--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained from Vox. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: Hi, I'm Lauren McGaughy, reporting for the Dallas Morning News.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, we're talking about a bill in the Texas Senate that's got a lot of people worried. It would give state-licensed professionals the freedom to deny services based on their religious beliefs.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: That's right. And the state's LGBT community feels directly threatened. If you want to be a lawyer or a doctor or a mental health professional in the state of Texas, you need a license from the state. That's how these things work. But in Texas, politicians want to change an essential part of how this works, not the part about licensing professionals. That's going to stay the same. They want to change who people with licenses have to serve.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was a committee hearing on Monday, the 25th of March. The bill that they were debating in this committee would basically give legal cover to people who are licensed by the state to deny services to folks based on their religious beliefs.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: This kind of stuff happens in Texas a lot. It's really murky and unclear exactly what we're talking about here because basically all the bill says is any licensing agency in the state can't require someone to do something that doesn't conform with their faith. And so it's really broad, right? It's kind of like, what exactly does that mean?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of people in Texas are scared. This means the state is going to start handing out licenses to discriminate against LGBT people. Currently, social workers in Texas that are licensed, which you have to be by the state to practice here, you can't discriminate or turn someone away based on their sexual orientation or their gender identity.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So if a social worker gets a client who's a trans woman, say, and that trans woman wants counseling and the social worker says, I'm sorry, I can't help you because I'm Christian and I don't believe that transgender people exist, that person could lose their license and could potentially, you know, never be able to practice social work again in Texas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the bill would say, no, no, no, if you are a licensing board in Texas, no matter who you license, you can't say that that person can't turn someone away or deny services or potential client because of something that is tied to their religious beliefs.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: What's the history of this bill? Where did it come from? Were people in Texas really pushing for it?
--:-- [Sound of papers shuffling]
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: The author of the bill, Lubbock Republican Senator Charles Perry, took issue with accusations that it was meant to benefit only white evangelicals. To actually be able to live our faith and our living our faith does not stop when we start to work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This wasn't really something that was on anyone's radar before this year. But the guy that authored the bill said he is pushing this legislation specifically because the American Bar Association came out with what's called a model rule.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And a model rule isn't something that state bar associations have to adopt. It's just something that the National Bar Association suggests. And it basically says you shouldn't be able to turn away a client because they're gay or trans.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the bill author here in Texas said, we don't want that kind of thing happening here. So we need to write into state law. We need to be proactive and say, if you're a licensing association like the State Bar of Texas that licenses lawyers, you can't have any rule that says lawyers can't turn people away because of their sincerely held religious beliefs.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So he's been open about the fact that this is a proactive attempt to not enshrine those kinds of protections in these rules for licensing boards. But it's more than just about lawyers. There's, you know, more than 100 licensing boards in Texas that look at everything from mental health to like cosmetology. I mean, this is everything.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This sort of sounds like that Colorado cake case that went up to the Supreme Court where that guy didn't want to make a cake for a gay couple.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: It's a clear win for Jack Phillips of Denver, who said baking a cake for a same-sex couple would violate his Christian beliefs, forcing him to express a view through the artistry of his cakes that he opposes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does it have anything to do with that? Not directly, but that's definitely one of the things that was discussed in the hearing.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So this hearing on Monday the 25th, there were like 60 people that came out to testify on the bill, members of the public.
--:-- [Sound of a microphone being turned on]
--:-- Will Francis: Good afternoon. My name is Will Francis, and I'm the government relations director for the National Association of Social Workers, Texas chapter. I am here to testify opposed to SB 17.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Over 200 of the 254 counties in Texas are mental health provider shortages areas, meaning that if someone were to reject services, there may not be another provider in that area.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And the vast majority of them were against the bill.
--:-- [Sound of a microphone being turned on]
--:-- Brian Russell: Good afternoon Brian Russell I a licensed attorney here in Texas been practicing 25 years I am here to testify in my strong support for SB 17
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What we talking about here is not an abstract principle. We're sitting here trying to say that people don't need to choose between their job, their ability to eat and provide for their family, and their First Amendment rights.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And that was brought up a few times. And the discussion around that was really interesting because in Texas, it's there aren't any laws that state laws that expressly protect LGBT people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so in most places, it's still legal to like fire someone or refuse to hire them or refuse to rent an apartment to them because they're gay or because they're transgender.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: Is this bill specifically targeting the LGBT community? Is this about ensuring Christians don't have to serve gay or trans people?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the bill doesn't ever say anything about what group it applies to. It just talks about what group it attempts to protect.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So all it says is people with a sincerely held religious belief shouldn't have to worry about losing their job or their license because they did something that someone thought was discriminatory.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: discriminatory.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: But the gay community has been the most vocal because it's one of the few that people can point to and say, well, these people aren't already protected under state or federal law.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so this bill wouldn't affect people who are discriminating based on race or like country of origin because those groups are already protected under state and federal civil rights laws.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: But the groups that aren't protected are the ones that are kind of left open to well, this might apply to us. And yeah, that's gay and trans people, but it could also be single mothers. There's different state and federal laws that protect based on your marital status.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if you're like a mom who had a kid out of wedlock, ostensibly this bill would apply to someone like that too.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: Or it could be like people with septum piercings, right? Well, if you could say that my religion says that you shouldn't have a septum piercing, that, yeah, I guess.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's one of the problems that the opponents have with it. They're like, well, what if you claim that you're part of any religious group that like, oh, I don't serve people who have cats, or I don't believe that you should wear hats on Tuesdays, and my religion teaches me that.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: These people say that the law is so broad that they worry it could really apply to almost anything.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What happened since the first version of it passed the Senate last Monday?
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: Well, a lot. So I don't know if your listeners are that familiar with what happened here in 2017, but there was this bill called the bathroom bill, and there were similar pieces of legislation in other states.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But basically, it would have restricted what restrooms someone could use based on their biological sex.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: The legislation frightens Sierra Jane Davis, who's transgender. For me, specifically looking the way I do, that would mean that I would have to go to a men's restroom.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that puts me in even more danger than I already am.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: The bill didn't become law. It failed. But in 2017, it was like it was all that anyone could talk about.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it was a real distraction for a lot of people.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And so this year, they've been trying to avoid going down that road again and getting, quote unquote, distracted by these red meat issues like gay rights because they have a lot to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And one of the big reasons that it died in Texas was because all of these big businesses came out against it.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, you know, the biggest tech CEOs in the world, eventually even like oil and gas companies like Exxon came out and said, don't pass this bathroom bill because it's bad for business.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It makes Texas look bad and people aren't going to want to move here and start businesses here.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: With IBM taking out full-page ads against the measure and the CEOs of 14 Texas corporations signing a letter in opposition.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tourism leaders in Texas say they've already lost $66 million in canceled conventions because of the bill and could lose over a billion dollars in bookings if it passes.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So since uh this new bill was debated last Monday, a group of those same businesses has come back out and they actually sent a letter that said look we know that the bathroom bill is a thing of the past but this new bill threatens to take us down that same road.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Amazon, Apple, Facebook, they all said lawmakers, you need to put this aside and focus on the real big ticket items that you said you were going to focus on, which are school finance and property tax relief.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And so just let it die and let's move on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So is that going to work? Is this bill going to die and is everyone going to move on?
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: Oh, well, that's a good question. Once a piece of legislation kind of gets some stink attached to it, like once it kind of doesn't look so good anymore, they're trying to rebrand it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we're seeing the lawmakers now kind of try to figure out whether they even have a path and if there a way that they can finagle the legislative process
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So wait, if lawmakers are saying they want to focus on stuff like school finance or property tax relief, why is this even happening right now?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, when the legislative session started in January, everyone was wondering whether the bathroom bill would be back.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And a lot of business groups and gay rights groups were really happy when the top three leaders in the state said, we've moved on. We're not going to touch that stuff anymore.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In fact, the main proponent of the bathroom bill claimed that he had won the fight, even though the bill never passed.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: He said that people got the message. That seems like a really bad argument.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, you know, it was very, a lot, people thought it was very Trumpian of him, actually.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: But people were kind of thinking, okay, we've moved past that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But that guy that I just mentioned, the main proponent of the bathroom bill, he's one of the top two most powerful politicians in Texas.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: He's a lieutenant governor. He leads the Senate as the Senate president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And people are saying that he's taking the state down the same path that he was in 2017.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So it's really down to this one guy.
--:-- [Sound of a microphone being turned on]
--:-- Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick: As lieutenant governor, I've added almost $2 billion to provide more troopers and equipment to keep our border strong. I led the fight to ban sanctuary cities in Texas, and I stand with President Trump on keeping our border secure. Liberals, they keep on fighting every step of the way, but I won't back down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did he have a bad experience with an LGBT person at some point?
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: He is a very religious man. He actually, before his time in office, he was a conservative radio host in Houston.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he's kind of famous for writing a book. It's called The Second Most Important Book You'll Ever Read, meaning the Bible is the first one and his is the second.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And so he ascribes a lot of his decisions to his faith, you know, what he believes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, these bills, he would say, have nothing to do with discrimination.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: What they're really trying to do is make sure that anyone who's religious, a Christian person, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Jewish person, that they can be confident in the fact that their faith won't mean that they lose their job or something bad happens to them simply because they're living up to what their faith tells them is important.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I wonder if you could make the opposite argument. Like, Dan Patrick's making the argument that this is about maintaining religious freedom.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: But could someone make the argument that this is too much meddling in religion for the state to be doing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: Something that was interesting that was brought up during debate was there was a senator who is from North Texas. His name's Pat Fallon.
--:-- Pat Fallon: Senator Fallon, you're recognized.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: Oh, thank you. To me, my faith in Tenet is love thy neighbor, period, end of story.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I've heard a lot of people say weaponize and hate.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And I don't know anybody in this body that wants to weaponize anyone or hate anyone.
--:-- Pat Fallon: And he was going back and forth. It got pretty heated with a pastor who actually leads a pro-gay church in Dallas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this pastor was saying...
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So in case of the cake, and I don't want to go down this rabbit hole, but the truth of the matter is, if you have, these laws are being seen to discriminate predominantly against LGBTQ people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because if you have these deeply held religious beliefs based on the scripture, then not only should you not bake a cake for an LGBT person, but you shouldn't bake a cake for someone who can't be married and have childbearing.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: You shouldn't make a cake for someone who's divorced, because those are just as equally, in accordance to white evangelical Christianity, equally condemned by the scriptures that we're quoting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm not one that takes the Bible quite literally. But you're taking it literally by saying marriage is defined between the man and the woman, so I need to take it literally back to you.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: Not at all. Let's use the Bible as the Bible is determined.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what they kept coming back to, the senators, was no one can know what your faith means.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And everyone's faith is individually determined.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's why the bill is written so broadly.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So I think that they would probably answer your question and say, everyone has their own interpretation of God and what their religion teaches them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this bill makes sure that they can't be penalized for thinking a certain way or acting a certain way based on that faith.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: How does the rest of the state feel about this? How about Governor Greg Abbott?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He hasn't weighed in.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: The governor is a very different politician than Dan Patrick. He's very cautious. He's measured. He likes to let the legislators themselves debate things and hash things out before he weighs in.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're getting kind of down to the wire now. We only have a couple months left in the session.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So he'll probably end up taking public stances for and against certain bills at some point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But if he doesn't have to weigh in on them and they die, then why would he?
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: That's kind of like the political calculus there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Everything's supposed to be bigger in Texas.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: Does that go for the LGBT community too? How are cities and communities that don't like this legislation dealing with it?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It really depends where you live how your life as an LGBT person is experienced.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: I mean in Austin Republicans jokingly call it the People Republic of Austin because it so liberal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And most of the other big cities are likewise, you know, they're choosing to pass local laws that actually protect LGBT people.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So in Austin, you can't be fired for being gay, but the state doesn't have a similar law.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so there's pockets of places where there's extra protections on the books for LGBT people, but it's a huge state.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So the rest of the state is largely rural and largely red.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's a really interesting place to live and work because of the dichotomy and that dynamic.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: Is there a chance that Texas can strike some sort of healthy medium between, you know, a bill that might seriously discriminate against LGBT people and, I don't know, ensuring some safety for businesses that have strict religious beliefs?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is there a way that Texas might serve as a model for the rest of the country that is also, you know, in some places very divided on these issues?
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: That's a really good question.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I asked one of the conservative groups that is always one of the most vocal proponents for these bills.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: I asked them recently that same question.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I said, look, you say these bills protect people of faith from discrimination, but LGBT people say it discriminates against them.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So is there some way that the two groups can kind of come together and agree on some middle ground?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, the head of this group, he admitted to me, he said, they do have conversations sometimes with these lawmakers that are liberal Democrats.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: We even have a handful of gay lawmakers in the legislature now, but they've never been able to find a middle ground.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And for the conservative groups, anything that amounts to what they see as an infringement on their religious beliefs isn't okay.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And so they don't really feel like there's much that they can compromise on, on that front.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then when you talk to gay rights advocates, they feel the same way about it.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: Something that happened last year that was, or two years ago, that was really interesting in the statehouse, actually.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's just say there was a fight going on on the floor on a piece of legislation.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And the subject of LGBTQ Texans came up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we only have a handful of lawmakers who are out.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: But there was a lawmaker who came up to the mic and she questioned one of her conservative colleagues and she asked him directly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She said, you know me, you know that I'm a lesbian and that I have a wife and you know us personally.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And yet you're here bringing this bill that you know that would be hurtful to me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And she asked him, she said. Mr. Schaefer, would you agree with me that there are those with sincerely held religious beliefs who have a literal interpretation of the Bible and think that homosexuality is a sin?
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: No question.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you agree that homosexuality is a sin?
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And he looked her straight in the eye and he said, Yes, I do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was a moment that I think hit home for a lot of people because it really encapsulated that idea where it's like, when your faith teaches you something, you're not going to deny it.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: And if you're a gay person, you can't deny it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you think that someone who believes that Christianity is the only true religion would then say to a non-Christian person, I'm sorry, but I have sincerely held religious beliefs and I can't help you because you're not a Christian?
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: They wouldn't make much money if they did.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Answer my question, please.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: You know, I can't imagine that being the case, but if they did, maybe they could make that case.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, but the shoe applies to everyone equally.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: That's what's great about this, is that anyone, whether you're a Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Christian, atheist, agnostic, this is going to apply to you as well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you see how some people would see what you're doing as hatred applying equally?
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: I think that's silly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That moment was really heartbreaking, I think, for both of those people, because those two lawmakers are actually friends.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: So they had to move beyond that especially the the lesbian lawmaker and be like okay this person just said this thing that was really hard for me to hear but I might have to ask for his vote next week on something.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we see that happen a lot in Texas where things get really down and dirty and they can get really personal and then people that are at the end of the day still everyday folks have to set that aside and get on with their day.
--:-- Lauren McGaughy: Lauren McGaughy is with the Dallas Morning News. You can find all her work at dallasnews.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram. This is Today Explained from Vox. You can find all of Vox's work at vox.com.
