Cognitive Dissonance, Same-Sex Marriage, and Religious Exemptions

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It is a huge change--the overturn of thousands of years of religious teaching about reality--when a state decides that henceforth "marriage" means not that a man and woman have pledged to start a new family together but that any two people have decided they want their love relationship validated by government.  And many of the proponents of the change are insistent that the state must not in any way support the former meaning--claiming that such support violates the Constitution by giving official support to a religious definition and by propping up a discriminatory view of marriage and sexual conduct.  

Given all of this, isn't the very idea of protecting religious exercise when marriage is redefined mere foolishness?  Sure, it might be a fine dream to write into the law that it shall not be illegal discrimination for a pavilion owned by a church not to rent the space out for same-sex marriages; that a faith-based adoption agency can continue to recruit only families and individuals committed to marriage as that religion has always understood it; that a religious college can reserve its married student housing to opposite-sex couples; and that a religious charity or hospital can maintain its policy of offering spousal benefits only to couples it believes are actually married.  But how can such exemptions withstand the state's redefinition of marriage?

George Weigel puts the problem in strong terms: 

"Before the ink was dry on Gov. Andrew Cuomo's signature on New York's new marriage law, the New York Times published an editorial decrying the 'religious exemptions' that had been written into the marriage law at the last moment. Those exemptions do, in fact, undercut the logic of the entire redefinition of marriage in the New York law - can you imagine any other 'exemption for bigotry' being granted, in any other case of what the law declares to be a fundamental right?

"Either the recently enacted New York marriage law is nonsense, or its religious opponents are bigots whose prejudices should not be given the protection of law. . . . [I]t's a matter of cognitive dissonance to try to have it both ways. In any event, pressures like that of the Times and its activist allies will continue, for the logic of their position requires them to try and strip away religious and other exemptions from recognizing 'gay marriage.'" 

Robert George and Matthew Franck have said the same.  Prof. George:  "If you ask, 'What can be done going forward around the country to protect religious liberty?' the answer is this:  Win the fight to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.  Period."  More briefly, Franck says, "Real marriage, and real religious freedom.  Or neither.  That's our choice."

So is there no point in legislators fighting for religious exemptions when a majority of their fellow lawmakers are determined to throw out the historic view of marriage and bring in the new?  Is there nothing courts or legislators can do to keep open the doors of religious service agencies that insist on maintaining historic standards of sexual conduct?  Is it actually impossible that faith-based schools and colleges can be protected so that they can continue to teach--and model--the historic view of marriage?

Yet, in fact, our society often does protect convictions and conduct that lawmakers have decided violates society's rightful norms.  The US Supreme Court has decided that unborn children most of the time are not actually children (beings who must be protected)--and yet federal laws say that nurses and doctors who have the opposite conviction cannot be required to treat those unborn children as if they were only bits of flesh to be aborted on demand.  Citizens must come to the aid of their country, laying down their lives in military service if called to do so--except that our nation has always protected people who because of their conscience refuse to serve in the military. 

It may be cognitive dissonance for a state government to make same-sex marriage legal and yet also adopt robust religious exemptions.  But that doesn't make religious exemptions and real, if imperfect, religious freedom impossible--it just means that citizens, organizations, legislators, courts, and government officials must be ever vigilant.  But vigilance is ever the price of limiting government and upholding the Bill of Rights. 

If a state never adopts same-sex marriage, then marriage redefinition can't cause religious-freedom problems in that state (except for same-sex married couples who move in from elsewhere).  True enough.  But that's no answer for the practical problem:  how can religious freedom be protected when a state does choose to redefine marriage? 

Although it is undoubtedly hard to get robust religious exemptions and will be a fight to keep them, cognitive dissonance is exactly why the fight is worthwhile.  That's because good religious exemptions protect a space of freedom for people and organizations who deeply disagree with the turn their state has taken--protected space to believe, teach, and live what they know to be the reality, even if the government has decided otherwise.

Cognitive dissonance is exactly why religious exemptions are vital.

Note:  That religious exemptions, if robust, can actually protect religious freedom is no reason for legislators to embrace marriage redefinition.  Rather it is a reason why legislators who already embrace marriage redefinition must enact robust religious exemptions, for they have a duty to protect religious exercise.