Opinion | When Gay Rights Clash With Religious Freedom – The New York Times

I’ll lift one more analogy from my own life. Though an admittedly imperfect comparison, let’s take women’s ordination. I am a woman and a priest, and both of these identities are a key part of who I am. I came to believe in women’s ordination after years of study and wrestling with church teaching, but I acknowledge that, to say the least, supporting women’s ordination is a minority position in the history of Christianity.

I know people who oppose women’s ordination out of misogyny. Yet, I also know people who care about women, who are kind, who have been generous to me, but because of their interpretation of scripture — because of their sincerely held religious views — do not support women’s ordination. I have friends who would not recommend me for ordination or come to my ordination ceremony.

I disagree with them, yet I would not want to use the power of the state to force a website designer or an event planner to provide services for my ordination ceremony. I do not think that, say, a conservative Catholic silversmith should be forced to sell me a chalice to celebrate the Eucharist or a conservative Baptist baker forced to make a cake for my ordination reception. Yet, if that same silversmith refused to sell me earrings or the baker refused to sell me a muffin on a Tuesday afternoon, that would be a violation of rights. There is daylight between my protected class as a woman and a ceremony celebrating women’s ordination.

We therefore can — and must — ensure that all people have general access to goods and services, regardless of their identity, while also ensuring that people are not forced to participate in a service sacralizing that which they do not find sacred. I don’t have to agree that women’s ordination is wrong to believe that people should not be compelled to participate in it.

We need the law to act as a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. Gay people must be protected from discrimination in secular employment, housing and health care. We need to ensure that gay people can continue to be legally married and live according to their deepest values. We also need to ensure that religious people are not compelled to participate in an event or voice approval of a marriage they object to and that they can form churches, schools and other ministries in line with their beliefs. Churches ought not look to the government to enforce their views of morality. At the same time, those who celebrate same-sex marriages must leave room for people who have a different vision of sexuality to work and live according to their beliefs.

Though what the courts decide on these issues is important, the courts alone cannot teach us to be good neighbors to one another across deep difference. That is a lesson that we must each take up. We must not demonize or seek to dominate those with whom we disagree. We must learn to live together and wade into complex social issues with mutual charity.

There really are people who want to marginalize or mock L.G.B.T.Q. people and eradicate laws protecting their marriages and civil liberties. There really are people who want to marginalize religious people, shut down their schools or nonprofits and sideline them from public life. And this week, as 303 Creative v. Elenis dominates headlines, both groups will most likely be loud in our public discourse and on social media.