The gay "threat' to religious freedom

In the coming brave new world of gay marriage, how will anti-gay wedding photographers earn a living without violating their deeply held religious beliefs?

This is one of the threats to religious freedom that has been keeping the conservative writer Damon Linker awake lately. (See "How Growing Support for Gay Rights Restricts Religious Freedom" here.)

Linker cites a 2009 discussion by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life examining how the U.S. will reconcile the coming wave of marriage equality with the Constitutional rights of objectors, whose religious freedom will be violated if they're legally required to provide university or assisted-living housing to same-sex couples, facilitate adoptions by gay parents, photograph gay couples or cater same-sex weddings. (To read the Pew study, click here.)

Bridal industry vendors with anti-gay scruples shouldn't be so worried. Remember the 2008 case of the New Jersey bakery that refused to decorate a birthday cake for a kid named "Adolf Hitler Campbell"? (A request for a cake with a swastika on it had been similarly rejected.) No government agents appeared to mandate that the bakery sell the cake against its convictions (and the free market stepped in when the boy's proud parents found a Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania that didn't object to white supremacist pastries).

Good news

Linker is a restrained and careful conservative whose recent argument against gay marriage is actually great news for proponents of gay marriage. If Linker is any indication, opponents have given up attacking gay marriage per se and instead are turning to desultory arguments about managing the coming change.

If gay citizens are about to receive full equality under the law, Linker argues, the next likely step will be "a public campaign to stamp out…dissent from the emerging pro-gay consensus."

Linker is right about two things: Religious freedom is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. And being marginalized isn't fun — even if it's a future, hypothetical threat, as opposed to the very real marginalization suffered by homosexuals for the past few millennia.

God's word

Linker acknowledges that religious texts have been falsely exploited in the past to prop up slavery and racial segregation. But whereas God's perceived word on racism turned out to be conditional, Linker suggests, God's word on gender roles and proper sex acts is absolute.

Linker's argument seems to boil down to this: Marginalization of gays and lesbians is acceptable on religious grounds. But marginalization of people who object to equal treatment for gays and lesbians on religious grounds is a violation of religious freedom.

According to Linker, gay marriage opponents "predict," "envision" and "anticipate" a dark future in which clergy will be forced to perform same-sex marriages and anti-gay sermons will be punishable under hate crime laws.

Kentucky's racist pastor

Linker seems to believe that somewhere in America there are couples who will insist on being married by a minister who's opposed to their union. These same zealous couples, presumably, will invoke Civil Rights law to force homophobes to cater and photograph gay weddings.

Presumably there's a Catholic couple somewhere who insist on being married by a rabbi, or a white racist couple who insist on being married in an African Methodist Episcopal church. But for the most part, Linker is conjuring up imaginary violations of rights, as opposed to the very real violations suffered by thousands of gay people who simply want to commit themselves to the moral and spiritual seal of the marriage compact.

In 2011, the pastor of Kentucky's Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church barred a longtime congregant from worshiping there with her black fiancé. For the sake of "greater unity" in the community, the pastor explained, "parties of [interracial] marriages will not be received as members, nor will they be used in worship services."

He resigned shortly after the bride's family reported his action to the media. But no government edict insisted that he marry an interracial couple against his convictions.

Threat to schools

The Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that Kansas's virulently homophobic Westboro Baptist Church members are protected by the First Amendment when they picket military funerals with slogans like "Thank God for dead soldiers." Yet Linker fears that pastors may soon face arrest for delivering anti-gay sermons.

One of Linker's chief fears is that the history of gay rights will infiltrate America's public schools as "analogous" to black civil rights, causing a "mass exodus" of traditionalists from the system.

If the history of gay rights enters our public schools, Linker warns, "The government would be actively working to undermine the sexual morality that traditionalists wish to pass on to their children." The solution, he says, is laws that "unambiguously protect the right of traditionalists to preach their beliefs about the evils of homosexuality and to pass those beliefs on to their children."

The real problem

Of course there's a simpler — and more respectful — solution than imposing your own religious views on the public schools: Teach religion to your kids at home, or in church. Or create your own alternative parochial school system, as Catholics in most major American cities did in the 19th century. Or home-school your kids, as many Evangelical Christians do today.

The real problem for traditionalists like Linker, you see, is not pro-gay legislators or judges but their own children. The broadest support for gay marriage comes from America's youth. A recent poll found almost 80 percent of Californians under 40 in support of gay marriage, as opposed to fewer than half of senior citizens.

The good news for Linker on the indoctrination front is this: Kids don't always listen to their elders, conservative or not. As a teenager, I was taught that I should associate with gay people only if they were trying to conquer their "disorder." But somehow, the message didn't take.