So the good folks at the editorial board of the Staunton News (Mis)Leader think that religious liberty is a battle cry for the “far right”:
Virginia Republicans aiming to please the far right by proposing new religious freedom legislation would be wise to watch how they walk their talk.
They might please the extremes at the price of alienating everyone else. The move could help the GOP in the low-turnout 2015 General Assembly elections, but would also backfire in the high-turnout 2016 presidential election.
In short, your religious freedom should be infringed — yes, conscience under foot — in order to demand, coerce, and enforce a full right to dignity for others. Or in other words; dignity for me, not for thee. Second verse, same as the first…
Far from ridiculous attempts to compare efforts to redefine marriage with the civil rights era, you can detect a tone that implies a hollow victory. The panic is this — that mock marriages might be acceptable in law, but still unacceptable in American culture writ large.
Of course, Virginia’s original RFRA was crafted by none other than Thomas Jefferson. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom is clear: “(T)o compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.”
This bill passed in 1785. To my knowledge, it’s still on the books.
The editors of the Staunton News Leader might want to take a trip over Afton Mountain and dwell on the differences between an open public square and the virtues of pluralism vs. a rigid and state-enforced orthodoxy of ideas, whether secular or sacred.
Certainly Mr. Jefferson would not approve.
