Conservative faith leaders have made religious liberty a rallying cry as gay marriage has spread throughout the states. And though stunned by Indiana’s retreat this week from a religious freedom law after an uproar over same-sex marriage, they are vowing not to give up.
Evangelical and Roman Catholic leaders say they will continue their push for conscience protections from laws they consider immoral — a drive that gained momentum several years ago when they saw eroding public support for their beliefs on marriage, abortion and other issues.
Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, who leads the religious liberty committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the bishops’ goals have not changed following the uproar in Indiana and to a lesser degree Arkansas.
“Individual or family-owned businesses as well as religious institutions should have the freedom to serve others consistent with their faith,” Lori said in a statement.
Similarly, the Rev. Russell Moore, who leads the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, said, “We have to continue to press for religious liberty for everybody regardless of how unpopular that concept might be.”
Still, Tim Schultz, president of the 1st Amendment Partnership, which works with religious groups and state lawmakers on religious liberty, said after this week’s controversy over religious freedom, “the brand has definitely been tarnished.”
The governors of Indiana and Arkansas signed bills Thursday hoping to quiet the national outcry over the perception that their laws offered a legal defense for discrimination against gays.
Religious liberty was once an issue that consistently united groups across the political and theological spectrum. But religious conservatives came to adopt religious freedom as a call to arms, as they found themselves more and more on the losing side of the culture wars.
The movement had its greatest victory to date last year, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain and other closely held businesses with religious objections could opt out of providing the contraceptive coverage required by the Affordable Care Act.
But that win prompted a liberal backlash, and public opinion against religious exemptions hardened, especially when it came to legalizing gay marriage.
Conflicts over protections for religious objectors had been a part of every statehouse debate over legalizing gay marriage. In New York, same-sex marriage became law in 2011 only after Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state’s top two legislators struck an 11th-hour compromise on protections for religious objectors.
But when gay marriage increasingly became recognized by courts instead of legislatures, religious conservatives needed another means to seek conscience protections. Lawmakers in several states turned to the laws known as Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, which states had been adopting one-by-one since 1997, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal version of the law did not apply to states.
But many church-state experts say the laws have been badly misrepresented amid this week’s turmoil. Legal scholars say the law would not provide blanket protection for religious objectors to gay marriage, as some advocates claimed. Religious Freedom Restoration Acts give people a chance to bring a religious liberty claim before a judge, who then decides on the merits.
“Those folks who wanted to clutch onto these laws as a way to hold onto the past or stave off gay rights misunderstood what these laws would do,” said Robin Fretwell Wilson, a family law specialist at the University of Illinois Law School.
Wilson advised legislators in Utah and elsewhere on a compromise enacted last month that combined religious exemptions with civil rights protections for gays.
“That’s the way forward,” she said.
But many religious conservatives and gay rights advocates rejected that approach, each saying it gave too much away to the other side — which means more clashes like the ones in Indiana and Arkansas are ahead.
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