Early this year, the St. Louis city council passed an ordinance “to prohibit discrimination based on a person’s reproductive-health decisions or pregnancy.” The law applies to discrimination related to employment or housing and includes no ministerial exemptions or exceptions for religious institutions. To Nathanael Blake, the law constitutes a major assault on religious liberty:
[U]nder this law, Catholic leaders in St. Louis can be fined and imprisoned for punishing a rogue priest who got a woman pregnant and then paid for her to get an abortion. . . . The elders of a Baptist church can be fined and imprisoned for firing a minister who, in order to preserve his image as the father of a perfect family, pressured his unmarried teenaged daughter to get an abortion. The leaders of pro-life groups can be fined and imprisoned for refusing to hire pro-abortion activists, or for even suggesting a preference for pro-life employees.
Megan Green, the original sponsor of the ordinance, has confirmed these consequences, declaring that, “We’re not saying the [Catholic] archdiocese and [other religious groups] can’t have their views. . . . We’re saying they can’t impose them on others in housing or employment.” This ordinance is intended to punish Christian ministries and organizations that require employees to adhere to Christian standards of behavior. This is further confirmed by the absence of any actual injustices for the law to remedy. . . .
Churches and religious institutions that can’t enforce standards of belief and behavior, even for ministers, do not have religious liberty. . . . The St. Louis law is one manifestation of a broader effort to pervert the purpose of anti-discrimination law, changing it from a tool used to protect minority groups from material harm (i.e., being locked out of essential goods and services) into a weapon used to destroy religious liberty. . . . [P]roponents of a similar measure in California are open about their desire to attack Christian organizations. . . . In St. Louis and elsewhere, anti-discrimination law is being hijacked to persecute religious nonconformists, rather than protecting their rights to live authentically by their faith.
Read more on Public Discourse: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/08/19840/