that
church-operated schools, for instance, don’t have to employ
anyone in a protected class, including gays, including women,
including blacks, including foreigners. Period.
Ronen claims that her comments were
misunderstood. “We just added another protected
category,” she says. “The religious exemption was
already part of existing law.”
Rick Garcia, director of Equality Illinois,
the state’s largest gay-rights group, agrees with Ronen.
Garcia notes that the state’s Human Rights Act also protects
people on the basis of marital status but says that Catholic
schools are free to fire teachers and other employees who divorce.
Garcia also points to a Catholic school in Chicago that expelled
two unmarried students after they became pregnant.
“I’m a Catholic,” Garcia
says, “and I don’t want the government telling the
church what to do.” Garcia says his organization has argued
that “religious institutions can basically do what they want.
They have special rights and special privileges.”
Even Ungaretti’s Anaclerio, who has
become an unwitting hero to conservatives in the last couple of
weeks, is urging the opponents to step back: “I didn’t
then and I don’t now take a position about whether it does
affect the abridgment of religious liberties.” Anaclerio also
says that he is not claiming that the law is an unconstitutional
infringement on religious liberties: “That’s not what I
said — and I wouldn’t have said that without a whole
lot more study of it.”
In other words, don’t believe the myth.
If you’re the principal of a Catholic high school, you
don’t have to hire a gay man.
This article appears in Feb 10-16, 2005.
