Southern Baptists in Texas were well represented at a Texas Senate hearing on how to protect religious liberty that critics say was in reality more about finding ways to discriminate against gays and lesbians.
Southern Baptists in Texas need stronger religious liberty protections, a spokesperson of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention told a state Senate committee at a hearing Feb. 17.
Cindy Asmussen
“We affirm that just as the family is the first basic human institution created by God, that religious liberty is the first human right,” Cindy Asmussen, ethics and religious liberty adviser for the 2,500 church-body claiming more than 1 million members, testified before the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs. “God has given us freedom of thought to choose to believe and hold his Word as sacred, apart from the tyranny and commandments of men, because ultimately we are responsible to God.”
Asmussen said her constituents in the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, one of two bodies in the state that are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, frequently approach her about what they view as encroachment on their religious liberties.
She told of a judge who, like many pastors, sometimes performs marriage ceremonies on his own time and would like to continue doing so without performing same-sex marriages against sincerely held religious beliefs. She said magistrates and county clerks deserve the same protections afforded to ministers of the gospel by the “Pastor Protection Act” signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2015.
“We also have many business owners who seek to operate their businesses according to their sincerely held religious beliefs and conscience and do good in their communities, but several ordinances in various cities are placing people of faith in positions that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs,” Asmussen said.
“We believe it is important to provide businesses more regulatory certainty,” Asmussen said. “People look to Texas as being a state that is dedicated to conservative values and the Constitution and they wonder if we will have specific protections for everyone, not only pastors and religious organizations.”
“I would think we would want to be a state that encourages business startups and small businesses to move here knowing that we will protect their right of conscience whether they are a wedding business, a bakery or any other kind business,” she said.
Asmussen said she hears from Texas Baptists about other things as well.
“We have had concerns raised as well by our members about new bathroom ordinances from the dad that told me about taking his 4-year-old son to the restroom at the ballpark only to find a woman standing there against the wall watching the men, or the women that have come to me and told me about instances in which a man was in the stall next to them,” she said. “They have a very real fear of the loss of their privacy.”
“As well our faith-based child welfare providers need assurance that they will not suffer adverse action for facilitating their services in accordance with their sincerely held religious beliefs — such as what we have seen happen in Massachusetts, California, District of Columbia or Illinois — where the agencies were forced to discontinue their services or else violate their religious beliefs and place children in homes that did not have a married mother and father,” she said.
“The agencies I have spoken with in Texas have numerous instances — one told me even weekly — where they receive calls asking if they place children with same-sex or unmarried couples,” Asmussen said. “With at least 25 percent of the child welfare services in Texas being provided by faith-based agencies, the state cannot afford to lose their help in caring for the orphan population.”
Steve Washburn, pastor of Southern Baptists of Texas-affiliated First Baptist Church in Pflugerville, Texas, who testified on behalf of the Texas Pastors Conference, said ministers “are deeply concerned about the rising threats against basic inalienable rights given by God and protected by our constitution,” specifically in the form of anti-discrimination ordinances like ones recently defeated in Houston and adopted in Dallas.
“The abuse of equal rights or non-discrimination laws as a thinly veiled special-interest agenda has created confusion, division and imminent threats against a majority of Texans to placate a tiny, very proactive, part of the population,” said Washburn, who in 2013 led opposition to a decision by the local school district to extend health insurance benefits to employees’ domestic partners.
Washburn said such ordinances “dramatically expand the power and reach of local government” in at least three ways.
First of all, he said, “they create vague designations for protected characteristics of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression that vary widely from city to city, creating a veritable patchwork of legal confusion.”
“A second way is they impose criminal penalties and fines that also may vary from city to city against citizens and businesses for simply practicing historically respected beliefs with shallow and weak exceptions for churches and religious institutions,” he said.
Finally, the pastor said, “they create new bureaucracies with investigative and punitive powers and limited avenues of appeal.”
Washburn said legislation “is desperately needed” to require that any local non-discrimination or equal protection laws conform to protected classes enumerated in state law.
John Tyler, associate professor of law at Houston Baptist University, testified about the effect of Obamacare on his employer. Aligned with both the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and Baptist General Convention of Texas, Houston Baptist University is a party in one of seven lawsuits before the U.S. Supreme Court alleging rules requiring faith-based nonprofits to cooperate with the government to ensure that female employees have access to a wide range of contraceptive services violate their sincerely held religious beliefs.
Joshua Houston, general counsel for Texas Impact, a statewide religious grassroots network with members from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths, said he believes a Texas Freedom Restoration Act passed by the legislature in 1999 has stood the test of time.
“Texas Impact’s board member Phil Strickland, who was better known as a long-time Baptist advocate for religious liberty, led a coalition that included over 50 organizations from across the political spectrum,” Houston said. “It included people of all faiths, and it worked with other stakeholders like local government and business to ensure the bill effectively calibrated individual religious liberties with the equal liberty of third parties.”
Before the hearing, religious and civil liberties groups sought to remind senators that religious freedom does not include the right to use faith as a weapon to discriminate against others or to ignore laws that everyone else must obey.
“Religious freedom is one of our most fundamental rights as Americans, but it’s deeply dishonest when politicians radically redefine that freedom so that individuals and businesses can use religion to discriminate or impose their personal religious beliefs on others,” said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network. “In America we all have the right to equal treatment under the law, regardless of who we are or what we believe.”