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 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 this week in its 6-3 ruling that employers who fire LGBT 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 the free exercise of religion" remains one of […]
