Ever since the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that gay people have the right to marry, those upset by this ruling have shifted their strategy from denying the right to limiting its enforcement.
Even if gay people have a right to marry, they argue, people also have the liberty to practice their religion as they wish. Accordingly, they claim, they cannot be forced to “aid or abet” those seeking to marry partners of the same sex. [...]
Rights, in contrast, are stronger. They not only give us these freedoms, but they also protect these freedoms from any kind of interference. But not all liberties are protected by rights. When people talk about religious liberty, it is accordingly important to understand what kind of liberty they might mean. For it might not be a liberty that is protected from the kind of interference that is at issue in these cases. [...]
So when people claim that aiding and abetting gay marriage would infringe on their religious liberty, in most cases what they must mean is that this would violate their particular conception of positive liberty – their particular conception of how we each should live, a conception that is based on their religious views. [...]
Indeed, for those who have any doubt about this, simply imagine what it was like to experience life as a black person under Jim Crow. One cannot imagine being subject to these kinds of restrictions and still thinking of oneself as truly free. The protection against arbitrary treatment is accordingly central to almost every possible conception of the good and plan of life a freedom loving person might select.
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