Religious Freedom and Sexual Identity: A Proposal for Peace
Is there a peaceful solution to the present conflict between sexual identity rights claims and religious liberty? The cultural orthodoxy of sexual identity appears to allow no refuge for dissenters....
View ArticleNo Room for Sanity at the Inn: Stifling Democratic Debate over Same-Sex Marriage
When I was a junior in college and looking for a summer job to defray the next year's tuition, I answered an ambiguous ad in a newspaper and found myself selling high-quality pots and pans, china, and...
View ArticleLiberty and SOGI Laws: An Impossible and Unsustainable "Compromise"
Indiana’s proposed sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) laws, SB 100 and SB 344, would make bad policy. The preamble of each states that it seeks a “balancing of differing religious values and...
View ArticleFreedom of Conscience and New "LGBT Rights" in International Human Rights Law
In the realm of international human rights law, major conflicts are developing today between freedom of conscience and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) policies. In these conflicts, much...
View ArticleMoral Complicity at Court: Who Decides?
“When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood,’ he said. ‘It is...
View ArticleThe Evolving HHS Mandate: A Play in Three Acts (So Far)
Act One: Charity: So, now that HHS has had time to implement the Affordable Care Act, what’s in this new “preventive care” mandate they’re laying on us? Agent: Well, the Department says the insurance...
View ArticleCongress Should Protect Conscience Rights for Medical Students Like Me
I entered the MD/PhD Program at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine in the fall of 2011. I am deeply committed to the sanctity of every human life, and I knew going into Dartmouth that many of my...
View ArticleReligious Liberty Crisis Averted in California
Over the years, California has often presented itself as a thriving example of pluralism and openness. It has promoted a “live and let live” ethos that didn’t please everyone but did allow a diversity...
View ArticleUnconscionable: Threats to Religious Freedom and Rights of Conscience in the...
While preparing for what she thought was a routine procedure for a patient following a miscarriage in 2009, nurse Cathy DeCarlo learned that the procedure was actually going to be performed on a living...
View ArticleHow to Think About Discrimination: Race, Sex, and SOGI
In a new report for the Heritage Foundation, “How to Think About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Policies and Religious Freedom,” I argue that current proposals to create new LGBT...
View ArticleAutonomy, Assisted Suicide, and Neil Gorsuch
On February 18, Washington, DC, became the sixth jurisdiction in the United States to permit physician-assisted suicide. Congress failed to intervene in time to prevent the DC Council’s bill from...
View ArticlePhysicians Without Chests: On the Call to End Conscientious Objection in...
In a recent “Sounding Board” article for the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, Drs. Ronit Y. Stahl and Ezekiel J. Emanuel call for the elimination of medical providers’ conscience objection...
View ArticleCakes and Consciences: The Case of Jack Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop
After getting married, my lovely wife and I independently sifted through the many photographs of our wedding and, without saying anything to each other, settled on the same one as our favorite shot:...
View ArticleParental and Governmental Authority in Medical Decisions: The Tragic Case of...
Much ink has been spilled debating whether or not further experimental treatment would be in the best interests of Charlie Gard. That debate is important and worthwhile. But it is not, in fact, the...
View ArticleSeattle Coffee Shop Illustrates Bedlam Surrounding First Amendment
On Sunday, October 1, the owner of a coffee shop in Seattle confronted a group of customers, cursed at them, and forced them to leave the premises. That’s the PG version; the specific details are...
View ArticleWhat Masterpiece Cakeshop is Really About
Let’s face it: most of us are happy when others agree with and approve of us. We prefer not to be confronted with sharp disagreement or disapproval. Disagreement can be unsettling, and disapproval can...
View ArticleWhy the Government Shouldn’t Force Bakers—Or Anyone—to Express Support for...
The back-and-forth I described in yesterday’s article has become familiar, even tedious. Christian merchants—bakers, florists, wedding photographers—insist that they are not “anti-gay,” and that they...
View ArticleThe Impoverishment of Law and the Loss of Ordered Liberty
In yesterday’s essay, I began a review of Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination by examining the implications of the authors’ debate for ordered liberty. Today I will examine the implications...
View ArticleAmerican Muslims, Lot’s Wife, and the Christian Baker
The Quran tells us that when God sent the Prophet Lot to the city of Sodom to call its people to righteousness and the worship of God alone, what he saw baffled him. “Do you commit lewdness such as no...
View ArticleMaking the Case for Complicity-Based Religious Liberty Accommodations
In recent years, religious claimants in high-profile religious liberty cases have argued that government policy improperly forces them to become complicit in the moral wrongdoing of others. Hobby Lobby...
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