What Are the Limits of ‘Religious Liberty?’

[cbayer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/magazine/what-are-the-limits-of-religious-liberty.html?_r=0

JULY 7, 2015


Illustration by Javier Jaén. Book: Sharpshot/Dreamstime.

First Words
By EMILY BAZELON

‘‘I can’t. It’s against my religion.’’ Americans tend to handle religious objections with care, personally and politically. When a guest says, for example, that he can’t eat the food being served because it’s not kosher or halal, the host usually hastens to find an alternative. And when people resist following a law on the basis of faith, the government and the courts may try to accommodate them. It’s an American legacy that dates back to before the founding, when some of the original colonies were set up as havens for religious dissenters. Under the banner of belief, Quakers and Mennonites in the 18th century won the right not to join state militias. The first conscientious objectors were religious objectors, and from there, the category expanded to include moral opponents of war. The same pattern holds for home-schoolers. It was an Amish father, not a hippie mother, who first got the Supreme Court’s permission to take his children out of school in 1972, based on his religious commitment to ‘‘life aloof from the world,’’ as the justices respectfully put it.

Making exceptions to the law for people of faith has become part of the American definition of religious tolerance, part of our ethos of live and let live. It has also helped keep the peace in a polyglot nation. In France, it’s illegal for a Muslim woman to wear a head scarf at a public school. In the United States, it’s illegal for a clothing store to refuse to hire a Muslim woman because she wore a head scarf to her job interview. When the Supreme Court issued that ruling last month, eight of nine justices agreed that Samantha Elauf, who lost out on a job at Abercrombie Kids because of a companywide policy banning head coverings, was asking for ‘‘favored treatment’’ — to which she was entitled by federal employment law. ‘‘This is really easy,’’ Justice Antonin Scalia said, announcing the decision from the bench.

And yet we’ve arrived at an unfortunate impasse over the meaning of religious liberty. Unlike in earlier eras, when religious objections let the faithful separate themselves from institutions they felt they could not support, many conservatives now deploy the phrase as a way of excluding other people. Take the furious outcry that erupted in response to the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision to make same-sex marriage legal in every state. Conservative pushback began with the dissenting justices: Clarence Thomas warned of ‘‘potentially ruinous consequences for religious liberty.’’ Some Republican officeholders rushed to throw up whatever shield they could for people of faith. Two states have declared that county clerks may refrain from issuing marriage licenses if they don’t want to give them to gay couples as a matter of conscience. Bakers, photographers and florists — and adoption agencies and landlords — who cite their religion when refusing to serve gay couples won assurances like this one from Greg Abbott, governor of Texas: ‘‘No Texan is required by the Supreme Court’s decision to act contrary to his or her religious beliefs regarding marriage.’’

The same-sex-marriage resisters hope to capitalize on a recent expansion of religious liberties, in another big case about modern-day sexual norms. In a divisive 5-to-4 ruling last year, the Supreme Court extended to a company, and not just to individuals, the right to mount a religious objection to a law. The craft-store chain Hobby Lobby, which is owned by evangelicals, refused to pay for certain forms of birth control for its female employees, as the Affordable Care Act requires. The owners argued that providing health insurance that covered emergency contraception and IUDs offended their evangelical beliefs, saying these methods induce abortions (by taking effect after fertilization). Hobby Lobby had little scientific support for that assertion. By contrast, in defending the contraception mandate, the Obama administration could cite the consensus medical view that providing a variety of birth-control methods benefits women’s health. Nonetheless, the court sided with Hobby Lobby and its sense of conscience.

more at link

[DetlefK]

1. Your (religious) beliefs end where my (religious) beliefs begin.

Why would the beliefs a stranger has on a person be given a higher priority than the beliefs the person itself has on itself?

What gives this stranger the right to expand his influence in a way that compromises my influence? I am my own sovereign until I decide to lend this sovereignty to a ruler.

Accommodating somebody else's beliefs is purely a courtesy, from one person to the other. It is no inherent right.

There were a shit-ton of religions in ancient times and people tolerated each other. Not because they liked each other. Simply because it made life easier and avoided unnecessary hostilities. People didn't go to war for religion back then. They went to war for political reasons.

[PeoViejo]

2. Ramen

[cbayer]

3. The US 1st amendment takes freedom of religion far beyond a courtesy.

It is, in fact, an inherent right.

If I recall correctly, you are not from the US. Is that right?

How does your country deal with the issue of freedom of religion?

Religion and other tribal issues have always been the source of conflict and hostilities. It is not always easy to tease out politics from religion.

[trotsky]

4. But freedom of religion does not extend to forcing others to abide by your beliefs.

Please don't attack people for something they didn't say.

[DetlefK]

7. The 1st Amendment just means that the state has to stay out of religion.

It does not regulate what religion can or can not do.


From wikipedia:
" it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere only when religious principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order."

That means, religion only becomes a concern for the government when it behaves badly on a social, public level. A private level is not mentioned here.



The 1st Amendment gives YOU the right to exercise YOUR religion in matters that concern YOU without interference by the government.
It does not give ME the right to exercise MY religion in matters that concern YOU. (I must behead infidels, my religion says so. If you refuse to be beheaded, you are getting in the way of ME exercising MY religion.)



I'm from Germany.
- Germany has christian holidays as national holidays.
- Germany has religion-classes in school for Catholics, Protestants and "Other" (where all the other religions are lumped together to talk about ethics in general).
- Germany has a church-tax that is automatically taken from your salary. (You must pick a denomination or you can opt out from this tax.) The money from the church-tax is then distributed to national representative organizations of Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam andsoforth who then further distribute it in their clerical structures.
- Apart from the holidays and festivities, religion is kept strictly out of all things politics, law or business, where a neutral stance is enforced. Religion is a private thing in Germany, something for you, your family and your community, but not beyond that. I have never-ever heard of a case where a german politician mentioned religion as the reason why something should be done. Voters also don't give a fuck about the religious beliefs of politicians.
(Obama gave an interview to pastor Rick Warren ahead of the 2008 election. That would be absolutely un-fucking-thinkable in Germany.)

[Angry Dragon]

5. Back in ancient times religion and politics were the same

My position is that if you want to run a business then you serve everyone
If you want a government job then you serve everyone
If you can not do that that then you do not run a business nor take a government job


What you do in your private time that is up to you

[AtheistCrusader]

6. Precisely no more respected or respectable than any other opinion one might hold.