On Frank Bruni’s Sincerely Held Beliefs
Imagine the irony of an opinion columnist who is paid, probably handsomely, to express his beliefs and convictions in the nation’s premier newspaper using his position to rob his readers of the very First Amendment freedoms he enjoys.
Columnist Frank Bruni is upset. He wrote a Sunday column lamenting religion’s “favored status” and that “‘religious liberty’ sounds disturbingly like a dog whistle to the crowd that wants specified, codified exemption from anti-discrimination laws.”
He’s upset that his homosexuality is treated as a threat to religious liberty. The truth, though, is that his homosexuality isn’t a threat to religious liberty; only a weaponized homosexuality that seeks to compel affirmation of behavior that some consider immoral is a threat to religious liberty. The existence of gays and lesbians isn’t a threat to religious liberty anymore than evangelicals are a threat to gay and lesbians’ rights to assemble, print, or speak or anything else afforded by the Constitution.
Though it serves his interests to omit such facts, Bruni glosses over the necessary distinction that sees the antagonists of his column—the florists, photographers, and bakers—gladly serve and employ gays and lesbians, but who refrain from using their creative talents and expressions for wedding ceremonies that violate their conscience. Bruni is the judge, jury, and executioner of his neighbor’s conscience, apparently endowed with powers to determine whether someone else’s conscience feels violated or infringed upon.
Crucial distinctions that neither he nor the activist LGBT lobby will acknowledge are left unstated. Instead, we’re told that these services aren’t “religious acts,” a secular dog whistle of his own making that compartmentalizes religious belief from the right to act on one’s religious belief. We’re reassured at the end that he actually respects religion, so long as its confined to “pews, homes and hearts”—the same “freedom to worship” anomaly, which enjoys no historic support in our founding documents, but is the adoption of secularists who feel threatened by religious ethics.
His column is a far cry from level-headedness. Robert George, the McCormack Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and the Vice Chairman of U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, also registered his strong disagreement with Bruni’s column.
How else is Bruni’s column problematic?
Bruni doesn’t weigh the competing interests that come with balancing religious liberty with equality. He uses sexual freedom as a forceful bludgeon to bring religious truth claims to heel.
He omits the judicial strictures that balance sincerely held beliefs with compelling government interests. In this world of black and white, Bruni ignores important complex legal reasoning that helps balance citizens’ rights.
He wrongfully casts religious freedom as a bludgeon to do anything if it flies under the banner of religion. As I’ve written countless times elsewhere, no conservative or evangelical believes that religious freedom is the “Golden Ticket” that gives anybody the right to discriminate. Nor do evangelicals have an active, plotting interest in discriminating against gays. We want freedom like all others to act on our most deeply held beliefs. But Bruni doesn’t care. It doesn’t help his cause to be nuanced, balanced, or honest in his presentation of the facts.
Bruni wants carve out speech as something different than religious belief. But speech and religious belief aren’t separate species. They come bundled together in the the project we call the First Amendment—the freedom to speak, to act on one’s belief, the freedom to publish, the freedom to assemble, the freedom to form contracts.
It is stunning that Bruni’s screed would come not even a week after the tragedy in France where free speech became the victim of terrorism. Thankfully, the world responded in one chorus, noting the resiliency of free speech and expression. We must always remember that hostility to free expression is the catalyzing force that incites contempt and the desire to exact vengeance. And in this column, Bruni unleashes on his fellow citizens that don’t think like he thinks. Bruni accosts Christians as pro-discrimination, a rhetorical flourish that only insulated liberals feel comfortable saying. His seething condescension for anyone who dares question the morality of homosexuality is apparent. I wonder if he would be apt to join his Times colleague Josh Barro who called for the dissenters of the Sexual Revolution be “stamped out, ruthlessly.” Dear readers, these are the fundamentalists of the Sexual Revolution whose speech codes or sexual ethics mustn’t be violated or argued with.
A post-script: Bruni mentions Mike Huckabee’s new book titled God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy. There’s a chapter titled “Bend Over and Take it Like a Prisoner.” Let me offer agreement with Bruni: Huckabee’s choice of language for this chapter is distasteful and morally repugnant. If that’s the rhetoric that’s supposed to play to his evangelical base, count this evangelical out.