‘Ugly intolerance’ of religious speech

In five words, Des Moines Register columnist Rekha Basu (“When Free Speech Collides With Your Job,” July 27) reveals precisely why it is illegal in America to fire someone from their job because of their faith.

Basu was referring, of course, to Bob Eschliman, a client of Liberty Institute, a nonprofit religious liberty defense organization. Eschliman is an award-winning journalist. He is also a man of faith.

He wrote in defense of his faith’s teaching about marriage on his personal, private blog and found himself suspended, and then terminated, from his position as editor-in-chief of the Newton (Iowa) Daily News. Bob was fired by Shaw Media Inc. because, “while he was entitled to his beliefs, he was not entitled to express those beliefs” publicly. Or so Basu and Bob’s former employer would have you believe.

In America, however, it is against the law to fire an employee for expressing a religious belief an employer may not share. Such religious intolerance by an employer has no place in today’s welcoming work force. People of faith ought to be welcomed at work, not fired for appropriately expressing their beliefs.

Yet, Basu, a columnist with the Des Moines Register, disagrees. She wants to exile religious newspapermen like Bob Eschliman to the religious ghetto.

“There are religious-oriented alternatives,” writes Basu, implying that Bob would do better to absent himself from the more enlightened ranks of modern, supposedly secular journalism in order to have his beliefs and express them, too.

Yet, the U.S. government created the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to combat precisely that kind of prejudice. The EEOC tracks instances of discrimination (including religious discrimination) by employers so it can deploy the Civil Rights Act to protect Americans against discrimination.

And the Civil Rights Act says it is illegal discrimination in America to fire people for their religious beliefs. End of story.

Basu is practicing ugly intolerance to suggest that Americans like Bob take their beliefs, and the expression of them, elsewhere.

Basu paints an America too weak to handle diversity. But the true, strong America values the freedom to disagree. The true America protects employees from being hired or fired for expressing their religious beliefs. Imagine what ghettos might be erected should no one challenge Shaw Media’s termination of Bob — and Basu’s bigoted notion that the religious leave secular society entirely.

Your employer could fire you for opinions you express on Facebook about your race. They could fire you for daring to discuss a political message that your employer disagrees with as you picnic in the park. If you teach Sunday School, your employer could examine your lesson and, if she disagrees with the flannel graph, kick you into the unemployment line next to Bob Eschliman.

What is the alternative? Well, for Basu, you register with your local government speech agent and check into the ghetto of your choice. There you can speak all the religious, cultural, or political messages that you like. The public square is reserved for the enlightened secularist; religious yokels are not welcome.

Of course, Basu evidently does not think that surveys showing a generally strong liberal bias among journalists means most of them should be made to write only for liberal journals. Only conservative Christians should be exiled.

Thankfully, the laws of the United States are much more tolerant and democratic than that. In America, employers do not fire someone for simply expressing their religious beliefs.

And the rest of us are the better for it.

Matthew Whitaker is a volunteer attorney for Liberty Institute, the managing partner of Whitaker, Hagenow & Gustoff LLP and the former United States attorney for the Southern District of Iowa. Contact: mwhitaker@whgllp.com. Jeremiah G. Dys is senior counsel to Liberty Institute, a nonprofit religious liberty law firm that seeks to restore and defend religious liberty across America. Contact: jdys@libertyinstitute.org