FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Wayne Besen, Executive Director
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org
Contact: John Becker, Director of Communications
Phone: 920-265-6023
E-Mail: john@truthwinsout.org
TWO Debunks Fake ‘Religious Freedom’ Lie With Groundbreaking Full-Page Ad
Ad Is In Response To New York Marriage Clerk Who Refused To Marry Lesbian Couple Under the Guise of ‘Religious Freedom’
Burlington, Vt. – Truth Wins Out announced today that it would place a groundbreaking full-page ad (see below) in the Ithaca Journal on Saturday that debunks the Religious Right’s latest strategy of claiming they are victims of religious discrimination when asked to follow the same laws as other citizens. TWO’s hard-hitting ad is headlined “Special Rights Masquerading as Religious Freedom” and signals that this fraudulent argument, increasingly used by anti-gay activists, will be vigorously challenged and exposed as a lie.
TWO’s ad is in response to the unethical actions of Ledyard, NY town clerk Rose Marie Belforti, who refused to issue a marriage license to a lesbian couple. Belforti disobeyed the law and then justified refusing to do her job by claiming she was a victim of religious discrimination.
“The private religious beliefs of public workers should be respected,” said Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen. “However, agents of the state are not entitled to pick and choose which members of the public they serve or which laws they obey. Refusing to serve entire classes of people based on religious objections will lead to chaos. It creates a slippery slope where self-appointed moral scolds serve as the gatekeepers to our freedom.”
Until recently, anti-gay activists argued that LGBT people were not entitled to equality because it was contrary to the will of the people. As recent polls show a sea change in support for marriage equality, particularly among younger demographics, the extreme right has switched its strategy. They now try to pose as martyrs whose beliefs give them the special right to discriminate and ignore the law.
“Belforti’s twisted version of ‘religious freedom’ comes at the expense of liberty for everyone else,” said TWO Communications Director John Becker. “It creates a balkanized nation that divides people based on sectarian differences. We must reject the unfair notion that some people have a special right to discriminate based on religious beliefs.”
TWO’s ad points out that allowing fundamentalists to follow their own rules would create chaos and undermine societal cohesion. The ad gives several examples of where this false notion of “religious freedom” might lead:
- Will town clerks use their fundamentalist beliefs to refuse issuing marriage licenses to divorced people who wish to remarry?
- Will town clerks use religion to justify turning away interfaith or interracial couples who want a marriage license?
- Will postal workers refuse to carry mail they find objectionable, or refuse to deliver to households whose religious beliefs they disagree with?
- Will religious public school teachers choose to educate only students who share their faith?
This latest effort is part of TWO’s Center Against Radical Extremism (TWOCARE), which debunks right wing propaganda and misinformation campaigns. TWOCARE also monitors and reports on extremist organizations and launches campaigns to spotlight their dangerous views.
(This ad is costing $2,500. If you like it, please kindly consider a tax-deductible contribution to help us pay for it)
Good to see an ad which frames the arguments so succinctly.
It troubles me when a group uses an emotionally charged word (like “religion”) to further their own biased causes. Good for you for responding. I hope all clear thinking people will take your words to heart and see what the truth is about this issue.
They already think they have the right to deny medication and even steal the prescription if they disagree with the treatment.
Your Freedom of Religion ENDS when it impedes on someone else’s rights. Just like ALL Constitutional Rights do.
Besides which, most “Christians” are vehemently OPPOSED to nearly everything Christ stood for.
Thanks for making me think!!! Will postal workers go through mail and toss any they don’t agree with? Will doctors refuse to treat HIV because it’s only “those people” who have it?
People who believe this should not be allowed to handle jobs that impact people with differing views. It is a public servant’s job to handle all matters that are legal no matter what your belief is. If you can’t handle this then you should not be in that type of position. So either you resign or you do it, simple as that.
I want freedom to discriminate against anyone I don’t like. I’ll form the Church of the Easily Angered and get a government job and refuse to assist anyone who is not my race, height, weight and hair color. Or something like that. In a serious note, by the argument of “religious freedom” could Muslim men choose to not assist women who don’t wear a veil or are unaccompanied by a male? Could members of some Aryan church refuse to assist African Americans? Hopefully this nonsensical argument will be squashed.
I love this ad! I only have one problem with it. I wish it were more inclusive. And no, that’s not because I’m a liberal and think that every statement must be inclusive of every group. It’s because I’d like it to be clearer that this is not just a GLBT issue. I’d like people who might dismiss this as just a GLBT issue that doesn’t affect their life to see that it clearly is not. That it’s not just Christians refusing to issue marriage licenses to lesbians; that they’re also refusing to fill your wife/sister/daughter’s contraceptive prescriptions.
Oops. I just posted my comment about inclusiveness and realized that I wasn’t clear. I did see that the ad proposes what if scenarios that could happen. What I was talking about wanting to see were events that have happened. That this HAS affected those outside the GLBT community, rather than it MIGHT affect them.
My partner of 30 years and I live in Ledyard. We have spoken out against Rose’s nonfeasance at town meetings. We volunteered for a write-in candidate who tried, unsuccessfully, to defeat her in the Nov. elections. Rose was re-elected by the voters of Ledyard with an 82 vote majority. She will soon place her hand on a Bible and swear that she will uphold the laws of the State of New York.
I doubt that she will deny marriage licenses to divorced couples, because she’s been married three times.
here’s the link to her website: http://www.fingerlakesdextercreamery.com/
Wow, I did not know the Bible thumper was married 3 times. What a spectacular hypocrite. These holier-than-thou types are unreal.
Do you believe clergy who have violated church hierarchy, dogma, oaths, and public law to marry gay persons are somehow the instruments of pushing us onto a slippery slope that leads to social chaos?
Your stance is no more rational than the irrationality it rejects.
Two peas in a pod.
Josef…the same arguement was made about clergy who used to marry interRACE couples. And Church hierarchy and dogma only change when they are challanged (which has happened in many of the oldest and most respected denominations, from the Episcopalians to the Lutherans). As per public law, well, a bad law is not a law in the truest sense, and in many states, and in time all of them, it will be the letter of the law to celebrate gay marriages.
It is not a slippery slope. It is the betterment and higher evolution of society from a low state, to a higer state of tolerance and grace. And, as is so often the case (gotta’ keep the people who fill the church plates happy!) the church will largly follow, not lead.
Comparing someone like Wayne to the hypocrit in New York is not just unfair…it is inaccurate.
Gene–just suggesting the ‘slippery slope’ argument posited in the advertisement is no more sound than the woman’s argument.
Slippery slopes usually go two directions. The blog post starts out clarifying religious beliefs (personal consious) must be respected. And then simply dismisses it as a consideration because if one considered it one would go sliding down the hillside into social chaos that would be held hostage by 1,001 religious fundamentalisms.
If you accept the slippery slope argument than the woman can run it back up the hill and argue that if you don’t allow her conscious to control her behavior you we will soon hammer every act of conscience that either violates law, religious teaching, or social practice.
I agree with you that there is not a slippery slope. There are lines of moral boundaries, lines of personal conscience, lines of public law. And these can be debated. The place we draw lines around allowing personal conscience to override public obligation (e.g. conscientious objection to war or an Amish carriage owner’s refusal to display a ‘slow-moving’ sign)ought have a rationality beyond whether we happen to agree with the person or not.
Wayne is Wayne. The woman is the woman. I only wished to equate the rationality of their arguments.
[...] increasingly in the minority in public opinion polls on issues affecting LGBT equality. As stated by Truth Wins Out, a non-profit organization that fights anti-gay religious extremism, [Anti-gay activists] now try [...]
[...] is a parallel issue to the one we highlighted with our ad in the Ithaca Journal recently. In that ad, we took to task town clerks in the state of New York who are unwilling to [...]
[...] http://www.truthwinsout.org/pressreleases/2011/12/20852/ [...]
[...] http://www.truthwinsout.org/pressreleases/2011/12/20852/ [...]
Here’s what Laurie Higgins of Illinois Family Institute has to say in support of Cardinal George:
http://www.illinoisfamily.org/news/contentview.asp?c=35473
My group’s web site was one of the original sites on the Internet when we first went online in 1995. We try to explain all viewpoints — a policy not often seen on religious web sites.
We have noticed a gradual shift that is particularly noticeable among religious conservatives.
– Religious freedom used to mean faith groups’ freedom from oppression by governments and other religions.
It is now changing. It is becoming freedom of faith groups to denigrate, oppress, and harm other groups — often women and sexual minorities.
See http://www.religioustolerance.org/relfreehate.htm
You seem to have noticed the same phenomenon.
Josef-very well said and even-keeled. Too often, it seems, tolerance has become only one-sided and has lost its definition of civil disagreement.
Josef said “Do you believe clergy who have violated church hierarchy, dogma, oaths, and public law to marry gay persons are somehow the instruments of pushing us onto a slippery slope that leads to social chaos?”.
Such clergy aren’t breaking any laws so there is no starting of a trend towards lawbreaking.
It is the RESPONSIBILITY of governmental agencies to fire agents/employees who refuse to fulfill their duties, as specified by law.
YOU ARE IDIOTS! Truth Wins Out…is not so interested in Truth as it is in their predetermined social stance and PROMOTION of homosexual rights. EVERYONE discriminates (not legal sense) in some way, we don’t like the way that person is drunk and laying outside the Waffle House restaurant, so we avoid. We discriminate against the drug addict that tries to get a job, but cannot calm himself long enough to sit through an interview. We discriminate against the blond girl, because we don’t want to spend our time telling the dumb-blond how to do her job every day. We discriminate against the priest and avoid talking with them, because they may bring up an issue we don’t like. We discriminate against the heterosexual, because being straight is so weird these days…no one should be so set in their ways. We discriminate against guys with mustaches, because guys with mustaches kill people…
Mustache-a choice, blond-a choice (most of the time), fat-choice not to do much about it, priest-choice of commitment, homosexual-choice of partnership, etc…ALL CHOICES
If Truth Wins Out, then we would all acknowledge our tendency to discriminate–because people are not like us. I personally don’t like people (any of them) because of stupid arguments for their cause (both sides)…or stupid conduct…or stupid beliefs…or stupid arrogance…or stupid lack of intelligence…or stupid…
Typing.
Are you intellectually challenged or unable to read?
All we care about is discrimination in the legal sense. LGBT people don’t give a flying f**k about what bigoted people think in their heads. We don’t want them to be able to deny us our rights to equal representation under the law and the right to pursue our lives like you do, unhindered by prejudicial laws. You really aren’t very smart if you cannot figure that out.
Josef said:
“Do you believe clergy who have violated church hierarchy, dogma, oaths, and public law to marry gay persons are somehow the instruments of pushing us onto a slippery slope that leads to social chaos?”
What does this have to do with anything in the article???? Who cares about clergy violating church hierarchy or dogma or oaths? Do you care if the Elks or the Rotary Club or the Masonic Lodge has members who “violate” their rules? Of course not!!!! That’s their own internal business! But when a Rotary Club member employed in a government position starts acting in a discriminatory way to deny services to members of the Lion’s Club, it DOES become significant. You are as rational as most christianists. In fact you and Typing are the “two peas in a pod”.