Gay rights, religious liberty and silence
27th June 2011
A look at how little protection is afforded in New York for those who choose not to embrace same-sex ‘marriage’.
(There are no protections in New York for vendors who are not clergy or religious institutions.)
So if you refuse to sell something that is to be used in a same-sex ‘marriage’, or rent property, or publish notices, or whatever — unless you’re clergy or a religious institution, you get whacked with the Discrimination Bat.
But that’s really only the tip of the iceberg — and probably the easiest conflicts to resolve — when it comes to discussions of religious liberty and gay rights. Will same-sex marriage laws impact the rights of religious organizations to place children for adoption as they see fit? What about Lutheran parochial schools that have faced civil rights lawsuits over their honor code? Will Muslim doctors have the right to refuse to do in vitro fertilization treatment on a woman in a lesbian marriage? Will an evangelical referring a patient to someone without religious qualms over same-sex marriage lose her job or license? What about the civil servants who have religious objections to same-sex marriage? Apart from wedding vendors, there are all sorts of other lines of work where individual religious liberty and religiously-motivated objections to same-sex marriage where the questions persist. What about adoption services, for instance? How might public school curriculum change? Will that pose a challenge for any public school teachers who are Muslim, Jewish or Christian?