Extend full rights to LGBT Kansans
Officially, Kansas remains hostile territory for gays and lesbians, even in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26 decision allowing same-sex couples to wed. How long must they wait for equal treatment?
All 105 counties are now granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and this week state government opened its health plan to same-sex spouses and began enabling them to change their names on driver’s licenses. The changes must lead to more as quickly as possible, such as allowing joint income-tax filing.
But Gov. Sam Brownback undercut those welcome steps with an executive order Tuesday responding to the “recent imposition of same-sex marriage” by the court. The order broadly bars state government from taking action against clergy members or religious groups that decline to provide goods or services “on the basis that such person or organization believes or sincerely acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman.”
Though the order most obviously (and redundantly) protects pastors from being forced to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies – as if a couple would want to be wed by a disapproving officiant – it also would shield religious organizations providing adoption services for the state that refuse to place children with gay couples. The order’s full impact is unclear, though, especially as it relates to “social services or charitable services.”
And is it even within the governor’s authority to declare, at least where taxpayer-funded services are involved, that religious rights trump same-sex couples’ marital and related legal rights?
When Brownback acted in February to rescind a 2007 executive order protecting LGBT state employees from sexual harassment or discrimination, he said “any such expansion of ‘protected classes’ should be done by the Legislature and not through unilateral action.” Yet his order this week was a unilateral action affecting much more than state employees, selectively favoring the religious freedom of clergy and religious organizations while again effectively sanctioning discrimination against LGBT Kansans.
The GOP-controlled Legislature may well try to shore up religious rights itself, despite a 2013 law and the 2014 outcry over a House-passed bill to enable public and private employees to refuse service to same-sex couples. On Wednesday the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, calling Brownback’s order an “adequate response” to the court, said no further legislation is necessary.
Few would disagree with Brownback that “religious liberty is at the heart of who we are as Kansans and Americans, and should be protected.” But so should what is now understood to be the constitutional right to marry, whether couples are heterosexual or homosexual.
In any case, respecting and balancing rights should be no feat for Kansas, which has played proud and pivotal roles in the nation’s other civil rights struggles.
Opponents to same-sex marriage in the state have lost the war. It’s time the governor and Legislature stopped picking battles over religious freedom and extended LGBT Kansans the full rights to which they are entitled.
For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman
This story was originally published July 8, 2015 at 7:08 PM with the headline "Extend full rights to LGBT Kansans."