ARTICLES 04/12/2009
 

LOS ANGELES PUBLIC INTEREST LAW JOURNAL

1 L.A. PUB. INT. L.J. 124

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GAY EQUALITY, RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT*
Matthew J. Murray

          Are gay rights laws and religious liberty fundamentally in conflict? Opponents of such laws vocally argue as much. Gay rights advocates contest such claims, but have had difficulty figuring out how best to respond. Given the highly politically charged and fast-changing nature of legal protections of gay people, a principled approach to addressing perceived and real clashes between gay equality and religious liberty is necessary.

         The claim that civil equality for gay people will impinge on the religious freedom of others has most frequently and vocally been made in the context of debates about same-sex marriage. Religion freedom. The arena in which society must make real trade-offs between the values of religious liberty and gay equality is in the application of sexual orientation nondiscrimination laws.

* For full article, please download the PDF.

 


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    J.D. Candidate, Harvard Law School, 2009; M.P.P. Candidate, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, 2009. I would like to thank Martha Minow for providing wonderful ongoing guidance, support, and helpful comments. Thanks also to Gary Buseck and Mary Bonauto for helpful comments on earlier drafts and to the editors at the Los Angeles Public Interest Law Journal for their constructive editorial guidance. Finally, thanks to William Rubenstein, Martha Nussbaum, Catherine MacKinnon, Richard D. Parker, Richard Parker, and Michael Klarman for their general encouragement and engaging instruction, which helped provide me the basic groundwork on which to develop my approach to the issues raised in this article.