Too Much of a Good Thing?

Our determination to insure basic civil rights may have become an irrational fetish.

Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? At heart that is the question raised by the Civil Rights Restoration Act (CRRA,) recently passed by Congress despite President Reagan’s veto and a full-court telephone press encouraged by James Dobson’s radio program and Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. In this case, the “good thing” is civil rights. The “too much” is the way some church observers fear the law will be used by liberal courts.

There is no argument about the importance of civil rights legislation. Twentieth-century totalitarian governments in the Soviet Union, Germany, Cuba, and much of Africa have amply demonstrated the cruel capacity of mankind toward its own when basic civil rights are ignored. Those experiences, along with our own growing recognition of the rights of minorities, have made us determined to insure adequate civil rights in the United States.

Yet it may be possible that our laudable determination to insure basic civil rights is in danger of becoming an irrational fetish instead of a concern for effective, fair laws. None can argue against basic civil rights as a necessary hallmark of our legal system. Yet if recent legislation is any indication, the United States Congress seems bent on demonstrating the folly of making individual civil rights the god to which all other interests must bow.

The Civil Rights Restoration Act

The most illuminating case of this antiphonal dance between no civil rights and civil rights above all is the Civil Rights Restoration Act. At heart, the CRRA attempts to restore two important features of 1960s civil rights legislation that a Supreme Court decision in 1984 (Grove City College v. Bell) put into question.

First, the Grove City decision said the federal government could not hold an entire institution accountable if one program of that institution failed to follow the dictates of antidiscrimination laws. Drafters of the CRRA say that was a bad decision, and wrote the CRRA with an eye to redress it. Thus, the bill states that if just one program of an institution accepts federal funds, then the entire institution must comply with federal antidiscriminatory hiring policies. For example, this may mean that if a church has a federally funded day-care program for disadvantaged children, then not only must the day-care program follow federal hiring guidelines, but the whole church must also do so—presumably, even in hiring pastoral staff.

(The CRRA allows institutions “controlled by a religious organization” to apply for exemptions. At greatest risk, then, are independent religious organizations and Christian colleges not directly tied to denominations.)

Which brings us to the second important feature of the bill: its reaffirmation of the rights of the disadvantaged in the workplace. In strong language, the bill champions the rights of the physically handicapped, women, and minorities.

On the surface, both goals are good. Who can argue against the importance of protecting the rights of the disabled and disadvantaged? Certainly not Christians concerned with justice and equal economic opportunity.

Yet some recent court decisions have put doubts in the minds of many Christians. If the courts would limit themselves to defining minorities and handicapped to those commonly referred to by those terms—blacks, native Americans, the wheelchair-bound disabled, for example—there would be no question. But the courts have not limited the definitions; they have expanded them. Thus, a Washington, D.C., court recently ruled that homosexuals qualify as a minority in need of legislative protection.

Who decides what groups qualify for special protection, and by what criteria? Do the moral and social status of protected groups make any difference? For example, do transvestites also qualify? How about farmers? Or Presbyterians?

Selfish Rights?

The lack of clarity about what constitutes a minority group is worrisome for two reasons. First, common sense tells us there is a practical limit to how many groups can be thus protected before they start trampling on one another.

It would be wonderful if every person in the United States qualified as a special-interest group specifically protected by individual legislation. But that’s absurd. We all realize there are limits to how many groups can be catered to in special legislation. A democracy, if nothing else, attempts to rule by majority will, with reasonable protection for minority groups. Chaos results if consensus and compromise cannot identify the major interests.

Further, there is a point at which one person’s civil rights takes away from another person’s. In hiring, for example, some standards must apply; otherwise, everyone would be considered equally qualified for every job. Existing civil rights legislation realistically takes these factors into account.

However, when you put civil rights legislation together with the way the federal courts have been defining individual rights, grave questions are raised about the very freedoms courts exist to protect. Ironically, in recent court patterns of decision making, freedoms of such special-interest groups as homosexuals are consistently given precedence over religious concerns. The courts seem determined to minimize the rights of religious citizens, when in fact the religious are one of the few groups our Constitution specifically recognizes as protected.

A Second Problem

But of even deeper concern to religious groups are the theological conflicts such decisions can create. Religious people believe civil rights are important, but they believe God’s commands are more important. When immoral behaviors are condoned and protected by law, God-fearing people have every right to be concerned.

It is ominous that drafters of the CRRA refused to include several simple clauses in the bill that defined protected minorities more precisely and exempted all religious groups from the threatening aspects of this legislation. Nothing of the essential nature of the bill would have been lost by including these clauses. The refusal raises questions about the creeping indifference of the legislators to religiously based concerns.

There is an irony about how one goes about getting civil rights right. On the one hand, civil rights protect the freedom of religious people to hold beliefs and worship freely. Yet on the other hand, it is those same religious beliefs that provide the philosophical foundations for drafting civil rights legislation. When either side of that ironic equation is ignored, the democratic freedom of religion is threatened.

Yes, you can have too much of a good thing if courts are defining the good and impressing that on the commonly accepted morality of grassroots America. The Civil Rights Restoration Act has the potential of doing just that. Only time will tell how the courts use this new legislative hammer. But if recent history is any measure, we have little reason for optimism.

By Terry Muck.

Back To Vietnam

Ten years ago the American people learned of a new kind of refugee, and the church selflessly responded with an outpouring of charity and compassion the sheer scale of which had not been seen since the end of World War II.

The boat people of Southeast Asia were received into thousands of homes and churches in the name of Jesus Christ.

Conservative estimates put the number of refugees resettled by American Catholics, mainline Protestants, and evangelicals at about 825,000—or over 75 percent of the total Southeast Asian population in the United States. Said one proud relief worker: “I wish I could read what church historians will one day say about all this.”

Now, ten years later, a new opportunity to bring physical and spiritual life to the people of Southeast Asia seems to be opening. Only this time, the bigger challenge may prove to be one of public relations more than “simply” the sheer numbers of those in need. Vietnam, the country that helped launch the human flotilla of suffering, is itself suffering. The physical and financial wounds wrought by 20-plus years of war remain unattended. And with no money and a shortfall of professionals, the coming years hold out little hope for any real recovery.

In desperation, Communist Vietnam is looking Westward—particularly to the United States and the American dollar. Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Anne Keegan reports that anti-American graffiti are dissappearing from city streets, and anti-American rhetoric is becoming all but a hush among government officials.

“Vietnamese officials,” writes Keegan, “now want to develop an economic relationship with the United States.”

It will not be easy. Questions regarding POWs and MIAs remain and must be answered; and the on-again, off-again willingness of the Vietnamese government to free its Amerasian population (American fathers, Vietnamese mothers) for resettlement in the United States must finally be resolved. And there is the question of Americans overlooking an agonizing war, one that divided our own country.

Still, there is a widening crack in the diplomatic wall, and the church may soon find itself in a position to offer healing to both of these once-warring nations: for Vietnam, physical healing in the form of health care and education, prosthetics to the thousands of people missing arms and legs as a result of the war, and agricultural education and assistance; for America, emotional healing, further working through an agony that continues its vise grip on our collective conscience; and for both countries, the opportunity for spiritual healing under the firsthand witness of the power of the gospel.

A new chapter is ready to be written on Southeast Asia. And perhaps historians will again find the church playing the leading role.

By Harold B. Smith.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.