Marriage Equality and Religious Freedom

Dale Carpenter debunks some new myths from the anti-marriage equality crowd:

With the exception of the Vermont clerk refusing to perform a civil union ceremony (about which more below), none of [the allged examples of discrimination against religion] involve a claim of discrimination provided by the gay couples' status as married or as joined in a civil union or domestic partnership. All of the cases involve the application of state laws barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation that pre-date the official recognition of gay relationships.

Neither the viability of the discrimination claim nor the viability of the religious objectors' desired exemption turns on whether the gay couple is officially recognized. In most of the cited cases, in fact, the couples' relationship was not recognized by the state, but adding such a status to the cases would change nothing about their legal significance. The most egregious abuse of these examples to undermine gay marriage is the Catholic Charities case, which involved the application of a 1989 antidiscrimination law. That dispute arose because the Catholic Church objected to complying with the law for the first time only after gay marriage was permitted in the state. It was a fortuitously timed conflict for gay-marriage opponents given that the state legislature was at that very moment considering a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.