- Jun 1, 2004
- 3,007
- 83
- 45
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Religion vs. Sexual Orientation:
A Clash of Human Rights?[/font][font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
(Bertha Wilson Lecture, 2002)[/font]
http://www.law.utoronto.ca/alumni/events.htm
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]University of Toronto - Bennett Lecture Hall
February 12, 2002[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Dr. Robert Wintemute is a leading scholar in the area of sexual orientation discrimination. He is a professor at the School of Law, King's College, University of London. Dr. Wintemute was invited to be the Bertha Wilson Distinguished Visiting Professor for this academic year at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law. His visit included the delivery of the Bertha Wilson Lecture for 2002.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
Introduction[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Dr. Wintemute began his lecture by drawing parallels between his topic and the life of the Bertha Wilson, Canada's first woman to sit on the Supreme Court. "She would have been pulled between the right to freedom of religion, and the right to be free from sexual orientation discrimination," Wintemute said, "by her commitment to equality and her profound religious reverence for the Church of Scotland and the United Church of Canada. This kind of conflict, and the ways to resolve it are the subject of my lecture."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
Religious Hostility Towards Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transsexual (LGBT) Individuals and Same-Sex Couples[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"How should the law deal with the problem of continuing hostility on the part of many religious individuals and institutions towards LGBT individuals and same sex couples?" Wintemute asked. [/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"If you are a LGBT person anywhere in the world, it is hard to have warm feelings towards most major religious institutions. What you and your partner consider lovemaking, they will often call an abomination. When you seek the same rights, and opportunities, and benefits as heterosexual persons, many religious individuals will fight you every step of the way." [/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Wintemute pointed out that religious hostility against LGBTs is not hard to find. The Vatican has a web site (see the side bar on this page) that collects the doctrines of the "largest, most influential Christian denomination."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]But Christians are not the only faith group hostile towards gays. Muslims, orthodox jews, and evangelical protestants joined the Catholic Church in oppossing same-sex marriage in the marriage cases currently underway in Canada.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"There are religious individuals and institutions in our world, who would rather see LGBT persons dead, in jail, or at least completely deprived of any legal protection against discrimination."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
How to Respond to the Anti-LGBT Religious Hostility?[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Because religious institutions often present their doctrines as eternal, unquestionable truths, rather than as products of the social conditions prevalent when the doctrines were adopted, it can take many decades, if not centuries, to persuade these institutions to change their views," Wintemute said.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Instead, change must happen in the world of politics and governance.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]In the face of religious hostility and active religious opposition, getting the political and legal system to protect the rights of LGBTs seems to be an impossible task. There are several ways, Wintemute said, for LGBTs to respond to "the apparently monolithic anti-LGBT consensus of the world's great religions":[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]1. Point out that consensus against LGBTs does not exist. Christian churches, for example, are increasingly becoming "welcoming" and inclusive.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
2. "Religious doctrines must be deemed absolutely irrelevant in determining the content of secular laws and human rights. A separation between law and religion is a defining principle of every liberal democracy. Without such a principle, there can be no freedom of conscience and religion, for the beliefs of the religious majority will be imposed on how they execute the law."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]The Catholic Bishops may insist that their churches remain hostile towards LGBTs, but Canadians will not accept a church-state, and the Bishops will not withstand democracy.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"The religious majority may seek to have their beliefs reflected in secular laws but they must do so through reasoned secular arguments. Religious text or doctrines must be excluded from legislative and judicial debates, because unlike secular law, they rely on inaccessible, extra-democratic source of authority, which cannot be challenged or overturned by reasoned arguments."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]The European Court of Human Rights affirmed this principle in 2001 in the case of Refah Partisi (Prosperity Party) and Others v. Turkey.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Assuming that the law must not give effect to religious hostility to LGBT persons, the next step is to define the scope of this principle.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
Religious Hostility Against LGBTs Has No Place in the Public Sphere[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"A religious institution that advocates racial discrimination is likely to be viewed as highly eccentric and therefore entitled to minimal accommodation for its views," Wintemute said. "A religious institution that advocates sexual orientation discrimination has the support of many of the world's great religions."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]To what extent, however, should the public world subsidize religious hostility directed towards its citizens?[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Does public funding for Roman Catholic or other anti-LGBT religious schools constitute financial support for sexual orientation discrimination analogous to financial support for racial discrimination and therefore violates section 15 of the Charter?"[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]One could build a compelling case against the Catholic Church in Canada, however Wintemute said "it is highly unlikely that the majority of the Supreme Court would currently be willing to find a violation of section 15 [of the Canadian Charter], yet they would be tempted to do so if the religious school taught the superiority of the white race, rather than the superiority of different sex sexual activity and partnerships."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]As we saw during the Ontario marriage hearings, religious groups are fighting to maintain their influence over the public sphere, including the promotion of an anti-LGBT bias in law and public policy.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Somehow," Wintemute said, "the law ceasing to give effect to their belief that their different sex partnerships are morally superior to same sex partnerships, would marginalize them and turn them into victims or even exclude them from the legal institution of marriage."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Rosalyn Levine, the lawyer representing The Attorney General of Canada during our Ontario hearing, enthusiastically demonstrated how the government is willing to parrot the Papal doctrine. "You don't have marriage anymore," she espouses, if same-sex partners share in this important family event. It is the same fear mongering that has been used by bigots who fought to maintain laws against inter-racial marriages.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"I am sorry that they feel this way," Wintemute said, referring to Levine's clients and collaborators, "but this is what happens in pluralist liberal democracies that require everyone to accept the differences of their neighbors. Religious individuals will remain free to apply their own religious beliefs to their own lives, and they will have to accept that the law does not require others to comply with their beliefs."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
Registered Domestic Partnerships[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]One of the solutions proposed by religious groups and the Attorney General of Canada, as voiced by Rosalyn Levine, is to segregate marriage for heterosexuals only. [/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"They want the institution [marriage], just the word, but not the goals," the Attorney General's lawyer claimed, showing either contempt or ignorance. "They want the word."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Surely that is not fair," said Justice Blair, one of three justices hearing the case.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]More recently, the Law Commission of Canada agreed that marriage has evolved over time, and that it should continue to do so to include same-sex couples. [/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"I ask you, whether women, who achieve the highest academic rank in university, should be denied the title Professor, in order to respect the feelings of those who believe that only men should be professors and [women] instead [should] be granted the title Registered Teacher, while of course enjoying exactly the same pay, benefits and duties of a professor?"[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
Private Religious Views - Allow For Discrimination[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Should religious institutions be prohibited from discriminating on the basis of sex, sexual orientation or gender identify in deciding who can be a priest, a rabbi, or an imam, where an individual may pray, or which couples are permitted to contract a religious marriage? I would not go this far," Wintemute advised. "It has to be accepted that the protection of anti-discrimination laws must occasionally be curtailed."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Although we must stop allowing religious groups and their government mouthpieces to foster hostility towards others in the public, secular world, religious groups are free to form their own doctrines for their churches and private homes. [/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Don't insist on the eradication of religious hostility in the religious private sphere," Wintemute advises, "Otherwise it will enter the public sphere."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]How can a LGBTs in faith groups or religious families escape spiritual, emotional and physical abuse inspired by religious doctrines?[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Wintemute outlined the ways in which LGBTs cope:
a) Enter a different sex marriage to obtain the approval of their religious community.
b) Remain celibate to comply with the religious community's doctrines while not living a lie.
c) Act on their sexual orientation or gender identity and risk expulsion from their religious community.
d) Form your own spiritual community like the Metropolitan Community Church
e) Abandon organized religion.
f) Stay in the organized religious community and fight for change. [/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Conclusion[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Compared with the rapid movement towards equality for LGBT individuals and same sex couples in Canada, progress world-wide is slow. Of the 180 member states in the United Nations and Switzerland, only 20 countries have adopted some form of legal recognition of same sex partnerships. In many countries the basic rights of LGBT individuals to life, freedom from torture, and arbitrary arrest, and expression are the priorities."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Eventually, Wintemute believes, fervent opponents, like the Vatican, will apologize to LGBT communities "because of courageous individuals, working from within to change religious doctrines."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Thereafter, Wintemute said, lightening the oppressive mood, he's "looking forward to the first lesbian Pope."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Kevin Bourassa
Toronto - February 13, 2002[/font]
A Clash of Human Rights?[/font][font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
(Bertha Wilson Lecture, 2002)[/font]
http://www.law.utoronto.ca/alumni/events.htm
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]University of Toronto - Bennett Lecture Hall
February 12, 2002[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Dr. Robert Wintemute is a leading scholar in the area of sexual orientation discrimination. He is a professor at the School of Law, King's College, University of London. Dr. Wintemute was invited to be the Bertha Wilson Distinguished Visiting Professor for this academic year at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law. His visit included the delivery of the Bertha Wilson Lecture for 2002.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
Introduction[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Dr. Wintemute began his lecture by drawing parallels between his topic and the life of the Bertha Wilson, Canada's first woman to sit on the Supreme Court. "She would have been pulled between the right to freedom of religion, and the right to be free from sexual orientation discrimination," Wintemute said, "by her commitment to equality and her profound religious reverence for the Church of Scotland and the United Church of Canada. This kind of conflict, and the ways to resolve it are the subject of my lecture."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
Religious Hostility Towards Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transsexual (LGBT) Individuals and Same-Sex Couples[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"How should the law deal with the problem of continuing hostility on the part of many religious individuals and institutions towards LGBT individuals and same sex couples?" Wintemute asked. [/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"If you are a LGBT person anywhere in the world, it is hard to have warm feelings towards most major religious institutions. What you and your partner consider lovemaking, they will often call an abomination. When you seek the same rights, and opportunities, and benefits as heterosexual persons, many religious individuals will fight you every step of the way." [/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Wintemute pointed out that religious hostility against LGBTs is not hard to find. The Vatican has a web site (see the side bar on this page) that collects the doctrines of the "largest, most influential Christian denomination."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]But Christians are not the only faith group hostile towards gays. Muslims, orthodox jews, and evangelical protestants joined the Catholic Church in oppossing same-sex marriage in the marriage cases currently underway in Canada.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"There are religious individuals and institutions in our world, who would rather see LGBT persons dead, in jail, or at least completely deprived of any legal protection against discrimination."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
How to Respond to the Anti-LGBT Religious Hostility?[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Because religious institutions often present their doctrines as eternal, unquestionable truths, rather than as products of the social conditions prevalent when the doctrines were adopted, it can take many decades, if not centuries, to persuade these institutions to change their views," Wintemute said.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Instead, change must happen in the world of politics and governance.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]In the face of religious hostility and active religious opposition, getting the political and legal system to protect the rights of LGBTs seems to be an impossible task. There are several ways, Wintemute said, for LGBTs to respond to "the apparently monolithic anti-LGBT consensus of the world's great religions":[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]1. Point out that consensus against LGBTs does not exist. Christian churches, for example, are increasingly becoming "welcoming" and inclusive.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
2. "Religious doctrines must be deemed absolutely irrelevant in determining the content of secular laws and human rights. A separation between law and religion is a defining principle of every liberal democracy. Without such a principle, there can be no freedom of conscience and religion, for the beliefs of the religious majority will be imposed on how they execute the law."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]The Catholic Bishops may insist that their churches remain hostile towards LGBTs, but Canadians will not accept a church-state, and the Bishops will not withstand democracy.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"The religious majority may seek to have their beliefs reflected in secular laws but they must do so through reasoned secular arguments. Religious text or doctrines must be excluded from legislative and judicial debates, because unlike secular law, they rely on inaccessible, extra-democratic source of authority, which cannot be challenged or overturned by reasoned arguments."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]The European Court of Human Rights affirmed this principle in 2001 in the case of Refah Partisi (Prosperity Party) and Others v. Turkey.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Assuming that the law must not give effect to religious hostility to LGBT persons, the next step is to define the scope of this principle.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
Religious Hostility Against LGBTs Has No Place in the Public Sphere[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"A religious institution that advocates racial discrimination is likely to be viewed as highly eccentric and therefore entitled to minimal accommodation for its views," Wintemute said. "A religious institution that advocates sexual orientation discrimination has the support of many of the world's great religions."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]To what extent, however, should the public world subsidize religious hostility directed towards its citizens?[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Does public funding for Roman Catholic or other anti-LGBT religious schools constitute financial support for sexual orientation discrimination analogous to financial support for racial discrimination and therefore violates section 15 of the Charter?"[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]One could build a compelling case against the Catholic Church in Canada, however Wintemute said "it is highly unlikely that the majority of the Supreme Court would currently be willing to find a violation of section 15 [of the Canadian Charter], yet they would be tempted to do so if the religious school taught the superiority of the white race, rather than the superiority of different sex sexual activity and partnerships."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]As we saw during the Ontario marriage hearings, religious groups are fighting to maintain their influence over the public sphere, including the promotion of an anti-LGBT bias in law and public policy.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Somehow," Wintemute said, "the law ceasing to give effect to their belief that their different sex partnerships are morally superior to same sex partnerships, would marginalize them and turn them into victims or even exclude them from the legal institution of marriage."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Rosalyn Levine, the lawyer representing The Attorney General of Canada during our Ontario hearing, enthusiastically demonstrated how the government is willing to parrot the Papal doctrine. "You don't have marriage anymore," she espouses, if same-sex partners share in this important family event. It is the same fear mongering that has been used by bigots who fought to maintain laws against inter-racial marriages.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"I am sorry that they feel this way," Wintemute said, referring to Levine's clients and collaborators, "but this is what happens in pluralist liberal democracies that require everyone to accept the differences of their neighbors. Religious individuals will remain free to apply their own religious beliefs to their own lives, and they will have to accept that the law does not require others to comply with their beliefs."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
Registered Domestic Partnerships[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]One of the solutions proposed by religious groups and the Attorney General of Canada, as voiced by Rosalyn Levine, is to segregate marriage for heterosexuals only. [/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"They want the institution [marriage], just the word, but not the goals," the Attorney General's lawyer claimed, showing either contempt or ignorance. "They want the word."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Surely that is not fair," said Justice Blair, one of three justices hearing the case.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]More recently, the Law Commission of Canada agreed that marriage has evolved over time, and that it should continue to do so to include same-sex couples. [/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"The introduction of a registration scheme should not be seen as a policy alternative to reforming marriage. Registration schemes in lieu of allowing same-sex couples to access marriage are seen, by those in favour of same-sex marriage, as creating a second-class category of relationships."
[font=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Beyond Conjugality (December 21, 2001)[/font][font=Times New Roman, Times, serif]
Law Commission Of Canada[/font][/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Wintemute has a practical response to those who advocate segregation in our marriage laws.[/font][font=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Beyond Conjugality (December 21, 2001)[/font][font=Times New Roman, Times, serif]
Law Commission Of Canada[/font][/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"I ask you, whether women, who achieve the highest academic rank in university, should be denied the title Professor, in order to respect the feelings of those who believe that only men should be professors and [women] instead [should] be granted the title Registered Teacher, while of course enjoying exactly the same pay, benefits and duties of a professor?"[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]
Private Religious Views - Allow For Discrimination[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Should religious institutions be prohibited from discriminating on the basis of sex, sexual orientation or gender identify in deciding who can be a priest, a rabbi, or an imam, where an individual may pray, or which couples are permitted to contract a religious marriage? I would not go this far," Wintemute advised. "It has to be accepted that the protection of anti-discrimination laws must occasionally be curtailed."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Although we must stop allowing religious groups and their government mouthpieces to foster hostility towards others in the public, secular world, religious groups are free to form their own doctrines for their churches and private homes. [/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Don't insist on the eradication of religious hostility in the religious private sphere," Wintemute advises, "Otherwise it will enter the public sphere."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]How can a LGBTs in faith groups or religious families escape spiritual, emotional and physical abuse inspired by religious doctrines?[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Wintemute outlined the ways in which LGBTs cope:
a) Enter a different sex marriage to obtain the approval of their religious community.
b) Remain celibate to comply with the religious community's doctrines while not living a lie.
c) Act on their sexual orientation or gender identity and risk expulsion from their religious community.
d) Form your own spiritual community like the Metropolitan Community Church
e) Abandon organized religion.
f) Stay in the organized religious community and fight for change. [/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Conclusion[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Compared with the rapid movement towards equality for LGBT individuals and same sex couples in Canada, progress world-wide is slow. Of the 180 member states in the United Nations and Switzerland, only 20 countries have adopted some form of legal recognition of same sex partnerships. In many countries the basic rights of LGBT individuals to life, freedom from torture, and arbitrary arrest, and expression are the priorities."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Eventually, Wintemute believes, fervent opponents, like the Vatican, will apologize to LGBT communities "because of courageous individuals, working from within to change religious doctrines."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Thereafter, Wintemute said, lightening the oppressive mood, he's "looking forward to the first lesbian Pope."[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Kevin Bourassa
Toronto - February 13, 2002[/font]
