Will, you are spouting the slogans of the people you most oppose. The Georgia bill was a religious freedom bill. It applied only to religious institutions and to people whose religious exercise was substantially burdened. For the second group, the government could impose the burden anyway if it had a compelling government interest, so it probably wasn’t going to be effective at addressing the wedding vendor cases. But it did not authorize discrimination in wholly secular contexts and where no one had a religious objection.
The NC bill says nothing about religious conscience or burdens on religion. It authorizes discrimination by anyone for any reason, and prevents cities from doing anything about it. It is not confined to religious contexts such as churches and weddings; it is not confined to protecting religion. It simply targets gays. There are no examples of good legislative solutions to the wedding vendor cases, because both sides have been unwilling or unable to compromise. What we need are strong public accommodations laws with explicit exemptions for small businesses in the wedding industry. A small group of academics (of which I am a part) has had draft statutory language for several years. We have no legislative takers. The Republicans don’t want to prohibit discrimination against gays in any context, however secular, and the Democrats don’t want any religious exemptions in any context, however religious, except that they generally do concede that the clergy don’t have to officiate at the wedding. There are examples in other contexts,enacted before this got so polarized. State laws prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation all have exemptions, of varying scope, for religious non-profits. All the marriage equality legislation in blue states, pre-Obergefell, had religious exemptions. There are ways to do this, but we lack the political will to break through the polarization. Douglas Laycock Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law University of Virginia Law School 580 Massie Road Charlottesville, VA 22903 434-243-8546 From: Will Esser [mailto:willes...@yahoo.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2016 3:20 PM To: Laycock, H Douglas (hdl5c) <hd...@virginia.edu<mailto:hd...@virginia.edu>>; Law & Religion issues for Law Academics <religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu<mailto:religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu>>; Paul Finkelman <paul.finkel...@yahoo.com<mailto:paul.finkel...@yahoo.com>> Subject: Re: Arizona, Indiana . . . and now Georgia Doug, I guess that just leads us to the type of impasse seen in Georgia. Supporters call it a religious freedom bill, and those opposed call it an anti-gay bill which permits discrimination. But we end up still asking the same question that has been so well discussed on this list - is there a resolution in which religious freedom and individual liberty to be free from unjust discrimination can both be protected? I thought that a carveout on the Charlotte ordinance to prevent the wedding photographer / cake baker scenario from playing out in North Carolina was a reasonable accommodation that could have gone a long way to addressing the concerns on the religious freedom side, but the Democratically controlled City Council were not interested in considering any such accommodation. If the NC bill were revised to include sexual orientation in the statewide non-discrimination provision, do you have any examples of other states non-discrimination statutes that you think do a good job of simultaneously protecting the significant religious freedom concerns? I'd be interested in reviewing an example. Here's hoping that more of the country can engage in the kind of thoughtful debate that takes place on this list on these important topics. Will Will Esser --- Charlotte, North Carolina
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