Religious Freedom And Gay Rights

LGBT, faith, and academic thought-leaders explore prospects for laws protecting each community's core interests and possible resolutions for culture-war conflicts.

In the United States and Europe, an increasing emphasis on equality has pitted rights claims against each other, raising profound philosophical, moral, legal, and political questions about the meaning and reach of religious liberty. The eye of this conflict is the debate over claims of religious freedom, on one hand, and claims of equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, on the other. As new rights for LGBT people have expanded in liberal democracies across the West, many advocates of religious freedom claim that their rights - such as the rights of conscience; the rights of parents to impart their religious beliefs to their children; and the liberty to advance religiously-based moral arguments as a rationale for laws - have experienced a corresponding decline. In Religious Freedom and Gay Rights, editors Timothy Samuel Shah, Thomas F. Farr, and Jack Friedman bring together some of the world's leading thinkers on religion, morality, politics, and law to analyze the emerging tensions between religious freedom and gay rights in three geographic regions: the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe. The result is a thoughtful inquiry into the legal and moral frameworks that govern tensions between gay rights and religious freedom and the political controversies that these tensions have produced. -- from back cover.

Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty explores the religious freedom implications of defining marriage to include same-sex couples. It represents the only comprehensive, scholarly appraisal to date of the church-state conflicts virtually certain to arise in many spheres of law as a result of the legal recognition of same-sex marriage.

Should religious people who conscientiously object to facilitating same-sex weddings, and who therefore decline to provide cakes, photography, or other services, be exempted from antidiscrimination laws? This issue has taken on an importance far beyond the tiny number who have made such claims. Gay rights advocates fear that exempting even a few religious dissenters would unleash a devastating wave of discrimination. Conservative Christians fear that the law will treat them like racists and drive them to the margins of American society. Both sides are mistaken. The answer lies, not in abstract principles, but in legislative compromise. This book clearly and empathetically engages with both sides of the debate. Koppelman explains the basis of antidiscrimination law, including the complex idea of dignitary harm. He shows why even those who do not regard religion as important or valid nonetheless have good reasons to support religious liberty, and why even those who regard religion as a value of overriding importance should nonetheless reject the extravagant power over nonbelievers that the Supreme Court has recently embraced. Koppelman also proposes a specific solution to the problem: that religious exemptions be granted only to the few businesses that are willing to announce their compunctions and bear the costs of doing so. His approach makes room for America's enormous variety of deeply held beliefs and ways of life. It can help reduce the toxic polarization of American politics.

Timothy Samuel Shah, Thomas F. Farr, and Jack Friedman's volume, 'Religious Freedom and Gay Rights' brings together some of the world's leading thinkers on religion, morality, politics, and law to analyze the emerging tensions between religious freedom and gay rights in three key geographic regions: the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe.

Nelson Tebbe shows how a method called social coherence offers a way to resolve conflicts between advocates of religious freedom and proponents of equality law. Based on the way people reason through moral problems in everyday life, it can lead to workable solutions in a wide range of issues, including gay rights and women’s reproductive choice.

Reinterpretations of key Bible texts related to sexual orientation, written by a Harvard student, present an accessible case for a modern Christian conservative acceptance of sexual diversity.

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