If Chris Matthews thought he could trip up and embarrass Russell Moore, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, he was most certainly disappointed. The Baptist theologian capably held his own mixing it up with the MSNBC host over the issue of Indiana's new religious-freedom protection law.
Moore appeared on the March 30 edition of Hardball along with Joshua Driver of Open for Service, a critic of the new law, which liberals including Chris Matthews have grossly mischaracterized as a virtual license to discriminate against gays and lesbians. While Matthews asked a few questions of Driver, the lion's share of the segment was comprised of Matthews grilling Moore. You can read the relevant transcript below as well as watch video highlights (emphasis mine):
TRANSCRIPT:
MSNBC
Hardball
March 31, 2015
CHRIS MATTHEWS: We have a policy in this country, Russell, of public accommodations being respectful to people regardless of whatever, orientation, sexual identity is not covered by that. But what do you think should be the case? Should a person who opens a shop for business, whether it's a wedding planner or it's a gas station, or it's a motel, hotel, whatever it is, restaurant, should they have the right to say, you guys seem gay to me, you're not getting in here. Should that be all right? Legally?
RUSSELL MOORE: Well, I don't think anyone is calling for that kind of discrimination, and this law doesn't address that at all. This law simply says --
MATTHEWS: Well, wait a minute. The governor had all day yesterday to say that and he didn't. George Stephanopoulos kept asking him --
MOORE: That's because the law is not making anything legal or illegal. It's simply saying what is allowed to come into court. Does the government need to prove that it has a compelling interest when it paves over someone's religious liberty issues? That's what the law is all about.
MATTHEWS: What religious issues would you have that would go into court that would justify discrimination of this kind?
MOORE: Well, there are all sorts of issues that are going to come into play--
MATTHEWS: Give me some!
MOORE: --in the public square when it comes to someone using his or her creative gifts or gifts of expression. I don't want the government to force a Jewish musician to sing "Stand Up for Jesus" at my revival meeting just because she's in the public marketplace. And so we have to have a balancing act when it comes to respecting conscience and respecting religious convictions along with other issues of the common good. And this bill is not the sort of radical move that some people are acting like. This bill is --
MATTHEWS: Why were all those people surrounding the governor and why was the governor doing that signing ceremony in private? What is the purpose of this, really? You say some Jewish fellow that doesn't want to sing, you know, "Ave Maria," if there is such a guy. I think that everybody wants to sing "Ave Maria," by the way, but it's a beautiful song. But, my question is, are these the most esoteric, you passed a state law with the most esoteric purpose. You're saying it doesn't have a broad implication to people. It couldn't be used, by, can it be used by, let me ask you a cases. Suppose a hotel doesn't want to serve gay couples.
MOORE: Again --
MATTHEWS: For religious reasons.
MOORE: This bill does not make anything legal or illegal that wasn't legal or illegal before the law was passed.
MATTHEWS: But it would be a challenge in court, you say.
MOORE: Not necessarily, no. This does not mean that someone has a golden ticket to get out of the dispute. It simply means that the government has to prove why there's a compelling interest. In most of these cases--
MATTHEWS: The United States people, the people of this country have long ago decided, back in the '60s we have a compelling interest when a store opens its door, it's open to everybody. Do you accept that? Open to everybody. A door opens, you have to let people in. You can't say, oh, you're black or you're gay. You can't do that. Do you accept that right? To walk in the door-
MOORE: In most cases.
MATTHEWS: In most -- when don't you accept it?
MOORE: Well, when you would, for instance, have someone who's using his or her creative gifts or expressive gifts for a viewpoint that that person by conscience can't agree with. And that would go in every direction, not just for people who agree with me on those issues.
MATTHEWS: OK, let me go back, I think this is absurd, Joshua [Driver]. I don't know anybody that would go to some Jewish guy and say, would you sing at my Catholic wedding? You'd pick someone who wanted to do it otherwise they'd do a lousy job do a bad job. I mean this is common marketplace sense. You wouldn't ask somebody to do a gay wedding who's anti-gay. You might but it would seem to be a stupid thing to do. You would want a wedding planner that would give you the best wedding you ever had. Who wanted to.
[...]
MATTHEWS: What do you make, Russell, of the idea of the NCAA, which is, you know, a lot of basketball players, white and black, the most talented college basketball players in the country don't want to go to Indiana now. They're talking about this.
MOORE: I think it's really unfortunate. I think it's a confluence of sexual libertarianism and crony capitalism in a way that is trying to bully the state of Indiana into backing down from protecting basic religious liberties the same way the federal government does and same way 19 other states do. I think that's really unfortunate.
MATTHEWS: What's sexual libertarianism? What is sexual libertarianism?
MOORE: Well, the idea that sexual freedom trumps everything else and that it ought to be able to pave over the consciences of anyone else. That's what we're seeing all over the country right now. That's the reason why we have numerous disputes and debates in which religious liberty, that once was an issue we could all pretty much agree on in American life, has become a culture war issue in ways that I think are going to be damaging for everyone.
MATTHEWS: OK. A hotel's owned by a Baptist person, a fundamentalist believer in opposition, only supports traditional marriage, should that person be able to keep a gay couple from staying in his lodgings? Yes or no? Under your thinking? Should he have a case in court that he can do that?
MOORE: I don't think that anyone who has a hotel or a lodge should spend time wondering about what anyone is doing in that. That's not where --
MATTHEWS: What if they did wonder?
MOORE: That's not where most of our disputes are happening.
MATTHEWS: Where are the disputes? It's not about the Jewish guy that won't sing at the Catholic wedding.
MOORE: But it is. But it is. We have religious minorities all over this country that are being discriminated against. Questions of Muslim employees who are being told they can't wear a hajib [sic, he meant hijab] because hats aren't allowed. And we have to have a way in order to say this is a matter of religious expression and religious conscience.
MATTHEWS: I think you gave away your argument with that sexual libertarianism [comment]. Anyway, thank you, Josh Driver, and thank you, Russell Moore, for joining us in this very interesting debate.
