Just 22 years ago, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed unanimously by the House of Representatives, approved by the Senate by a vote of 97 to 3 and then signed by President Bill Clinton into law. 

The justification for passing such a law at the time was to countervail the decision made by the Supreme Court in the wrongfully-decided 1990 case Employment Division v. Smith, in which the Court ruled that the state of Oregon could refuse to give unemployment benefits to two Native Americans fired for testing positive for mescaline, an illegal substance found in peyote, which they used for religious ceremonies. 

The law simply brought back, according to the Constitution Center, the “Sherbert test,” an old metric created in the 1963 case Sherbert v. Werner but greatly diminished in the 1980s. The test says “that if a person claim[s] a sincere religious belief, and a government action place[s] a substantial burden on that belief, the government need[s] to prove a compelling state interest, and that it pursue[s] that action in the least burdensome way.” 

In short, the law creates a balancing test for the courts to weigh people’s sincerely held religious convictions with the compelling interests of the state. Since the passage of RFRA, 21 states have adopted such measures to empower religious individuals to petition their case against state action—not just action involving the federal government—while 11 other states have had similar provisions made through state court decisions. 

One of the most recent states to enact such a measure was Indiana, with two main differences: the law also applies to closely held corporations, constitutional through 2014’s Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case, and it applies to private parties, which many legal scholars, like University of Virginia Law Professor Douglas Laycock—who is pro-same-sex marriage and a supporter of RFRA—say follows the original meaning of the federal RFRA.

This should have been an agreeable law to all. Religious freedom is, after all, the cornerstone of America and its founding. But the problem is that the year is 2015, and many liberals, who at one time declared themselves to be the unabashed champions of civil liberties, have become disgracefully intolerant of and authoritarian toward religiously-minded people.

In order to create traction against RFRA, liberals declared war on the law by promoting a campaign to instill fear and deceive the public, doing a complete 180-degree flip on their stance towards RFRA under President Clinton. 

Democrat Governor of Connecticut Dannel Malloy, who conveniently glossed over the fact that his state has its own, stricter RFRA (the burden on a belief in Connecticut’s RFRA doesn’t have to be “substantial” like in Indiana’s version of the law), had a Twitter tirade, disingenuously accusing Indiana’s law of “turn[ing] back the clock on progress” while righteously proclaiming that “discrimination won’t be tolerated,” which led him to ban state-funded travel to Indiana. Other politicians like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo would follow suit in banning state-funded travel to Indiana.

But politicians weren’t the only ones crusading against “discrimination.” 

People like Apple CEO Tim Cook warned of RFRA’s dangers, writing that such laws “say individuals can cite their personal religious beliefs to refuse service to a customer or resist a state nondiscrimination law” while recklessly equating it to the Jim Crow era. And there was much, much more. 

 While Indiana Governor Mike Pence, along with Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, facing a similar bill in his state, would eventually capitulate to the mob and would add an “anti-discriminatory fix” that, in effect, guts the law, it is still imperative to debunk the central lie on RFRA—it does not, and will not give license for business owners to discriminate against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender patrons or against anyone else.

Indeed, there is plenty of legal precedent from before RFRA was even codified law to suggest that no business has legal standing when it comes to discriminating against particular groups of people, according to Professor Laycock. 

In actuality, RFRA sets up the framework for a more targeted and controversial question: can the religious—or anyone else for that matter—be forced to participate in activities that they believe are in direct contradiction to their sincerely held religious or moral beliefs?

If the owners of Memories Pizza, a pizzeria located in the small town of Walkerton, Ind. that became the epicenter of liberal spite and condemnation, explicitly state that they do not practice discrimination against anyone but would refuse to specifically cater to or  participate in a hypothetical same-sex marriage—a crucial distinction—they should at least be allowed to ask that question and state their case to a court. And they should definitely not be receiving death threats from our friends on the left just for espousing their religious views. 

But if we’re going to ask this question, we might as well answer it. Yes, religious business owners should be able to deny services for same-sex marriages.

The primary problem present today is that many liberals fail to understand the meaning and purpose behind religious ideals, values and beliefs because they have far removed themselves from any exposure to flesh-and-blood religious, traditional people as they’ve coalesced around LGBT-related issues. That’s why they instinctually jump to the conclusion that believing in traditional marriage makes one a bigot without knowing a single thing about the individual or individuals they’re attacking.

Liberals do this mainly because they believe that, regarding views on marriage, there is only one right answer—theirs. As such, people are inherently bad if they don’t subscribe wholeheartedly to the liberal mindset on social issues.But the truth is that, at its core, the question of marriage and its designed purpose mean different things to different people.  

Yet instead of agreeing to disagree, many on the left are trying to coerce people to conform to their views through government force by opposing laws that would check the power of government to regulate religion’s practice out of existence. It’s especially ironic given that these are the same people who started the same-sex marriage push by marketing it as a “leave-me-alone” movement with slogans like “Don’t like gay marriage? Don’t have one.” 

When looking at all of this, it becomes increasingly clear that the inculcation of this groupthink mentality through force, contrary to what liberals like Tim Cook say seems to be much more aligned with the evils of the Jim Crow era than anything America’s religious community has ever done. 

In fact, people often forget that these laws actually mandated that all businesses discriminate and segregate their services based on race. The Jim Crow era was, at its core, government force.

Similarly, it is the left today that is attempting to mandate through government’s heavy hand that every dissenter be quelled into submission, which is quite literally the opposite of the tolerance they purport to live by. 

So instead of trying to suppress the beliefs of those they disagree with, the left is better off leaving people who haven’t harmed anyone alone. They should respect the views of people like Aaron and Melissa Klein, Oregonians who, because of “anti-gay discrimination laws” are facing fines that could potentially bankrupt their cake-making business. 

Because, in the end, punitive measures that violate the sacrosanct beliefs of religious businessowners hurt the proprietors far more than any grievance hustler trying to generate controversy. With the added fact that there are many more businesses that will serve same-sex marriages than not, this search-and-destroy campaign against religiously minded people has no warrant, basis or place in America. All it does is ruin lives.

Ultimately, no one should have to abandon their religious and moral convictions simply for trying to make a living. Instead of listening to the Left, let’s embrace diversity of thought and leave good, honest religious people alone.