Religious Freedom and Gay Rights

Emerging Conflicts in the United States and Europe

Edited by Timothy Shah, Thomas Farr, and Jack Friedman

Analyzes a current issue that is highly visible, controversial, and rapidly evolving
Brings diverse international perspectives to the examination of tensions between religious freedom and gay rights
Forecasts how an expanding rights for LGBT individuals will affect religious freedom in the coming years

Religious Freedom and Gay Rights

Emerging Conflicts in the United States and Europe

Edited by Timothy Shah, Thomas Farr, and Jack Friedman

Description

In the United States and Europe, an increasing emphasis on equality has pitted rights claims against each other, raising profound philosophical, moral, legal, and political questions about the meaning and reach of religious liberty. Nowhere has this conflict been more salient than in the debate between claims of religious freedom, on one hand, and equal rights claims made on the behalf of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, on the other. As new rights for LGBT individuals have expanded in liberal democracies across the West, longstanding rights of religious freedom — such as the rights of religious communities to adhere to their fundamental teachings, including protecting the rights of conscience; the rights of parents to impart their religious beliefs to their children; and the liberty to advance religiously-based moral arguments as a rationale for laws — have suffered a corresponding decline. Timothy Samuel Shah, Thomas F. Farr, and Jack Friedman's volume, Religious Freedom and Gay Rights brings together some of the world's leading thinkers on religion, morality, politics, and law to analyze the emerging tensions between religious freedom and gay rights in three key geographic regions: the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe. What implications will expanding regimes of equality rights for LGBT individuals have on religious freedom in these regions? What are the legal and moral frameworks that govern tensions between gay rights and religious freedom? How are these tensions illustrated in particular legal, political, and policy controversies? And what is the proper way to balance new claims of equality against existing claims for freedom of religious groups and individuals? Religious Freedom and Gay Rights offers several explorations of these questions.

Religious Freedom and Gay Rights

Emerging Conflicts in the United States and Europe

Edited by Timothy Shah, Thomas Farr, and Jack Friedman

Table of Contents
Introduction
Matthew Franck
I. The United Kingdom
1. Equality and Religious Liberty:
Oppressing Conscientious Diversity in England
John Finnis
2. Gay Rights Versus Religious Rights
Stephen Law
3. At the Door of the Temple:
Religious Freedom and the New Orthodoxy
Archbishop Tartaglia
II. The United States
4. Wrongful Discrimination? Religious Freedom, Pluralism, and Equality
Richard W. Garnett
5. Civil Marriage for Same-Sex Couples, "Moral Disapproval"
and Tensions Between Religious Liberty and Equality
Linda C. McClain
6. The Politics of Accommodation: The American
Experience with Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Freedom
Robin Fretwell Wilson
7. Die and Let Live? The Asymmetry of Accommodation
Steven D. Smith
III. Continental Europe
8. Tensions Between Claims for Homosexual Equality
and Religious Freedom: Moral and Conceptual Frameworks
Rocco Buttiglione
9. Same-Sex Partnership and Religious Exemptions in
Italy: Constitutional Textualism vs. European Consensus
Andrea Pin
10. A Scandinavian Perspective on Homosexuality,
Equal Rights, and Freedom of Religion
Maarit Jänterä-Jareborg
Afterword
Roger Trigg

Religious Freedom and Gay Rights

Emerging Conflicts in the United States and Europe

Edited by Timothy Shah, Thomas Farr, and Jack Friedman

Author Information

Edited by Timothy Shah, Associate Director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University, Edited by Thomas Farr, Visiting Associate Professor of Religion and International Affairs, Georgetown University, and Edited by Jack Friedman, Research Assistant at the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University

TS: Associate Director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University; Visiting Assistant Professor of Government, Georgetown University; co-author of God's Century (Norton, 2011)TF: Visiting Associate Professor of Religion and International Affairs at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University JF: Research assistant at the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs

Contributors:

Rocco Buttiglione, Professor of Political Science at Saint Pius V University (Rome)
John Finnis, Biolchini Family Professor of Law at Notre Dame University and Professor
of Law and Legal Philosophy at Oxford University
Matthew J. Franck, Director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion
and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute
Richard W. Garnett, Professor of Law and Concurrent Professor of Political Science at
the University of Notre Dame Law School
Maarit Jänterä-Jareborg, Professor of Law at Uppsala University (Sweden)
Stephen Law, philosopher and Senior Lecturer at Heythrop College, University of
London
Linda McClain, Paul M. Siskind Research Scholar and Professor of Law at Boston
University School of Law
Andre Pin, Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Padova (Italy)
Steven D. Smith, Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego
School of Law
Philip Tartaglia, Archbishop of Glasgow
Roger Trigg, Senior Research Fellow at the Ian Ramsey Center, University of Oxford
Robin Fretwell Wilson, Professor of Law and Law Alumni Faculty Fellow at
Washington and Lee University School of Law