From Volume 88, Number 3 (March 2015)
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In 2006, an Albuquerque photographer declined to photograph a same-sex wedding, citing religious objections. The couple sued her for discrimination and won. Cases like this one present a conflict between gay rights and religious liberty. Religious conservatives feel that it would be sinful for them to personally facilitate same-sex marriages, and they have sought to amend the laws to accommodate their objections. These efforts have met fierce resistance. In Arizona, the only state where a legislature has passed a religious accommodation law, the governor vetoed it in response to enormous national public pressure.
The resistance is largely unnecessary. Gay rights advocates have misconceived the tort of discrimination as a particularized injury to the person, rather than the artifact of social engineering that it really is. Religious conservatives likewise have failed to grasp the purposes of antidiscrimination law, and so have demanded accommodations that would be massively overbroad.
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