Is religion a license to discriminate, or is it something worse?

Never discuss religion or politics in polite company – that’s a message which has been passed down for decades.

Well, our highly polarized political arena does not constitute polite discourse and the result is an intersection of religion and politics that has sparked a firestorm of debate, from the local level to the state Capitol.

The religious freedom bill that was passed by the state House, putting a national spotlight on Michigan, is decried by critics as a “license to discriminate” against gays. That’s a misleading assessment, though one that requires some unraveling to get at the truth.

Under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, civil liberties advocates claim, a doctor or EMT could refuse treatment for a gay person, based on religious grounds. A pharmacist could cite his religious beliefs in declining to fill a prescription for birth control or HIV medication. A fundamentalist teacher could refuse to mentor the child of a same-sex couple. A Catholic county clerk might end the issuance of marriage licenses to those who have been previously divorced.

That all sounds terrible to anyone who values freedom for all above religious beliefs. House Speaker Jase Bolger, the champion of this legislation, said the “parade of horribles” laid out by his detractors fails to recognize the role of the legal system under this new set of rules.

In reality, Bolger’s law would provide a newfound weapon to wield in court. Those with demonstrable discriminatory views toward certain people – in the immediate case, those in the LGBT community – could rely upon the proposed religious freedom provisions to defend their actions.

That doesn’t mean that bigoted bakers would immediately stop making wedding cakes for gay couples. It does mean that the baker whose religion recognizes only one sexual orientation would now have a legal leg to stand on.

If their actions were challenged in court, these businesses and professionals would rely upon their “sincerely held religious beliefs” as a defense. Legal experts say that victims of discrimination would be forced to demonstrate that the government has a “compelling interest” to protect them from bias.

For the individual, that would mean spending a lot of time in court and money for lawyers.

For the rest of us, it would mean further clogging up the court system.

In Macomb County, an anti-discrimination policy that was recently passed protects gay rights in the workplace for the county’s 2,600 employees. But this ordinance also offered a religion exception. In effect, the county took a contrary approach, declaring that those “affiliated with” a religion that does not recognize gay rights cannot be blocked from using county facilities or services.

An attempt to strip the religion provision failed last week after Commissioner Jim Carabelli introduced this scenario: Is the county willing to prevent a Catholic couple from getting married at Freedom Hill County Park because their religion does not tolerate LGBT people?

“At the end of the day, that is discrimination,” said the Shelby Township Republican.

While the overall “Human Rights Policy” stands, thanks to commissioners who remained steadfast against considerable initial opposition from conservatives, the Sterling Heights City Council rescinded their LGBT protection ordinance when many of the same opponents waged a high-profile challenge.

Of course, none of these machinations would be necessary if the U.S. Supreme Court had recognized the LGBT community as a protected class within society, based on the insidious discrimination they have suffered over a long period of time. The courts have followed that path of reasoning in the past to establish protections based on gender, race and ethnicity.

Instead, the high court opened the door a crack in the so-called Hobby Lobby case, ruling that “closely held” (essentially family-owned) companies can refuse to provide their employees insurance coverage for contraception, based on the owners’ deeply held religious beliefs.

What if the next case to reach the court asserts that religious beliefs allow closely held corporations to hire or fire workers based on their sexual orientation? What if the next religion-based dispute to land on the justices’ docket is brought forward by Home Depot instead of Hobby Lobby?

At that point, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law designed to protect minority religions, will become unrecognizable. Some 20 states have adopted their own religious freedom laws as conservatives eager to blur the lines between church and state attempt to minimize the impact of the gay rights movement sweeping the nation.

All of this has an uneasy resemblance to the days when Bible-thumping preachers created a culture of intolerance.

Religion was used to justify segregation, and later to block interracial marriages. Now, those arguments seem fairly ridiculous. Someday, the public may look back on the religious freedom claims made in 2014 and consider them rather silly.

In the meantime, the issue is this: Should religious beliefs established centuries ago trump the secular morality established by a nation of laws?

If an individual citing religious grounds pressures his church not to allow same-sex marriage ceremonies at their place of worship, that’s an internal matter among the congregation. They essentially have that license to discriminate among their flock.

But when the government passes a law that opens the door to religion-based discrimination in everyday life, that becomes a sanctioned form of public prejudice. That creates a standard in which a version of Christian (or Muslim) doctrine supersedes constitutional liberties.

For those seeking freedom, their only hope is to place their confidence in a legal system that’s already under fire for perceived bias.

Under the proposed law, those battered by bigotry receive one more painful message: Have faith.