No doubt about it: Someone will have to negotiate a ceasefire someday between the sexual revolution and traditional religious believers, said Justice Anthony Kennedy, just before he left the U.S. Supreme Court. America now recognizes that “gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth,” he wrote in the 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission decision. “The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of their civil rights. At the same time, the religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression.” Kennedy then punted, adding: “The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts.” The high court addressed one set of those circumstances recently in its 6-3 ruling that employers who fire lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender workers violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Once again, the court said religious liberty questions will have to wait. Thus, the First Amendment’s declaration that government “shall make no law … prohibiting […]
News from around the world. Curated by Mark McDowell. Posts do not constitute agreement or endorsement.