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Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor has it right: “Human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.” A case in point is the religious right’s reaction to The Equality Act, which proposes to give the LGBTQ community the same rights that straight people enjoy.

According to evangelist Franklin Graham, “The Equality Act is a threat to life as we know it in our nation today…. schools, churches, and hospitals could be forced to accept the government’s beliefs and mandates about sexual orientation and gender identity.”

People could be fined or lose their jobs for using the wrong name or pronouns. Worse yet, says Graham, “Schools will be coerced to instruct first, second, and third graders that they can choose to be a boy or a girl, or neither.”

Surely, the Act will result in America suffering the same fate as Sodom and Gomorrah—burning sulfur being rained down on us from God. Or maybe not.

Never mind that Graham’s description of the Act is fiction. What the Act mandates is that everyone be treated equally, and if we’re all children of God, and God loves us all equally, then doesn’t God want all his children—straight or gay—to be treated equally?

A rather short document, the Act expands the definition of unlawful discrimination—race, color, religion and national origin—to include “sex (including sexual orientation and gender identify)” when it comes to stores and service providers, as well as employment and public education. The Act also expands similar protection for housing and credit.

Graham says, “This is not about politics—it’s about Biblical truth and religious freedom.” What nonsense. Graham and his followers are using religion to marginalize people they disapprove of.

Just like everything else in life, religion has a duality. Money can be used to buy groceries and food, or it can be used to bribe government officials. Guns can be used for hunting game or to murder an opponent. Sex can be used to express love or to denigrate and subjugate.

Religion can be a source of light that uplifts the spirit and moves us to rectify social injustice, or religion can be used to justify shunning people who are seen as different. Of course, the religious right disguises what it is doing by professing, “We love the sinner but hate the sin.”

If they so love the sinner, why does the religious right tell legislators that people of faith—or of purported faith—should get a free pass when it comes to doing business with LGBTQ people or hiring them? It’s more than hating the sin. It’s a matter of not wanting to be associated with people who are different.

What you get from the Bible, according to Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, depends on what you are “willing and able to see.” Inspired people will “almost naturally see inspiration in a text,” while “devious people will merely use or manipulate a text no matter how spiritual it is.”

The Bible, Rohr warns us, is dangerous in the minds of agenda-driven people.

Peter Wehner, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, reminds us the hallmark of Christ’s ministry was “his intimacy with and the inclusion of the unwanted and the outcast, men and women living in the shadow of society, more likely to be dismissed than noticed, more likely to be mocked than revered.”

The religious right shows us how difficult it can be to follow Christ’s example.

[This post was published as an op-ed on August 6, 2021, in The Columbus Dispatch.]

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Jack D’Aurora writes for Considerthisbyjd.com

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