The Correlation Between Gay Rights and Religious Liberty

I grew up in a conservative Evangelical home, attending a conservative Evangelical church.  While my tribal allegiance is a moving target, I am a person of faith who values both religious freedom and gay rights, and I think there is a correlation between the two.

Our present notion of religious liberty was not a foregone conclusion when the Founding Fathers met in the State House of Philadelphia in 1787.  For the most part, the tradition of forcing morality on dissenters was common place.  The established churches of Europe forced out the Puritans, and then they forced out people that they disagreed with; people like RogerWilliams who championed religious freedom and fidelity to conscience. It was Williams who insisted on buying land from the Native Americans rather than simply taking it, and who in contrast to the Puritans, embraced religious diversity when he founded Rhode Island.

One hundred years later, as the Founders debated exactly what religious freedom would look like for the young republic, a surprising coalition emerged which included both the irreligious and the forerunners to today’s Evangelicals.  Together they conceived of a religious liberty that both freed the church from the dictates of the state, and freed the conscience from the dictates of the church.  The less religious did so for reasons that are fairly self-evident.  Those that were more religious sought religious freedom from the state, both because they were often in the minority, Baptists and Catholics for example, and because they understood that in the religious context true faith flowed from a free conscience.  However not everyone agreed.  Many in the religious establishment believed that a state sponsored church was directly tied to state sponsored morality, and both were paramount.

This religious freedom was one of the things the community I grew up in valued most, the freedom to worship God as we saw fit.  While there is not a one-to-one comparison between the freedom to marry the person once chooses and the freedom to worship as one chooses, (for example the legal arguments are different, one being based on Due Process, and the other on the First Amendment) the underlying principle is the same.  Freedom.  More than once growing up I heard people discussing the disastrous affects of government regulation or the fact that you could not enforce morality.  They argued that people should be free to make their own decisions, both in business and their personal lives.  While some argued that there are limits to our freedoms, and they were right to an extent, today I believe those limits should focus on those things that directly impacts others.  We should not deny people public benefits because of their private beliefs or actions.

A second conservative value I learned growing up was the golden rule, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.  When we as a society fail to take this approach, we often go the other direction, taking an eye for an eye.  That is what is happening in today’s culture wars, wars primarily about power.  Parties on both the left and the right are using the power of the state not only to enforce their own version of morality, but to exact revenge on their counterparts.  Increasingly, more of us are feeling pushed into one camp or the other because we feel like we have to take sides.  People of influence on both sides claim that not taking sides is wicked, foolish, or indicative or our utter and total lack of a vertebra.

Another reason we become radicalized is because we feel attacked.  Many of us know friends on one side of this issue or the other who feel like their freedoms are under attack by the other side.  Some of them have specific examples of being sued, or called names, disparaged or otherwise attacked.  No one wants to be disparaged either because of what they believe or who they are.  And in particular, no one wants to be told what they can or cannot do by the government.  Conservatives feel that their personal freedoms are under attack by the anti-discrimination narrative.  Progressives feel attacked by the very real legislative and judicial efforts to actively deny them over 1000 state and federal marriage benefits that their strait counterparts receive.  When some of our progressive friends have the opportunity to sue those they feel are discriminating against them, they sometimes take that opportunity, understandably paying back an eye for an eye, because conservatives have actively sought to deny them access to marriage.

This impulse that both left and right have, to enforce morality and take revenge, it is in contrast to our better impulses—the desire to live free, and the desire to give to others what we want for ourselves.  As long as both the left and right continue to force morality on others, there will continue to be a culture war.  The better approach is for us to respect the convictions and freedoms of the other, embracing both religious freedom and gay rights, even as we disagree about the wisdom or morality of our opponent.

I'm not suggesting we stop advocating for our various potions in the battle of ideas. I am suggesting that both sides should stop using the power of the state to limit freedom and enforce morality.