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NY Times Op-Ed: 303 Creative, Gay Rights, And Religious Freedom

Paul Caron
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New York Times Op-Ed:  When Gay Rights Clash With Religious Freedom, by Tish Harrison Warren (Priest, Anglican Church; Author, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (2021) (Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year)):

Warren 3TThe day the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling came down in 2015, establishing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, I called one of my dearest, oldest friends, a fellow writer, who is gay, married and lives in Oklahoma. Our conversation was over two hours long and one of the most vulnerable, loving talks we have ever had. I said to him, “Tell me every way this ruling makes your life better.”

One story he told sticks in my memory. A few months before, his husband, Brian, went to the emergency room with a serious cardiac condition. My friend told me that on the way to the hospital, amid this horrifically scary situation, one other fear whispered in the back of his mind. He was going to a Catholic hospital. What if the hospital policies didn’t permit him to be with Brian in the E.R. or the I.C.U.? This ruling, he told me, lessened that fear.

I want my friend and all people to be able to have this assurance in times of crisis, and we need laws ensuring that’s the case. My friend knows that though I respect secular same-sex marriage, I am a priest in a denomination that understands holy matrimony to be the spiritual and sexual union of a man and a woman and that I would not preside over a same-sex wedding. …

I think of that phone call often. The spirit of that conversation — a spirit of mutual love and honesty, a spirit of reaching however clumsily across differences to support one another, a spirit that doesn’t expect agreement and works for peace — is rare when it comes to national debates around religious liberty and gay rights. Yet, it is what is needed if our nation is to hold together.

[Last] week, the Supreme Court [heard] a case that will reignite a continuing conversation about what to do when long-established religious convictions clash with gay people’s civil rights. In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, a Colorado web designer, Lorie Smith, wants to create websites for clients’ weddings. She is a Christian, and because of her religious beliefs, she does not want to offer these services for same-sex weddings. However, she serves L.G.B.T.Q. customers for other design projects.

This week’s legal arguments will most likely focus primarily on questions around free speech: Can the government compel artists or designers to express messages that contradict their beliefs? In the public discourse more broadly though, this case, like the Masterpiece Cakeshop case in 2018, poses a question to us as a culture: How committed are we to true pluralism?

Pluralism is not the same as relativism — we don’t have to pretend that there is no right or wrong or that beliefs don’t matter. It is instead a commitment to form a society where individuals and groups who hold profoundly different and mutually opposed beliefs are welcome at the table of public life. It is rooted in love of neighbor and asks us to extend the same freedoms to others that we ourselves want to enjoy. Without a commitment to pluralism, we are left with a society that either forces conformity or splinters and falls apart. …

Unlike white supremacy, religious teaching regarding sex, including prohibitions on extramarital and premarital sex, pornography, lust and same-sex sexual activity have been part of the Christian faith from its earliest days. This is not an aberrant view rooted in bigotry but a sincere belief that flows from ancient texts and teaching shared by believers all over the world. …

[T]he courts alone cannot teach us to be good neighbors to one another across deep difference. That is a lesson that we must each take up. We must not demonize or seek to dominate those with whom we disagree. We must learn to live together and wade into complex social issues with mutual charity.

There really are people who want to marginalize or mock L.G.B.T.Q. people and eradicate laws protecting their marriages and civil liberties. There really are people who want to marginalize religious people, shut down their schools or nonprofits and sideline them from public life. And this week, as 303 Creative v. Elenis dominates headlines, both groups will most likely be loud in our public discourse and on social media.

Still, I think a majority of people — including many gay people and many theologically conservative religious people — want to live in a society where they and others, even those with whom they deeply disagree, can live the lives they desire and practice, proclaim and pass on what they believe. This is the promise of pluralism. It’s a promise that different communities with conflicting narratives and ideologies are allowed in society and public life. It is a promise worth keeping.

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a weekly email each Sunday with links to the faith posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.

Other New York Times op-eds by Tish Harrison Warren:

About the Author

Paul Caron Avatar
Paul Caron
Paul Caron was named Duane and Kelly Roberts Dean of Pepperdine University School of Law on June 1, 2017. Dean Caron joined the Pepperdine faculty in 2013 after serving as the Dorothy and Leonard Straus Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law in the spring semesters of 2010 through 2013. He served as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at Pepperdine in 2015-2017. Before coming to Pepperdine, he was Associate Dean of Faculty and Charles Hartsock Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.
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