Christian Morals are Irrelevant to Public Policy

Three diverse opinions on the morality of transgenderism, each written by a Christian leader, appeared in a recent issue of the San Diego Union Tribune (Lohrmann, Robinson, Van Meter; March 19, 2023). Together, they show there are many different possible interpretations of Christian doctrine and that the most extreme voices, though they claim to speak for the whole religion, are in fact a small minority. There is also good reason to think the extremist views are theologically and morally mistaken.

However, Christian morality (even if there were universal agreement on what it is) is the wrong tool for determining public policy. Many Americans are not Christian, and Christian standards do not apply to them. This is guaranteed by the US Constitution. The First Amendment says both that the country is officially non-religious, and that the government should not impose one religion’s notions on anyone else.

So, when I hear that Christian leaders are for or against transgenderism, my first thought is, So what? That’s irrelevant to the question of what rights transgender people ought to have. Those religious opinions are irrelevant because imposing religious ideas on others is wrong. (You wouldn’t want them to impose their religion on you.) And they are irrelevant because, despite the rhetoric from Christian Nationalists, the US is not a Christian country.

Laws should, of course, reflect the will of the people. Even by that standard, the extremist anti-trans position deserves a mere shrug in response, since it is very much a minority view. (According to Pew Research, 37% of US adults are non-Christian, and the extremists are not a majority of Christians.)

We should be suspicious of attempts to limit freedoms. Promoting freedom is a core American ideal. It is a good moral idea, too, independent of any specific political structure. We all want maximal freedom and the autonomy to live as we choose for ourselves, and we all deserve it given our fundamental humanity.

Every reasonable person understands that “maximal” freedom does not mean absolute freedom. There are reasonable limits on what we should do to others and what we should allow others to do to us. But what are those limits, and on what basis should we set and enforce them? There are two main principles for deciding.

The first is that since harming others is wrong, we should disallow actions that cause harm. Think of this as an implementation of the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated. (The Golden Rule appears in cultures around the world; it is something like a culture- and religion-independent moral rule accepted by nearly everyone.)

Political philosophers put it like this: “My right to swing my arm only goes as far as your nose.” A person is free to believe or act as they want, unless it causes harms to others. The reason you are not allowed to harm someone else is that they have the freedom not to be harmed; you want that for yourself, so you should give it to others. Many cases where we are deciding the limits of freedom are about balancing competing interests and choosing the path that does not impose unjustified harms.

The second main principle is that governments should write laws from the best evidence and reasoning available. Whether we are talking about restricting a freedom or allowing a harm, a mere opinion is never an adequate justification.

Since no one can prove their religion true, or prove that they speak for god—millennia of inconclusive theological and philosophical debates bear this out—religious assertions amount to mere opinions in the public context. They carry almost no weight and should have no influence on law-making.

Unfortunately, the US is currently trending the wrong way on this. Some legislatures and courts have bought into Christian Nationalist propaganda, restricting instead of protecting freedoms (eliminating access to abortion, criminalizing talking about homosexuality, not letting parents and doctors make the best care decisions for children, banning books, etc.). There has been a long, well-funded, highly coordinated campaign among religious conservatives to capture legislatures and courts (see important work by Stewart, Seidel, Kruse, and others, in my reading list on Christian Nationalism). It is time the rest of us, the majority, push back. We need to reprioritize and properly interpret freedom of/from religion in public life, and correct our laws and judicial rulings accordingly.

To that end, we need to assert, loudly and often, that Christianity has no special claim on truth and morality. In fact, the Bible is full of assertions we know to be factually false, not to mention things we today—correctly—assess to be morally wrong (public stonings, keeping slaves, rabid misogyny; see this). There is no reason to trust the Bible as a guide to modern life.

Even so, Christians are free to live by whatever moral rules they want—among themselves, and provided they don’t harm anyone. They should offer that same freedom to everyone else, too, and stop trying to impose their religious opinions on the whole country.