Religious Liberty–or death (Common Sense #2).

You’re free to your own opinions–BUT NOT TO YOUR OWN [choose one]:
~~~facts;
~~~actions;
~~~constitution;
~~~tyranny;
~~~state.

or

~~~forts & armadillos;
~~~armed forces & art museums;
~~~commandos & conscience courts;
~~~tanks & torpedoes;
~~~state security & surveillance agencies;

When some say, “People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts,” others say, “Well, that’s your opinion. I don’t agree.” Which is telling it the way it is? As every freshman learns at Hogwash Academy, in the real world (i.e., the classroom), it depends.

Your right to sacrifice virgins stops where my purely beating heart begins, for example. Your right to burn, rape & pillage on behalf of Cosmosis the Almighty, Destroyer of Worlds, stops where such actions are in violation of civil & criminal codes, local municipal ordinances, and non-sectarian moral commandments. Along these same lines, your right to believe whatever you want (& practice accordingly) ends where my right to believe whatever I want (& practice accordingly) begins.

We are more likely to give way on freedom of beliefs, so long as those who believe differently in some respects at least keep their mouths shut & practices secret. Otherwise, it’s “Stranger, stay out of my face.” Speech itself is a form of action, although less so where all talk, no walk. Practice is where the rubber meets the road, however, and all but the extreme Satanists recognize some limits to complete freedom, particularly where other people’s rights & lives are involved.

These limits simply recognize that a person’s rights do not include the right to infringe, violate or take away the rights of others–except, of course, for a good, sound & compelling reason, e.g., protection of others. A reason might be good, but not compelling. A compelling reason is not the same as an obsessive-compulsive one whispered in one’s ear by the Lord of Delusion or one’s invisible puppet master. Prohibition might seem like a good idea with rowdy drunks around, and even compelling out on the highway. It may not be sufficiently sound, however, as historical experience has rather soundly established.

When a particular means causes more serious problems than it solves, its soundness may be questioned, in other words. That’s certainly the case with those who would establish their religious views on others, especially as part of public policy & embedded in the legal system at large. The cost of having one’s own religious freedom is recognizing that others have the same. It doesn’t take much attention to recognize the simple fact that many others have quite different views from one’s own. However ignorant that may seem to make them, this is simply the reality. Recognize it.

Nor does it take much awareness to notice how commonly people kill each other (often in large numbers) over which set of beliefs shall be not just dominant, but exclusive, &, even more commonly over which faction of interpreters shall have sole authority & power of enforcement over any given geography & its population. Tribalism, nationalism,  imperialism & colonialism can all feed into the same sinkhole, where the only way to protect oneself & one’s own is to fight against all others.

One way out of this morass is to redefine the public space as separate from the private, leaving room in the private realm for people to believe & practice without interference–to them by others, or by them to others–within the limits that are defined by a consensus of reason, the non-sectarian commandments by which a successful community operates.

A pluralistic society removes the need to dominate others to preserve one’s own freedom. One need only respect the freedom others also have. That’s the cost, and, presto, like magic, a huge area of potential conflict is eliminated, eliminating incalculable social & community costs in the process, while further empowering the community at large by the range of people cooperating in those areas properly in the public square–trade, business,  economy, administration, highway engineering, military, even government service itself.

It really doesn’t matter what your religious views are for most of one’s public work, what your church & scripture say, or even your political party, so long as you can do your job. That applies to the person making a road, a county clerk, a private enterprise employee, or even spiritual leader. Whatever it is, your job is not to impose your views on others, but to perform your tasks, as defined within the law & conscience.

In the case of a conflict between these last two, if conscience prevents someone from performing in accordance with the job description as legally defined, that person should  presumably resign. There’s nothing dishonorable in that, whereas it is dishonorable for a public servant to refuse refuse to serve members of the public who hold different views, and to serve them equally, which is presumably the basis for the Supreme Court’s recent decision regarding same-gender unions.

It simply doesn’t matter what anyone’s views on the sacrament of marriage is, means, or should represent. By recognizing something as sacramental, we explicitly represent it as having religious significance–therefore, not the business of the state to determine among competing views. The partnership of marriage may have deep sacramental meaning, but equally deep meaning to agnostics, or pagans, or followers of other traditions. That’s not the marriage that the state license!

The term marriage has widely accepted & used secular meaning as well, however, and serves many functions in the legal system, as well as in the management of families, property, etc. This is the marriage–& the only marriage–that the state has an entirely legitimate stake in regal;eating, licensing, recording. What you do in or out of churchy, like what partners do (or don’t do) in & out of bedrooms, is not a county clerk’s business.

It’s a strange confusion to think otherwise, brought on perhaps by an inability to distinguish the multiple levels of meaning a word like “marriage” can have, both religious & secular seemingly wrapped up together. That was why some felt a distinction should be made, using “marriage” for the sacramental & “civil union” for the secular, but that solution didn’t fly. Some though it smacked of a second class marriage, but the real reason was that the single word already had the wide spectrum in deeply & widely established usage. Fighting usage can be harder than fighting city hall.

The genius of a system like ours is that it preserves the freedom to mean “different things to different people,” without having to fight over it. How? By leaving what’s private (e.g., sex & religion) to the people involved. I don’t need to know whether your partnership is celibate or erotic, for example, let alone what your religion says about marriage. The public space marriage isn’t about such things at all.

In fact, it’s specifically NOT about such things. As soon as religious convictions are expressed, for example, you’re talking about something else! The fact that it is something else doesn’t make it less important. (The same may be said about sexuality, or lack thereof.) It’s not what the state licenses, although the confusion may be encouraged by the fact that states recognize for civil purposes the marriages affirmed by religious practitioners & organizations, though they do so equally under the law.

 It is striking, on must admit, how few people seem to grasp the difference between the private sphere & the public, let alone the fundamental reason for the separation church & state, protecting the religious of all persuasions equally, as well as everyone else. Nor is the confusion always to assume that the law should reflect what your church says. There’s more on the other side, too, where a person’s religious rights may be violated for being unwilling to participate in a private ceremony. No one would force a clergy person to officiate at a sacrament that person considered heretical. Why would you force a photographer to photograph it?

The Colorado cake-maker who didn’t want to make a cake for a same-gender gay couple’s event cuts a thin slice of the issue. Courts ruled, I think, that being in a public business, he could not discriminate against clients–whether on religious or gender grounds. And certainly that should be the standard for customers buying displayed items. It’s an entirely different matter where custom made work may (or may not) be contracted for an event or occasion.

A cake-maker (like the photographer) ought to have some considerable range of freedom in accepting a custom contract with any customer, for a wide range of reasons–price; time; other commitments; aesthetic, ethical or religious sensibilities. In this case, there may be no single line separating off-the-shelf from custom contract. If it’s a matter of adding names & a toy couple as standard fare, he should deliver equally. If it’s entering the spirit of a bonding ceremony he can’t in good conscience do, hey, there are plenty of other cake-merchants without trying to make a federal case of it, as if to rub the poor fellow’s face in it, then that’s an abuse of the state.