"Religious Freedom and Nondiscrimination" Article

I’ve published a new article, Religious Freedom and Nondiscrimination, based on an address at Loyola University-Chicago’s symposium on “The Question of Religious Freedom: From John Courtney Murray and Vatican II to the Present.” The symposium papers (vol. 50, issue 1) are from an excellent list of people, including MOJ-friend Kathleen Brady, the leading theological ethicist Robin Lovin, Loyola’s Miguel Diaz (who chaired the event), Leslie Griffin, and others.

My piece can be downloaded at SSRN; here is the abstract:

      This essay explores two theses about the relationship between religious freedom and nondiscrimination. First, nondiscrimination is a crucial component of religious freedom: such freedom must be equal for all religious positions. Religious freedom for some faiths more than others is not truly religious freedom: rather, it is a policy for advancing the favored faiths or their sociopolitical goals. We see this tendency operating today, for example, in that some conservatives speak strongly of religious freedom but oppose equal freedom for Muslims. The essay discusses (examining the Trump travel ban and other disputes) why that attitude is wrong in principle and misguided, as a matter of prudence, for social conservatives' own religious-freedom claims. The essay also discusses the prevalence of hostility toward conservative Christians.

       Second, religious freedom is a value independent of nondiscrimination. Equality for various faiths is little comfort without a baseline guarantee of actual freedom, including room to exercise religion aspects of life beyond worship: charitable work and daily life. Moreover, sometimes the values of religious freedom and nondiscrimination come in conflict: when they do, we must give weight to both of these important values, and in particular, not simply subordinate the value of religious freedom to the value of nondiscrimination. The essay gives reasons for protecting religious freedom as well as nondiscrimination, outlining parallels between the constitutional claims of LGBT persons and those of religious objectors to same-sex relationships. Finally, the essay suggests means for giving substantial protection to both rights.