Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Greg Hamilton
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000328B
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00:05 Welcome back to the Liberty Insider
00:08 for the break with Greg Hamilton 00:10 from the Northwest Pacific Liberty Association. 00:15 I was trying to draw you out on what your association's done 00:18 and we got not so attract, 00:20 but there's a huge story talking about the RFRAs, 00:25 which have played a role 00:26 in some recent Supreme Court decision. 00:27 You mean state religious freedom acts 00:29 like in Indiana and Georgia... 00:30 The Indiana one hit the headlines very negatively 00:33 because some religious factions had put really extra... 00:38 Well, they want to give a blank exemption 00:41 to small business owners 00:43 who have religious objections to... 00:47 Serving gays and another... 00:49 Providing business services for same sex couples 00:53 who want to have a wedding cake or photography services done 00:58 or having their flowers catered by a florist. 01:03 All of these factors are there and even the clerk, 01:09 it was in Kentucky that refused to sign marriage licenses. 01:15 This is outcome and it's a big issue right now 01:18 and if they would just stick to language, 01:22 in fact we had a bill that was radical in Montana 01:25 that I actually helped defeat just a year ago. 01:29 And we actually put forward four different amendments 01:33 in terms of language that would have cleaned up the bill 01:35 including establishment clause problems, 01:38 violating the constitutional separation of church and state. 01:41 But the committee was dominated by Tea Party Republicans 01:45 and they wouldn't have anything to do with it, 01:47 and if they had... 01:48 In fact, even the guy who testified after me, 01:53 a former retired Montana Supreme Court justice 01:57 who was a spokesman for American united 02:00 for separation of church and state got up and said, 02:02 you know what, Greg Hamilton, what he said is exactly right. 02:06 He praised my testimony 02:08 which has never happened to me before in my life, Lincoln, 02:11 twice. 02:12 And not that I should take great credit for that 02:16 but it was stunning 02:17 because they went ahead and passed it through committee 02:22 on a straight party line vote. 02:24 They took it to the House floor for debate and a vote. 02:27 They lost by one vote, 50, 02:30 but they lost by one vote in the... 02:33 not by 50 but they lost by one vote 02:36 in the House side of their assembly, 02:41 and if they had just listened to me by doing a more generic, 02:45 not giving a blank exemption to small business owners 02:48 and just restoring the compelling state interest 02:50 and least restrictive means test 02:52 like we're talking about 02:54 the free exercise jurisprudence, 02:55 their bill would have passed 02:57 and it probably would have likely passed in the Senate. 03:00 Now I don't know 03:01 whether the governor would have signed it or not, 03:03 because the governor had vow to veto it, 03:06 but I can guarantee you it would have much better chance 03:09 if they had listened to us. 03:11 This is the sad story of all of these referrers, 03:12 state referrers now. 03:13 The overreach is really hurting the general cause 03:17 because there is a need to pass this. 03:19 Well, do small business owners... 03:21 Most of our viewers may not know, 03:23 this was passed on the federal level 03:25 and declared unconstitutional and the technicality of, 03:28 not because the bill itself was wrong... 03:30 Well, that's too much history to cover your notions. 03:32 It applies only on federal employees, so... 03:36 You're talking about 03:37 the Federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. 03:38 Yeah, but there's been an effort since then, 03:40 that you've actively involved with 03:43 to establish the same thing de facto 03:46 by getting all the state's individual. 03:47 Right. 03:49 That was good but with this new element put in, 03:52 it sort of discredited this movement 03:54 and I think it's gonna be very hard from here on now. 03:58 On what've done, 03:59 I know you had a great success on religious dress, 04:02 right, a bill you're referring to. 04:04 Well, I know, it wasn't focused on religious dress so much, 04:06 it was focused actually on holy day accommodation 04:09 so Sabbath accommodation at the workplace. 04:11 I thought the title even had... 04:13 Yes, Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act, 04:15 and a Workplace Religious Freedom Act 04:18 dealt specifically with the Title VII law, 04:24 federal and state but in this case, 04:26 in Oregon the state law 04:28 which basically gave to businesses 04:31 based upon a Supreme Court decision 1977 04:34 called Trans World Airlines versus Hardison, 04:37 in which the Supreme Court reversed the original intent 04:40 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, under Title VII 04:44 which said that employers had to demonstrate 04:48 that they had a significant difficulty, 04:51 administrative difficult 04:52 and a significant expense involved 04:56 to say that this was an undue hardship 04:57 on their business, 04:59 so therefore we cannot accommodate you. 05:00 If you want your Sabbath off 05:02 or whatever whether it's Friday, Saturday, Sunday 05:04 whatever and the Supreme Court 1977 05:08 with a TWA versus Hardison case said no. 05:12 All you have to do is have a minimum, 05:15 a minimum expense 05:18 or a minimal administrative inconvenience, 05:22 you can cite those two things, wave it like a magic wand 05:25 and say to your employee work or else. 05:28 And so we were trying to restore the original intent 05:32 in Oregon for Title VII and we succeeded 05:37 especially when it comes to Sabbath cases and so on 05:40 but, or Sabbath accommodation. 05:42 But it also involved religious garb in the workplace 05:45 which helped a lot of Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Catholics 05:48 and others especially in the public school system 05:52 where they would be marginalized 05:54 in the State of Oregon 05:55 for the wearing of religious garb, 05:57 I mean, they would, it's part of their identity, 05:59 they can't change who they are and so that was lifted, 06:02 in fact it was a probation 06:04 put forward by the Ku Klux Klan in 1920, 06:08 so that's something that we repealed, 06:10 and we thought that was a good thing. 06:11 They thought that communism would most infiltrate 06:17 through Catholic institutions and schools. 06:20 The reason why they thought that 06:22 is most of your Protestant schools 06:26 were actually the public schools 06:27 in those days 06:29 and the Catholic schools were feared, okay, 06:33 because they thought 06:36 that religious garb and so forth 06:40 and the Catholic faith itself, okay, 06:43 was very much aligned with communism in those days. 06:47 It's not aligned but there is a... 06:50 It seems like communism grew out of strongly Catholicism. 06:53 There was a Protestant paranoia at the time 06:56 and the Ku Klux Klan led the way and then charged. 06:59 They were apparently a group there. 07:01 And so anyways, so we passed the Oregon Workplace 07:04 for Religious Freedom Act, thanks to Dave Hunt, 07:06 the former's a powerful speaker of the House, 07:09 we're going to honor him 07:11 at our 25th anniversary gala banquet 07:13 on August 16th of this year 07:15 at The Empress Estate in Woodland, Washington. 07:19 It's a French provincial mansion on a hill 07:22 or a mountain overlooking a valley. 07:23 It's just gorgeous. 07:25 Overlooks Interstate 5 actually. 07:26 I'm looking forward to. 07:28 Yeah, hope it's not too hot 07:29 but it's gonna be outside on the pavilion 07:31 and it should be a lot of fun. 07:34 But we also like I said, 07:35 we passed Idaho's Free Exercise Religion Act of 2000 07:38 and we need to pray for Senator Grant Ipsen. 07:41 We wrote Alaska's Religious Freedom Restoration Act 07:44 which, you know, was a huge success 07:47 in terms of writing it 07:49 but we never got it passed through the final committee. 07:55 We also were influential in rewriting. 08:00 In 2006, 08:03 our direct intervention allowed the rewriting 08:07 of the inmate religious preference law 08:12 or regulation. 08:14 Basically they said you can only, 08:16 especially native American-Indians, 08:17 you can only register either as a native American-Indian 08:21 or the religion that you're baptized in. 08:23 You couldn't have both, all right. 08:25 So there's one Catholic chaplain 08:28 was harassing my client, 08:30 a Seventh-day Adventist on death row for murder 08:34 and I won't say his name of course but, 08:37 and Todd McFarland helped us at the very end to... 08:41 He is the legal counsel at headquarters. 08:43 Yeah, at General Conference headquarters 08:45 who helped finalize everything. 08:47 We did all the work though however, 08:51 and over three years worth of work. 08:54 And anyway, that case 09:00 with the help of the Assistant Attorney General at the time 09:04 Melissa Stanhope 09:08 and we worked together 09:10 and we used the Religious Land Use 09:14 and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 09:17 signed and passed 09:19 by President Bill Clinton at the time. 09:20 It was a great success at the time. 09:21 It was a great success 09:23 but he had to have great encouragement 09:24 by Hillary Clinton, 09:26 the first lady to get him to do that 09:27 because he was reluctant 09:28 on most religious freedom legislation 09:30 to sign anything and I've got evidence for that 09:33 where Hillary Clinton, 09:36 whether you like or whether you don't, 09:38 she's a huge champion of religious freedom, 09:40 and I've always appreciated that about her. 09:43 Regardless of what else anybody thinks about her 09:46 and even what I may think about her. 09:47 She even recorded her promo for Liberty Magazine one day. 09:50 Yes, yes, she's been what? 09:53 Extraordinary friend and politician. 09:54 She's been very special that way. 09:56 So we were able to allow for dual religious preference 10:02 for prison registration. 10:04 And by the way that has now swept the entire United States. 10:07 So what we did in Washington 10:09 has affected every State prison across the United States 10:13 allowing native American-Indians 10:14 to have dual religious preference. 10:16 Their native American religion 10:18 which allows them to smoke in their sweatshop 10:21 and lodges and also their baptized religion. 10:25 Now do you think that this is... 10:29 which is a very necessary legal change 10:33 but is this sort of bouncing up 10:34 against the regrettable recruitment 10:38 for fundamentalist Islam in the prisons? 10:41 I don't think so, no, I don't... 10:43 It seems to me that's writing ahead on religious privilege. 10:48 Yeah, I don't see that at all. 10:50 But let me state two other things. 10:52 We defeated Greater Seattle's Growth Management Act 10:55 in 2001, 10:56 thanks to my associate Charles Steinberg 11:00 at our office, 11:03 the County Council, King County which is Greater Seattle 11:07 attempted to place a moratorium on 11:09 the building of new churches and schools 11:11 in rural King County, that is Greater Seattle. 11:15 And so we defeated that through a referendum 11:18 both in a vote at the County Council, 11:20 of which we were behind by I think a vote 11:23 of something like, I forget what it was, 11:26 10 to 3 and we were able to reverse it 11:29 to a two vote victory on the County Council. 11:32 Then it went to a referendum to the people 11:34 and we won by a vote of 69 percent 11:37 in favor of our referendum. 11:40 So... 11:42 You've had a string of successes. 11:43 But we had one more. 11:44 We defeated the forced unionization 11:46 of all private child care centers 11:48 in Washington State in 2010. 11:51 That was a big one as well. 11:52 Now one thing you've brought in your article 11:54 and it's not the only reason you do it 11:57 but this is proven to be a very positive way 12:00 of projecting the Seventh-day Adventist church in its place. 12:04 We need to be active. We need to be involved. 12:05 We need to be active at the State Legislative level, 12:08 we need to be seen, we need to be heard, 12:10 and for the cause of religious freedom, 12:12 we need to be counted, 12:14 we need to be accountable in the public square. 12:16 If we're not, why do we want to be so isolated, 12:20 we won't achieve anything by isolation. 12:23 When I'm not editing Liberty Magazine, 12:26 when I'm not doing this program, 12:29 I'm usually traveling around talking to different groups, 12:32 church groups most of them 12:34 and the comment is made over and over again, 12:38 what can I do? 12:41 At first blush, there isn't much you and I can do 12:44 to stop major events. 12:46 We can't turn national legislators on the dime. 12:51 We can't easily change a whole societal attitude. 12:54 But as the Northwest Religious Liberty Association 12:57 has shown, we can do a lot. 13:02 And over the years the advocates 13:04 working out of the Northwest Religious Liberty Association 13:08 have affected legislatures. 13:11 They have made contacts in governments 13:14 and in communities that have made a very real difference. 13:17 And that it has provided a vehicle for people 13:21 who want to be involved to do something. 13:24 I could wish that it was a bigger model 13:27 but there is much more to be done 13:29 all across the United States, 13:31 there is much more to be done all across this world of ours 13:35 and around this world. 13:36 All it takes are as individuals, 13:40 you perhaps to get involved, do something, speak out, 13:45 make that contact 13:47 and many, many good things will come from that. 13:51 It's our privilege to work together 13:53 with the mechanisms, 13:55 and the powers, and the neighbors, 13:57 and the legislators and great things will happen. 14:02 For Liberty Insider, this is Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2016-08-15