Author of Utah LGBT Rights Law Has Deep Ties to Anti-LGBT Right Wingers

MEDIA RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 16, 2015

CONTACT: Queer Nation: news@queernationny.org

LGBT Activists Condemn HRC for Backing Law With Right Wing Agenda   

New York, NY (March 16, 2015) – The University of Illinois law professor who wrote Utah’s recently-enacted law barring some instances of anti-LGBT discrimination opposed New York’s marriage equality law as written, joined the right wing Alliance Defending Freedom in defending a broad religious exemption law in Arizona in 2014, and has ties to a leading proponent of the discredited Regnerus study claiming that children are harmed by having gay and lesbian parents.

“Robin Fretwell Wilson has joined hands with some of the LGBT community’s most hate-filled opponents,” said Ken Kidd, a member of Queer Nation, about the law’s author. “It’s shocking that the Human Rights Campaign ignored widely available information about Wilson and has partnered with someone who is clearly seeking to do great harm to the LGBT community.”

The Utah law has sweeping exemptions that allow religious institutions and their affiliates to continue to discriminate against LGBT Utahns in employment and housing. The law also allows all Utahns to refuse service in public accommodations to members of the LGBT community.

In 2011 letters to Republican state senators, Wilson and five other law professors argued for a “middle way” in New York’s marriage law, saying that “without adequate safeguards for religious liberty…the recognition of same-sex marriage will lead to socially divisive and entirely unnecessary conflicts between same-sex marriage and religious liberty.” Marriage equality was enacted that year without their recommendations. Wilson has made the same argument to other jurisdictions that enacted marriage equality.

In 2014, Wilson was one of 11 law professors who wrote to then Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer saying that SB1062, a so-called religious freedom bill, had been “egregiously misrepresented by many of its critics.” The letter was organized by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a right wing group that has a long history of attacking the LGBT community. Brewer vetoed SB1062 after a national outcry.

In 2006, Wilson and University of Virginia professor Bradford Wilcox authored an article on adoption in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal. In 2014, Wilson and Wilcox penned a controversial editorial in the Washington Post that said that women should get married to avoid sexual assault. Wilcox played a leading role in the Regnerus study attacking gay and lesbian parents.

Wilson has consistently argued in favor of broad religious exemptions in marriage equality laws, including exemptions for government employees who process marriages. In 2012, Wilson co-authored an article on marriage and religious exemptions with Douglas Laycock, a University of Virginia law professor who has also championed religious exemptions, and Anthony Picarello, the general counsel for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.  

In a March 4 statement, Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said the Utah law “should serve as a model for other faith traditions” and would be a template for legislation in other states.

“LGBT people are equal in every way and our community’s goal is state and federal legislation that insures that we are treated equally under the law,” Kidd said. “Utah’s law, with its sweeping religious exemptions, jeopardizes that goal by allowing discrimination by those who most want to fire LGBT people from their jobs and deny us housing or service in public accommodations. We should oppose broad religious exemptions as fiercely as we oppose the conservatives who support these religious exemptions.”

Queer Nation continues to call for state and federal comprehensive civil rights laws that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, education, credit, public accommodations, and federally funded programs with the limited religious exemption that is found in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.