Public Square and Discourse
Everyone should have a voice in how religious liberty and LGBT rights are both realized and meshed in the law. Despite the myth that people on different points of the political spectrum refuse to listen to each other, respectful dialogues are popping up across the country between sincere people of good will—people who make similar claims to be respected for who they are in private and public, people who have similar needs. Real dialogue is the first step towards common ground lawmaking.
These sorts of dialogues recognize that viewpoints rooted in a religious worldview, or none at all, are not prohibited from the public square by the notion of separation of church and state.
Some fear that laws protecting LGBT persons from discrimination will be wielded to punish religious people and religious views. Americans hold a range of different, yet reasonable, opinions about marriage.
LGBT nondiscrimination laws don’t enforce a certain opinion about marriage. Indeed, these laws can be structured to make sure that whatever your opinion is on marriage, faith or sexuality, you shouldn’t be discriminated against for it—not when you’re trying to get a job, or rent an apartment, or hire a plumber. In Utah, lawmakers created a level playing field whatever opinion a person holds—it forbade employers from restricting employees’ speech about marriage, faith and sexuality when such speech was non-harassing and did not undercut the employer’s essential business interests. Employers could ban all such speech but if it allowed speech on these topics for some employees, they must allow it for all employees. Utah gave protections to employees for speech outside the workplace, too.
Many people ascribe views on these questions to others based on identity politics—both their own politics and perceptions of the politics of others. Of course, threats to religious freedom, like decisions to protect religious freedom, don’t all come from one political party. The same is true of decisions to protect persons from illicit discrimination. Indeed, it was a Republican stronghold, Utah, that last extended protections against discrimination in housing and hiring to the full LGBT community. By making common cause, both communities secured more rights than they receive in much of the rest of the US.
Far more constructive than our present divisiveness would be to recognize the undeserved discrimination experienced by both the LGBT and religious communities, in the workplace, in housing, and in the public square.
