CBS Does ‘Hit Piece’ on Religious Freedom

In a slanted hit piece against religious freedom laws for CBS Sunday Morning, correspondent Mark Strassmann proclaimed: “North Carolina’s public bathrooms are the new frontier in American civil rights law….Just since the beginning of this year, lawmakers in 34 states have proposed so-called ‘bathroom’ bills and ‘religious freedom’ laws that, critics say, target gay, lesbian and transgender people.”

The reporter argued that the source of such supposed discrimination was signed into law decades earlier: “These state actions descend from a little-known bipartisan bill signed into law by President Clinton back in 1993….The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, prohibited the government from unduly interfering in the way Americans express religious beliefs.”

A soundbite played from left-wing University of Pennsylvania law professor Marci Hamilton, who expressed her disgust over the legislation: “It’s really hard to explain what was happening. Basically, the civil rights groups dropped the ball. Everybody was just so excited about religious freedom – how could you be opposed to religious freedom? But the very smart, very conservative evangelical groups knew what their agenda was.”

Strassmann declared: “…she argues that RFRA, in effect, granted a license to discriminate.”

She ranted: “It’s Jim Crow. It’s just that there are different targets at this point for some of the people.” Rather than challenge the harsh comparison, Strassmann teed her up: “And the targets are?” Hamilton asserted: “Targets are the LGBTQ community, sadly. Not just same-sex couples; the entire community is being targeted.”

Strassmann briefly got a legal perspective from the other side of the debate, talking to Kristen Waggoner at the Alliance Defending Freedom, which as he described, “represents Christian conservatives and has advised several states drafting religious freedom laws.”

Waggoner explained:

It has nothing to do with how someone identifies in terms of being LGBT or saying that they’re straight…. I think that there’s a more fundamental principle, which is whether we will continue to allow a diversity of viewpoints, or we will allow the government to personally and professionally ruin someone because of a religious conviction they have.

Strassmann was aghast at her call to “allow a diversity of viewpoints” on the subject: “Do you understand why some critics see this as extreme?”

She pushed back hard: “I don’t understand why it’s extreme to say that you wouldn’t want to force someone to engage in speech and promote messages that violates their religious convictions, or why it would be extreme that you would want to live and let live and let other people who have a diverse viewpoint or a different viewpoint on marriage live consistently with that belief.”

Rather than let that such a defense of religious freedom stand, Strassmann quickly went back to Hamilton: “What these individuals are arguing now, in these groups, is that they have ‘rights’ in order to be able to discriminate against others. But the ‘rights’ that they’re talking about are made up. They are not rights from the Constitution.” To her make her condescension even worse, she used her hands to make air quotes when she referred to religious freedom “rights.”

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