Pressing Issues

Clashes between religious liberty and LGBT rights have dominated headlines for so long that common ground can seem illusory, a throw-back to a long-past era. Groups whose business models rest on conflict present never-ending clashes as a stark choice between competing moral principles—and tell us we have to pick. 

Consider the conflict between religious bakers and same-sex couples. Some say no one should be excluded from a business on Main Street for who they love because that would treat a LGBT person as less than.  Others emphasize that religious people and groups have rights, too, and that choking off the livelihoods of small business owners is wrong. 

As these pages show, it is not true that only one of these two deep moral principles can be affirmed.  The parties ask for the same thing: respect and a place at the table.

A just society makes room for all.

For too long, however, Americans have been told that to respect one side means policymakers have to crush the other.  Each of us knows someone implicated by these unnecessary clashes, or who easily could be—or perhaps we are ourselves.

It is time to move on from scorched earth tactics and entrenched culture wars. Rather than one-sided either/or measures, we need both/and. It is time to write a new legal script for peaceful coexistence, to meld the deep moral principles each side rightfully claims, so that we have the best of America.