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Utah LGBT Rights Bill A Trojan Horse For Religious Right’s Agenda

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There were both cheers and tears as many in the Utah LGBTQ community celebrated the passage of a workplace and housing nondiscrimination law in the conservative Utah legislature. But behind closed doors, I suspect it’s actually the leaders of the Religious Right who are cheering the hardest.

As someone who began as an activist in the Utah LGBTQ community, and fought for years alongside countless others for full workplace and housing protections, I was overjoyed at the possibility that 2015 might finally be the year we stepped closer to equality. Too many LGBTQ Utahns, myself included, have faced that discrimination firsthand. But once the legislation was unveiled, my heart sank. While there is much to be happy with in the legislation, and the protections it offers to some of the most vulnerable citizens in the Beehive State, the law also contains a tiny Trojan Horse individual religious exemptions clause. 

The Utah bill is being called a “model” to be used in states around the nation, but we must be forewarned. The individual religious exemption in the law, as small and seemingly noninvasive as it is, could put the civil liberties of everyone at stake for decades to come.

Religious freedom is important, and as a principle has existed since before the writing of the U.S. Constitution. The 13 original colonies were a fractured bunch of near-theocracies, with various Christian sects dominating different colonies—to the detriment of anyone not a member of the particular sect in power locally. Thanks to the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the principle of religious freedom in the Constitution set in motion of the disestablishment of the state churches, and the advantages they held in the public sphere. Jefferson’s famous Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which predated the Constitution and was the first such law to be enacted in the world, said one’s beliefs or non-beliefs cannot “enhance, diminish, or impact” one’s “civil capacity.” Individuals were shielded from the tyranny of churches who had previously sought to force them to adhere to their beliefs, and religions were shielded from governments elevating one religion over another. 

It has taken us a long time to make it work and, in truth, we are still working on it. 

But the Religious Right has launched a campaign to redefine the meaning of religious liberty, stripping away those protections and once again giving religions the power to circumscribe the rights of individual conscience. 

This coalition, led by right-wing groups such as Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly known as Alliance Defense Fund), the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and Liberty Counsel, is systematically working the courts and state legislatures to enact religious exemptions—essentially a right of religious institutions and individuals to decide which laws they will or will not follow.

In practical terms, this could play out as a business owner invoking faith to deny service to a LGBTQ couple, or refusing to hire Jewish employees. Or a man refusing to promote women to managerial positions because he doesn’t believe men should be subservient to women. We cannot allow such freedom of conscience to become a legal sanction for these and other forms of discrimination.

One of the Religious Right leaders heavily involved in this campaign is Dallin H. Oaks, one of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ (Mormon) senior leaders and member of their Quorum of 12 Apostles. The Mormon church frequently finds itself at odds with members of other faiths who don’t believe it to be a true Christian religion. However, unlike some of his brethren in the all-male leadership, Oaks is deeply involved in the work with the Religious Right. He sits on the board of the international culture warring organization World Congress of Families. He received the 2013 “Canterbury Medal” for his “defense of religious liberty” from the Becket Fund. In speeches before conservative groups, Oaks frequently extols the benefits of individuals being able to using their faith as an excuse to dodge pesky civil rights laws.

That’s why, when just a few weeks ago Oaks held a press conference to announce that he and the Mormon church were ready to endorse a statewide nondiscrimination law for LGBTQ people if only the leaders of the local LGBTQ community would sit down and negotiate a “compromise,” many were suspicious.

Oaks was up front about what he was looking for. He and other leaders of the Mormon church enumerated the religious exemptions they wanted included with a nondiscrimination law, including a right for government and health care workers to deny service to LGBTQ people.

SB296, the bill that resulted from those negotiations, was hailed by equality groups and the Mormon church as a “historic compromise” of nondiscrimination and religious freedom. The bill does indeed ban workplace and housing discrimination against LGBTQ people in Utah. But buried underneath those important protections, is a small clause guaranteeing the right of individuals to express faith-based anti-LGBTQ views at work.

It’s a small exemption. Seemingly inconsequential in comparison to the benefits the new law could bring. Viewed purely as a standalone piece of legislation, SB296 does a lot more good than bad and it’s unsurprising to see so many social justice-minded people supporting it.

But the equality movement cannot survive if we view legislation through a short-term and narrow lens. To do so is to ignore the context of the long-term consequences of the Religious Right’s national agenda—which only needs to get a foot in the door to get the ball rolling. 

Oaks’ goal with the nondiscrimination law was not to pass full individual religious exemptions all at once. To use the analogy of the unfortunate amphibian, the frog will jump out of the pot if put directly into boiling water. But turn the heat up slowly, and the frog cooked to death. For the LGBTQ community to endorse the Religious Right’s corrupt redefined version of religious freedom, even in this one seemingly minor way, opens the door for the expansion of religious exemptions in both breadth and number. 

And as if to confirm this suspicion as quickly as possible, within two hours of the “compromise” SB296 passing the Utah legislature, conservatives in the Utah House of Representatives had also passed two other bills that had not been part of the negotiations: one granting county clerks the right to refuse to perform any marriage they opposed on religious grounds, and the other paving the way for full individual religious exemptions in the public marketplace. 

It’s a victory for the Right not only in the success of imposing their agenda into law, but in winning the larger PR battle at a critical moment in time. 

As I discussed in Resisting the Rainbow: Right-Wing Responses to LGBTQ Gains, the Mormon church has only ever given in to pressure by the LGBTQ community when its back is against the wall in a public relations battle. After months of heavy protesting over their involvement in California’s Prop 8, they endorsed a municipal nondiscrimination law in Salt Lake City in 2009. In 2010, after 2nd-in-command Mormon leader Boyd K. Packer claimed that there was no way God would allow people to be born gay, protests around the church’s headquarters garnered international attention and prompted Packer’s comments to be officially stricken from the church’s records.  

So why did the Mormon church unexpectedly come to the table? Could it be a delayed response to their highly-publicized excommunication of faithful feminist members for asking for a public discussion about why the patriarchal church does not allow female leadership? Unlikely, that was months ago and the discussion has largely died down.

A more plausible explanation is the forthcoming World Congress of Families (WCF) event scheduled for Salt Lake City in October. The international coalition of U.S. culture warriors held a conference last year in Moscow—their name was removed just before the conference started to prevent negative publicity over the situation in Ukraine—where attendees unanimously voted to urge their home countries—like the United States—to pass laws modeled on the Russian anti-LGBTQ law. (That law criminalizes any positive speech about LGBTQ people under the guise of protecting children from “propaganda.”) 

WCF attendees and other U.S. conservatives, such as Rick Warren, Sharon Slater, Brian Brown and others, are known around the world for their work in exporting the culture wars abroad, which has resulted in outcomes like the “kill the gays” bill in Uganda.

Dallin H. Oaks is a member of the WCF board of directors. 

Thanks to Oaks’ work in helping to pass the “compromise” legislation, the WCF and the Religious Right’s goal of codifying their redefined version of religious freedom into law has taken a giant step forward. Once Pandora’s Box is opened, there’s no shutting it.

 

Eric Ethington is a journalist, activist, and researcher. Originally from Utah, he now works in Boston for a social justice think tank. His writing, advocacy work, and research have been featured on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, CNBC, the New York Times, The Guardian, and The Public Eye magazine. Follow him on Twitter @EricEthington. 

Image: Gov. Gary Herbert signing SB296 into law. Photo by Salt Lake City Council Member Erin Mendenhall via Twitter

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News

Torture? Shoot Protesters? Greenland? Question After Question, Hegseth Refused to Answer

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January 14, 2025

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Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial and, many say, unqualified nominee to lead the millions of people serving in the U.S. Armed Forces and oversee the Pentagon’s $842 billion budget, refused to give straight answers to numerous questions posed by U.S. Senators during his short, four-hour-and-fifteen-minute confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

Democrats on the committee had requested multiple rounds of questions so they could follow up with the nominee, a former Fox News weekend host who has been accused of sexual assault, “aggressive drunkenness,” sexism, mismanaging two veterans’ non-profits, and an apparent embrace of Christian nationalism. Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) refused, despite precedent with multiple nominees before the committee over many years. Wicker also refused to allow the FBI’s report on Hegseth to be made available to all members of the committee.

Hegseth, at times combative, frequently battled Democratic Senators, talking over them and refusing to answer numerous questions, while often praising Donald Trump — and invoking his name as a shield. Questions he did answer often came from Republicans on the committee. They included questions like, How many genders are there? How many pushups can you do? What do you love about your wife?

But Hegseth refused to give straight answers to a large number of basic questions, such as: Would you submit to an expanded FBI background check? Agree to use the military to seize Greenland or the Panama Canal? In each of your weddings you’ve pledged to be faithful to your wife? Should allegations of spousal abuse be disqualifying?

One question Hegseth initially refused to answer was what his use of the apparent slur, “jag off” means.

“I don’t think I need to, sir,” he told the Ranking Member, Jack Reed, when politely asked.

“Why not?” Reed, surprised, asked.

“Because the men and women watching understand,” Hegseth replied.

He only explained it when Reed reminded him that “perhaps some of my colleagues don’t understand.”

READ MORE: ‘Loyalty to a Tyrant’: Cheney Invokes Jack Smith’s Report to Warn Senate on Trump Nominees

“It would be a JAG officer who puts his or her own priorities in front of the war fighters,” Hegseth finally said. (JAG is Judge Advocate General, a military attorney.)

Hegseth’s history of comments against women and LGBTQ service members is well-documented. U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) repeatedly pressed him on his beliefs on women in the military.

“Will you commit to preserving the Women, Peace, and Security Law at DOD and including in your budget the requisite funding to continue to restore and resource these programs throughout the DOD?” Senator Shaheen asked, referring to this law.

“I, Senator, I will commit to reviewing that program and ensuring it aligns with America First, national security priorities, meritocracy, lethality and readiness. And if it advances American interests, it’s something we would advance,” Hegseth smugly replied. “If it doesn’t, it’s something we would look at.”

“Well since former President Trump signed it into the law, I hope that he agrees with you,” Shaheen responded.

At one point, when Hegseth grew combative, he talked over U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI), forcing her to repeatedly say, “I’m not hearing the answer to my question.” He then refused to answer if he would “resign if you drink on the job, which is a 24/7 position?”

Senator Hirono also asked Hegseth if he would comply with an order from the Commander-in-Chief, who will be Donald Trump, to shoot protestors. He refused to give a straight answer.

“In 2020, then President Trump directed former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to shoot protesters in the legs in downtown D.C., an order Secretary Esper refused to comply with. Would you carry out such an order from President Trump?” she asked.

Hegseth launched into what appeared to be a defense of Trump’s order, but would not answer, leading Hirono to say, “Sounds to me that you would comply with such an order, you will shoot protesters in the leg.”

Asked, again by Hirono, if he would “carry out an order from President Trump to seize Greenland, a territory of our NATO ally Denmark, and, “comply with an order to take over the Panama Canal,” Hegseth again refused to give a straight answer.

“Senator, I will emphasize that President Trump received 77 million votes to be the lawful Commander-in-Chief —” Hegseth replied.

“We’re not talking about the election,” Hirono reminded him.

“Senator, one of the things that President Trump is so good at is never strategically tipping his hand,” Hegseth, again lavishing praise on Trump, replied, again not giving a straight answer.

In a similar vein, Hegseth refused to give a straight answer to U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who asked if there are any orders a Commander-in-Chief could give that would be unlawful and violate the Constitution.

“I reject the premise that President Trump is going to be giving illegal orders,” he exclaimed.

He also refused to give a straight answer when asked if he has been in conversations about using active duty military within the U.S., and using active duty military in U.S.-based detention camps.

RELATED: FBI Report on Hegseth ‘Insufficient’ Says Top Dem: ‘I Do Not Believe You Are Qualified’

Hegseth’s back-and-forth with U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) however were among the most damaging, as veterans’ advocate Paul Rieckhoff noted.

At one point, Hegseth refused to answer if spousal abuse would be disqualifying for someone to be Secretary of Defense, after refusing to say he would release his former wives from NDAs if there were any.

“Did you ever engage in any acts of physical violence against any of your wives?” Kaine asked.

“Senator, absolutely not,” Hegseth replied.

“But you would agree with me that if someone had committed physical violence against the spouse, that would be disqualifying to serve as Secretary of Defense, correct?” Kaine continued.

“Senator, absolutely not have I ever done that,” Hegseth stressed.

“You would agree that would be a disqualifying offense, would you not?” Kaine pressed.

“Senator, you’re talking about a hypothetical,” Hegseth responded, again refusing to answer.

“I don’t think it’s a hypothetical. Violence against spouses occurs every day,” Kaine insisted. And if you as a leader are not capable of saying that physical violence against a spouse should be a disqualifying fact, for being Secretary [of Defense] of the most powerful nation in the world, you demonstrating an astonishing lack of judgment.”

The liberal Super PAC American Bridge put out this clip, saying, “Pete Hegseth refuses to say he doesn’t support waterboarding, torture, or abandoning the Geneva Conventions. This guy has dangerous ideas that have no place at the Department of Defense.”

In that exchange with Senator Angus King (I-VT), Hegseth also declared, “what an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand decisions over to international bodies.”

And when asked to give just true or false answers to questions about numerous alleged instances of intoxication, Hegseth repeatedly replied, “anonymous smears.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

RELATED: ‘Marxist’ Agenda: Hegseth Says Gay Troops ‘Erode Standards’ in ‘Social Engineering’ Push

 

Image via Reuters

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FBI Report on Hegseth ‘Insufficient’ Says Top Dem: ‘I Do Not Believe You Are Qualified’

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January 14, 2025

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s vetting of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s highly controversial nominee to head the U.S. Department of Defense, an $842 billion entity that employs more than 2.8 million people, was “insufficient,” Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee warned at the start of his confirmation hearing Tuesday.

The FBI’s report on Hegseth was made available only to the Chairman and the Ranking Member of the Armed Services Committee, not the rank-and-file Senators on the Committee. Ranking Member Reed asked that the report be made available to the entire committee, but the Republican Chairman, Roger Wicker, refused.

Critics have noted that, similarly to how the FBI conducted its investigation into sexual harassment allegations against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Bureau reportedly did not interview the person who allegedly was sexually abused. In October 2018, as ABC News reported, the FBI did not interview Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

READ MORE: ‘Loyalty to a Tyrant’: Cheney Invokes Jack Smith’s Report to Warn Senate on Trump Nominees

ABC News also, on Tuesday, reported the FBI did not interview the woman, whose name has not been made public, who “told investigators in October 2017 that she had encountered Hegseth at an event afterparty at a California hotel where both had been drinking and claimed that he sexually assaulted her.”

The New York Times on Tuesday published a report detailing concerns Democrats have voiced about Hegseth and the FBI’s report.

“Quite a few of the women with significant allegations against him have not been interviewed by the F.B.I. investigators,” Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) said on MSNBC on Monday evening, The Times reported, “adding that some of those women feared for their safety and that of their children.”

“My understanding is that some of them would like to be contacted by the F.B.I. investigative team, or the vetters, and they have not been talked to,” Duckworth also told MSNBC.

“One missed opportunity,” The Times reported, “came when the bureau did not interview one of Mr. Hegseth’s ex-wives before its findings were presented to senators last week, according to people familiar with the bureau’s investigation.”

Another Democratic Senator on the Armed Services Committee, Richard Blumenthal, told The Times: “There are significant gaps and inadequacies in the report, including the failure to interview some of the key potential witnesses with personal knowledge of improprieties or abuse.”

READ MORE: LA Mayor a ‘Communist’ Alleges Fox News Host With Ties to Trump Nominee

Tuesday morning, Ranking Member Reed told Republican Chairman Wicker: “You and I have both seen the FBI background investigation, as they have said, and I want to say, to the record, I believe the investigation was insufficient.”

“Frankly, there are still FBI obligations to talk to people, they have not had access to the forensic audit, which I referenced, and the person who had access to was quite critical of Mr. Hegseth, and I think people on both sides have suggested that they get the report.”

“I know your colleagues have asked for it, [Senate Republican Majority Leader] Thune assured me personally that he thought it was the appropriate idea.”

Reed noted that another of Trump’s nominees, “had similar, very complicated personal issues,” and the “report was made available for all the members.”

Chairman Wicker refused Ranking Member Reed’s request.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Reed went on to tell Hegseth, “I do not believe that you are qualified to meet the overwhelming demands of this job.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

RELATED: ‘Marxist’ Agenda: Hegseth Says Gay Troops ‘Erode Standards’ in ‘Social Engineering’ Push

 

Image via Reuters

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‘Loyalty to a Tyrant’: Cheney Invokes Jack Smith’s Report to Warn Senate on Trump Nominees

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10 hours ago

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January 14, 2025

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Republican former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, who served as vice chair of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, on Tuesday cited the Special Counsel’s just-released, 174-page report on Donald Trump’s involvement with the January 6 insurrection, and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, to deliver a prescient warning to members of the Senate. Starting today, the Senate begins confirmation hearings on the President-elect’s highly-controversial cabinet nominees. Focusing on Justice Department nominees, she warned Senators that those “compromised by personal loyalty to a tyrant” should not be confirmed.

Jack Smith, who resigned as Special Counsel on Friday ahead of the President-elect’s inauguration next week, emphasized in his report that there was sufficient evidence to warrant prosecuting Donald Trump. He also noted that if those cases had proceeded to a jury trial, the evidence was strong enough to secure convictions.

Smith wrote, “after conducting thorough investigations, I found that, with respect to both Mr. Trump’s unprecedented efforts to unlawfully retain power after losing the 2020 election and his unlawful retention of classified documents after leaving office, the [Principles of Federal Prosecution] compelled prosecution.”

READ MORE: LA Mayor a ‘Communist’ Alleges Fox News Host With Ties to Trump Nominee

His final words in his report state that the Special Counsel’s office “assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”

Cheney says that Smith’s report makes clear that Trump’s nominees, specifically, Justice Department nominees, had anything to do with his efforts to overturn the election, they must not be confirmed by the Senate: “if those nominees cooperated with Trump’s deceit to overturn the 2020 election, they cannot now be entrusted with the responsibility to preserve the rule of law and protect our Republic.”

“The Special Counsel’s 1/6 Report,” her statement begins, “made public last night, confirms the unavoidable facts of 1/6 yet again. DOJ’s exhaustive and independent investigation reached the same essential conclusions as the Select Committee. All this DOJ evidence must be preserved.”

READ MORE: Senator Suggests Unusual Interpretation of ‘Advice and Consent’ Responsibility

“But most important now, as the Senate considers confirming Trump’s Justice Department nominees: if those nominees cooperated with Trump’s deceit to overturn the 2020 election, they cannot now be entrusted with the responsibility to preserve the rule of law and protect our Republic. As our framers knew, our institutions only hold when those in office are not compromised by personal loyalty to a tyrant.”

“So this question is now paramount for Republicans: Will you faithfully perform the duties the framers assigned to you and do what the Constitution requires? Or do you lack the courage?”

Sarah Longwell, a Republican and the publisher of The Bulwark, responded, writing: “This. Donald Trump has revealed how shallow the vast majority of the current GOP’s commitment is to the constitution and the American experiment. These confirmation hearings will be another inflection point for the few who claim they value their oath. I hope some rise to the occasion.”

READ MORE: Trump Trying to Buy Back His DC Hotel Seen as ‘Magnet’ for Conflicts of Interest: Reports

 

Image via Reuters

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