The Global Reach of Religious Liberty Rhetoric

Last updated on: April 23, 2014 at 8:46 am by Guest Contributor

The Global Reach of Religious Liberty Rhetoric 2014-04-23T08:46:00-05:00 Guest Contributor

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For the past 16 years, the U.S.-affiliated and Kampala, Uganda-based Makerere University Walter Reed Project has conducted research on HIV vaccines and public health issues in the East African country. Earlier this month, Ugandan officials raided the project, detaining and interrogating a staff member, reportedly because of the project’s assistance to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBT, people. According to the project’s website, “the operations of the program are temporarily suspended to ensure the safety of staff and the integrity of the program.” Speculation that Uganda’s new Anti-Homosexuality Act, which prohibits “promoting homosexuality,” inspired the raid raises the question of what inspired the act in the first place.

Considering the act’s origins is relevant to the formulation of an official American response to it. However, this also has immediate domestic implications, since many of the arguments and actors behind anti-LGBT legislation and intolerance in Uganda, Nigeria, Russia, Lithuania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Gambia, and elsewhere are the same arguments and actors behind anti-LGBT “license to discriminate” bills here in the United States. One way to be responsive to intolerance abroad is to be responsible for our own voices at home.

Exporting the license to discriminate

Domestic religious liberty, or license to discriminate, bills are part of a global movement that misuses religion to justify discrimination and intolerance against LGBT people. Earlier this month, Mississippi lawmakers passed—and Gov. Phil Bryant (R) signed into law—the Mississippi Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which civil rights groups fear will be invoked by religious business owners to justify their unwillingness to serve LGBT patrons and to circumvent existing or future anti-discrimination statutes.

Despite substantive substantive similarities between Arizona’s unsuccessful license to discriminate bill, S.B. 1062—which was vetoed by Gov. Jan Brewer (R)—and Mississippi’s successful bill, the latter received minimal media coverage, while the former drew outrage from state and national businesses, the faith community, and even one of the bill’s co-sponsors. Although a majority of the public might not know about Mississippi’s new license to discriminate bill, Tony Perkins sure does. Perkins—president of the Family Research Council, or FRC, a right-wing organization that has been linked to the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups—attended its private signing ceremony. Not only have Perkins and his group supported license to discriminate bills across the country, but the FRC also spent a significant amount of money in 2010 lobbying Congress to vote down a resolution denouncing Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill.

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