The Politics of Accommodation: The American Experience with Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Freedom

This chapter offers a pathway toward compromise for opponents and supporters of same-sex marriage in the United States. Both sides, it argues, have reason to cooperate. On one hand, after Obergefell established a constitutional right to marriage for same-sex couples, religious liberty projections are needed more than ever: religious objectors to same-sex marriage are increasingly forced to choose between their livelihood and their conscience. On the other hand, despite a string of recent legal victories coupled with increasing public support for same-sex marriage, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in most states still lacks protections against discrimination in housing, hiring, and public accommodations. Unpalatable though it may be to both sides, the chapter urges it would be prudent of both same-sex marriage supporters and opponents to compromise by exchanging religious liberty protections for bans against LGBT discrimination.