The Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana is called discriminatory by its detractors and essential by its supporters. But are both of these groups missing the real point? Ron Paul explains...
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana is called discriminatory by its detractors and essential by its supporters. But are both of these groups missing the real point? Ron Paul explains...
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana is called discriminatory by its detractors and essential by its supporters. But are both of these groups missing the real point? Ron Paul explains...
Today with me is Daniel McAdams, who is the co-host and he's also the executive director of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Good to have you here today, Daniel.
Good morning, sir.
Good.
Well, you know, the world is still filled with a lot of problems.
It looks like our efforts haven't been successful yet.
The troops aren't home yet, and the wars are still going on, and there's potential hot spots in Ukraine all the way down to Yemen into Africa, and we're involved in all of those.
But also the economy, although the stock market is booming, we still have some big problems in the economy.
But guess what is the big issue today that we're going to address?
It's who has the authority to tell a bakery how and when and what they can put on a cake.
Now, don't you think that's a pretty important subject that we need to deal with?
It seems critical.
That is.
Matter of fact, I think most people know about what's going on because it's been in the news and has to do with this problem of a law passed in Indiana, which is a consequence of a problem in Oregon.
There was a couple that refused to bake a cake in a special way for a homosexual couple.
And they ended up going out of business, so that was one consequence.
But the whole thing is, is there has been a move on for allowing people to express their religious beliefs and not be punished.
For instance, this couple in Oregon that refused to bake a cake in a certain manner by their Department of Labor, they are now pressured under their law because they have violated somebody's rights or demands.
I don't call it a right.
It's a demand.
They can be fined $75, $75,000 per person and given money to those customers.
So here it is, they are arguing the case that the customer has a right to demand, and if you don't do what they want, they can close you down and fine you and you have to reimburse them.
I don't consider that an example of an individual right.
That sounds pretty crazy, but what's the Indiana solution?
Does that make any more sense?
Well, you know, it's complex.
I think it comes from too many laws of political correctness and how do you enforce them.
But if one questions on whether this makes any sense, let me just read a short portion of the Indiana law that's supposed to solve all this mess.
And we've been around a bit and read a lot of legislation, and a lot of it's a mess and you can't ever read the truth.
But this is a pretty good example of this.
So the Indiana law says, this is supposed to solve this problem.
A governmental entity may substantially burden a person's exercise of religion only if the government entity demonstrates that application of the burden to the person is the furtherance of a compelling government interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering the compelling interest of the government.
So in regular English, that means you can't discriminate against someone's religion unless the government decides it's good for the government to discriminate against someone's religion.
Is that right?
That's what they think they can do.
And of course, that's why there's a lot of unhappiness.
But you know, I compare it a little bit to the skirmishes that go on with legislation on marriage.
You know, you and I may have a definition of marriage and maybe they can make the case that we don't have the right to tell everybody our definition has to be followed.
Somebody else wants to define marriage a certain way.
And libertarians say, well, that's okay.
But the whole problem is changing the law.
Why does the law have to tell us what to do and what the definition is?
And this is, in a way, political correctness.
And it's put into law.
I used to think political correctness was not legal.
You know, that it was just a political opinion.
Pressure was put on individuals to obey the line of political correctness.
And they can do a great deal of harm.
But in this case, this is legislating the way it happened in Oregon.
This is legislating political correctness.
If you don't do it, you can be in big trouble.
So I understand our friend Chris Rossini has made a comment on this, and it's interesting his take on this.
Yeah, Chris wrote on the Target Liberty website that he pointed out that this business, Angie's List, has announced in response to the Indiana law that it will now pull out of its plan to build a $40 million headquarters in Indiana.
And what Chris points out is very interesting is that they don't like the fact that the intent of the Indiana legislation is to allow people to exercise their free choice of who they do business with.
But isn't Angie's List doing the same thing by saying it refuses to do business in Indiana?
So they're exercising the same freedoms that they don't believe other people should have in Indiana.
And they're leaving.
They're going to another state, which is one of the solutions that we advocate.
I also understand that there might be some money involved with Angie's List, the state money, and they weren't going to get as much government money and they were getting on their way out anyway.
That this was sort of, you know, being used as an excuse.
But, you know, it really goes back to some basic principles.
Can we solve all our problems by law?
Write a law that says you have to do this.
We can tell you if somebody wants a cake a certain way, it is their right, and we can insist on it.
If not, we're going to punish you for this.
But, you know, in a society that recognizes liberty and private property, all associations would be voluntary.
And some of the people who are condemning this law love voluntary associations.
You know, just when you think of the laws that were written that were very discriminatory, you know, against race and for sexual matters, these laws were bad and we had to eliminate them.
But then they turn around and they use the government to have what I think is affirmative action.
You will do this.
Your association, you will be forced to do this.
You say, well, this is public.
This is not private.
But if you and I own a restaurant and we want to have a certain clientele and we want to have a certain decorum, and we say, well, we don't want 10 kids with you running around in the room and we don't want you to come in in sandals and you have to wear a shirt.
Nobody questions that.
So there are times when we already are making these types of choices.
What do you think about the approach of Indiana where they use your religious beliefs as a substitute for what you're saying, which is property rights?
Well, you know, I think that confuses things very much because it to me isn't a religious issue.
It's a rights issue because I think it's been pointed out also that secular people, non-religious people, have their druthers and their desires.
Do they have as much rights as people who have religious reasons?
That's why I think the answer to so many of these problems can't be found in, say, religiosity, you know, religious beliefs, because the government's role in religion is to keep your hands off, but not to use it.
And then you get confused because then they end up not defending this basic principle of voluntary associations.
That is, to me, so important.
And I think we do pretty well on voluntary associations, you know, in sexual matters, in religious matters, and other things.
But when it comes to economics, it is bad.
Now, one person pointed out that maybe this would lead to something bad on religious matters.
What if this was carried to a full extent of it?
Could it be that government might use this to say, well, priests and ministers use the state to sign the law because this is a legal matter and therefore you will marry the people we tell you to.
Would that be a logical conclusion to this?
And they receive their certification by the state as ministers.
So what happens to very conservative ministers who their biblical beliefs prevent them from doing this?
Talk about opening a can of worms.
Yeah, I think so.
And I think there are so many things that could be solved with voluntary approach.
No force, no force by one group over another.
You know, boycotts and leave, go from one state to another, and you can correct a lot of these problems.
But what bothers me most when they claim it's a right, you know, a demand, okay, I have a right to this.
I'm entitled to this.
And they never say, well, how about the other person?
Does he give up his right to just, you know, have his property confiscated and given to somebody else?
So they do this.
So often they, you know, call things rights that aren't right.
We have a right to our life.
We have a right to our liberty.
And we have a right to pursue our happiness, and that should be protected.
If the government would only do that, believe me, we would be a much happier society.
But for us as a culture, when all the important things that are going on around the world today are spending this much time on what are the rules and regulations on baking a cake, it's pretty absurd.
So I think that there is an easy solution, and that is just believing in liberty and believing that people can make choices and people can boycott and they can walk out and have a definition of rights a lot more precise than they are today.