Editorial, October 12, 2016.
Kit Bigelow,
who was Director of external affairs for the National Spiritual
Assembly of the Bahais of the U.S. until her retirement in June 2010,
has appeared as co-signer of a controversial letter
from an ad-hoc group of religious leaders. Kit Bigelow is not a leader
of the Bahai community. The letter was sent to President Barack Obama,
Orrin Hatch as Senate leader (pro-tem) and House Speaker Paul Ryan. The
letter states:
We wish to express our deep concern that the Commission has issued a report, Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Non-Discrimination Principles with Civil Liberties,
that stigmatizes tens of millions of religious Americans, their
communities, and their faith-based institutions, and threatens the
religious freedom of all our citizens.
The Commission asserts in its Findings that religious organizations “use the pretext of religious doctrines to discriminate.”
What we find even more disturbing is that, in a statement included in the report, Commission Chairman Martin Castro writes:
“The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’
will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code
words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia,
Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.”
Kit Bigelow’s name appears as a signatory in her individual capacity
as “Religious Freedom Advocate.” The term has been tainted in the USA in
the last two election seasons because of its use as a cover for
religiously-motivated discrimination, but Kit Bigelow’s activism for
real religious liberties goes back much further, and not primarily in
relation to the USA.
Current policies in the Bahai community do not allow for the
recognition of the legally performed civil unions or marriages of
same-sex couples. The policy of the Universal House of Justice is that
individuals who are in same-sex marriages should not be allowed to enrol
in the Bahai community. This means that they cannot vote, or be
elected, for the Spiritual Assemblies that govern the affairs of local
Bahai communities, and cannot participate in the open consultations on
community affairs by enrolled members which are part of the ‘Feasts’
held in each local community 19 times every year. Those who are excluded
from enrollment are not shunned and are not barred from other occasions
of worship. The Bahai community today does not campaign against the
legal recognition of same-sex marriages.
While the exclusion of individuals in same-sex marriages from
membership of the Bahai community is discriminatory, this has not been
justified by Bahais under the highly politicized banner of preserving
religious freedom. There is nothing in the Bahai teachings that would
justify Bahais in discriminating against homosexuals in their business
activities, or in any role they might have as public officials. It would
be unfortunate if the description of Kit Bigelow as “Religious Freedom
Advocate” gave the impression that she, or the Bahai community, were
aligned with the political movement that has claimed a religious
liberties justification for discrimation in public life.
A PDF of the controversial letter is available
here.
The report it criticizes is available as a PDF
here.
An example of the dialogues within the Bahai community on this question can be found
here.
Short link:
http://wp.me/pNMoJ-2Jx
Make the jump here to read the orginal and much more here
