On the Respect for Marriage Act

Congress has passed the  Respect for Marriage Act, and it will become law upon President Biden’s expected signature. In Bill protecting same-sex, interracial unions clears Congress

Mary Clare Jalonick reported for The Associated Press,

The legislation would not require states to allow same-sex couples to marry, as Obergefell now does. But it would require states to recognize all marriages that were legal where they were performed and protect current same-sex unions if the Supreme Court decision were overturned.

This is a preemptive act, in case the same-sex marriage right recognized in Obergefell v. Hodges is overturned. As I wrote on Facebook, This is a very good bill, in my view consistent with Federalism and the 14th Amendment. 

The 14th Amendment states that 

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. [my emphasis]

Note that U.S. citizenry supersedes state citizenry, in terms of “privileges or immunities,” i.e. individual rights. This Amendment, one of the so-called “Civil War Amendments,” was a monumental advance for individual rights. The U.S. Constitution now made explicit what was implicit from the Founding—that no longer can any state violate the Federally guaranteed rights of any American, by, say, enslaving them, denying them the right to vote, or violating any other inalienable individual right. 

Of course, the Respect for Marriage Act is wholly unnecessary as long as Obergefell v. Hodges, the pro-14th Amendment SCOTUS ruling that nullified state laws banning same-sex marriage, is not overturned. But it is not at all certain that the SCOTUS will not overturn Obergefell given the horrendous anti-Constitutional reasoning behind the shockingly reactionary Dobbs ruling, which ignored the Ninth Amendment and 14th Amendments and violated the Constitution’s philosophic conscience, the Declaration of Independence, to overturn Roe v. Wade.

* [Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law on December 13, 2022, USA Today reported.]

Related Reading:

Gay Marriage and Individual Rights

ObamaCare and Gay Marriage Rulings: One Loss and One Win for the Right

In SCOTUS’ Draft Opinion Overturning Roe Abortion Ruling: Double Standards of Left and Right Exposed

Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty by Randy E. Barnett  

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty by Timothy Sandefur

Get Married, Have Babies . . . to Support Social Security?

Bob Hugin, the 2018 Republican candidate for U.S. senator from New Jersey, was the subject of a 6/28/18 N.J. Star-Ledger letter titled Hugin turns his back on GOP values. Observing that Hugin “proclaims himself to be pro-choice and pro-marriage equality,” the writer labels Hugin “a Democrat masquerading as a Republican.”  

No surprise. My focus is on the writer’s reasoning, which is not the usual religious objection to legalized abortion and gay marriage. The letter says:

Right now, America is in trouble because of an aging population. In terms of retirement, Social Security, Medicare, etc., there are not enough young people to sustain these important programs. The workforce also needs  more young people. The birth rate is low and the only thing growing our population is immigration. Yet we have a man running for Senate who wants to promote “choice” (abortion), thus killing off more of the next generation. Marriage equality is barren by its very nature and does not produce children, yet Hugin endorsers it. [sic]

Get that? Abortion and gay marriage should be outlawed because the elderly need ghe children to support them. What about the women and gay individuals whose freedom to pursue their individual happiness will be crushed? 

The evil of collectivism is laid bare here. To a collectivist, individual lives mean nothing. Instead of the mystical “abortion and gay marriage violates God’s law,” we are told that the collective needs supersede the individual rights of the young. 

The age problem is, of course, a problem created by the welfare state. Young people must be enslaved to the needs of the elderly, because the money paid in to Social Security and Medicare was not saved and invested but spent by Congress. Even if it were, these programs would still be immoral, albeit less bad than the current pay-as-you-go schemes.

The real horror is that the letter promotes slavery. But young people and gays are not slaves of “the workforce” or of the recipients of Social Security or Medicare. Women’s bodies do not belong to any other entity other than themselves as individuals. A gay person’s decision to marry is no one’s business, regardless of how “barren” anyone else claims marrage equality to be.

Collectivism is one of mankind’s darkest evils. This letter is an example of that truth.

Related Reading:

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

The Collectivist Rationalization for Keeping Overtaxed New Jerseyans from Leaving the State

It’s Me-First, or Slavery. Take Your Pick

Why Marriage Lincensure?

The Kim Davis episode, in which Davis refused to perform her job as county clerk in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, raises a fundamental question: Why does marriage licensure exist? In comments below a New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial titled Kim Davis, certified bigot, gets her 15 minutes, I said, quoting the Star-Ledger:

“It would be better if her release would redirect the discussion onto the rule of law.”

Agreed.

And this whole episode begs the question: Why should marriage require a government license at all? I could think of no reason why consenting adults should require government permission to marry, especially considering the racial and eugenics roots of the institution of marriage licensure.

Marriage has many personal meanings, both religious and secular, to different people. But from a legal perspective, it’s a contract. The government’s job is to enforce the terms of contracts and mediate contractual disputes, so long as the terms of contract do not involve the violation of the rights of others (like a mob hit contract). There is no more reason to require a government license for marriage as to require a license to contract with a home remodeler.

Alabama has made a move to end marriage licensure. It’s time to end it across the country. Short of that, the basic issue is not freedom of religion or conscience. It is the proper role of government. As long as the government issues marriage licenses, its officials must not discriminate on the issuance of those licenses. Government has a fundamental duty to protect individual rights, always applying the laws equally to all persons at all times. The personal opinions of individuals in their capacity as government officials is irrelevant to their duties as employees of the government. Davis thus had two choices; set aside her religious convictions and perform her duty as a government official, or quit. Short of that, she should be fired (which in her case means impeachment).

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One model for marriage could be the corporate laws. No licensure is needed to start a corporation. One need only file papers with the government, and you’re off.

Related Reading:

“Corporate Personhood” Clarified

Gay Marriage and Individual Rights

There is No Parallel Between the Private Right to Discriminate Against Gays and Jim Crow Laws

Many people misinterpret the causes of the arrival of marriage equality for gays and mischaracterize and confuse the issues underlying the progress.

A good example of this is illustrated by New Jersey Star-Ledger guest columnist Robert Checchio. Here are some excerpts from Checchio’s column To understand anti-gay bias, we can learn from Civil Rights Movement:

The recently-introduced First Amendment Defense Act, co-sponsored by over 100 members of Congress, shares its origins with the same mentality that created Jim Crow laws following the Civil War as well as the less formal but still violent anti-black discrimination that was so pervasive before and after the Civil War.

[The act is an] attempt . . . to legitimize anti-gay discrimination through legislation. If passed, the act would allow some people to proclaim themselves superior by denying other people rights and privileges taken for granted by "normal" people – the right to marry, the right to visit a loved one in a hospital, the right to buy a cake.

I left these comments, edited and expanded for clarity:

Maybe the “mentality” is the same—or maybe not. But the similarities end there. There is a horrible equivocation implied in this statement and this article.

Jim Crow laws imposed discrimination and segregation by law, and the associated violence was covertly supported by law. The issue today is people non-coercively choosing not to do business in a way that violates their conscience. There is no legal imposition of segregation or discrimination advocated. The difference is as stark as the opposite sides of the moon: It’s the difference between coercive aggression and simply being left alone.

While I do not support so-called religious freedom restoration laws like the First Amendment Defense Act, I do support the First Amendment and the rights that it enumerates, including the right to freedom of association. This is what the champions of FADA are essentially fighting for, even though they frame it—wrongly, in my view—in religious freedom terms.

Defending the right to freedom of association is not the same as defending or legislatively legitimizing discrimination, as Checchio’s simple-minded view supposes. Would we equate defending a communist’s or a Nazi’s free speech right to advocate their ideas a defense or legitimization of communism or Nazism? The basic issue there is Voltaire’s “I don’t agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” The same principle applies to Christian bakers refusing to serve a gay wedding. In the case of the baker, it’s a matter of freedom of contract, which derives from freedom of association. The issue is, “I disapprove of your discriminatory business practice, but I’ll defend to the death your right to practice it.”

Rights are not permissions to act only in ways the government approves of. Nor are rights an automatic claim on products or services that others must be forced to provide. Rights are inalienable guarantees to freedom of action, so long as one’s actions don’t violate the same rights of others. Rights don’t guarantee that everyone will act rationally or morally: That would require a police state set up to enforce government-approved personal morals. Rights simply sanction the freedom to act. There is a right to marry. There is no “right to buy a cake.”

Jim Crow laws and associated KKK violence violated the rights of blacks. A Christian baker refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding may be offensive: It offends me. But it violates no one’s rights. The baker refusing the gay couple’s business neither initiates force against the gay couple nor forbids a rival baker from serving the cake: A gay couple turned away from a Christian baker can simply take their business elsewhere. The freedom to associate includes the freedom of private individuals not to associate, for whatever reason—and that includes the freedom to engage in or not to engage in voluntary economic contracts. The baker is simply exercising his non-coercive rights of association, which is a far cry from coercive Jim Crow or the KKK. (The question of whether the baker is acting on irrational religious conviction or bigotry is beside the point.)

The truth is the opposite. A law mandating that baker to make that cake based on an alleged “right to buy a cake” violates the baker’s rights, effectively making the baker a slave of the buyer. Such laws are just as bad as laws banning gay marriage. Anti-black discrimination and anti-gay discrimination may or may not spring from “the exact same mentality.” But the role of government then and as advocated by gay rights activists now spring from opposite political philosophies. Under Jim Crow, the government legally imposed discrimination. Today the government is being called upon only to protect the private right to discriminate as conscientious objectors. The first violates rights. The second protects rights. The first is statism, the second is constitutional republicanism.

Marriage equality advocates should celebrate. I do. But there we part company. Gay marriage advocates who now celebrate their victory by supporting laws forcing that baker into coercive contracts are hypocritical and just as wrong as Christians who backed laws banning gay marriage.

Checchio has it terribly wrong. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act and Jim Crow are opposites, not analogous. Anti-private discrimination laws spring from the same political philosophy as Jim Crow; the belief that it is OK to impose one’s values on others by law. By trying to legally force coercive contracts on unwilling bakers or other private businesses, the gay “rights” advocates are simply demonstrating that they don’t understand individual rights at all, or the associated responsibility to respect the rights of others even if they disagree with them. Live and let live? Not for these gay “rights” advocates.

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Cultural change comes before political change, which comes before legal change. In today’s America, anti-gay bigotry has been steadily receding because it is just as irrational as anti-black bigotry. That cultural shift paved the way for the legalization of same-sex marriage. There is no practical need for, and no philosophical or moral justification for, laws trampling on private individuals’ right to act on their conscientious beliefs, however irrational those beliefs may be. Let the religious zealots exercise their bigotry openly, where it can be fought openly on the battleground of reasoned debate, rather than drive it underground and allow it to fester.

The “bottom line” is that individual rights are individual rights. Eroding the inalienable fundamental rights enshrined in the First Amendment in the name of fighting discrimination is a grotesque perversion of the moral concept of rights. The equivocation of Jim Crow laws with First Amendment rights is as fundamental an attack on America’s Founding principles as one can imagine.

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Furthermore, anti-gay bigotry activists who push for anti-private discrimination laws are acknowledging that they have no rational defense against such bigotry, and cannot defeat it on the battleground of ideas and First Amendment rights-based social activism. The anti-black bigots turned to Jim Crow laws because they were losing the cultural battle. After the Civil War, blacks were steadily being assimilated into American society, so the bigots turned to coercive means, both legal and quasi-legal. The official legal imposition of Jim Crow segregation and the unofficial legal sanction of the KKK violence were evidence of the anti-black bigots’ intellectual and social impotence. So they turned to legalized force. But as the Supreme Court observed in overturning one of the bigots’ legal weapons, “separate but equal” under Plessy v. Ferguson, “The impact [of discrimination] is greater when it has the sanction of the law.”

I would argue much greater. Eliminating the bigots’ legal weapon is a game changer. Handing that weapon over to the enemies of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of association is one wrong replacing another.

Irrationality cannot win in a fully free society, where rational people have all sorts of weapons to marginalize and defeat bigotry, such as free speech, boycotts and other types of social activism, economic competition, and simply ignoring the bigots. A bigot striopped of the ability to enforce his irrationality by law or by covertly sanctioned violence is not a threat to anyone. A gay couple turned away from a Christian baker can simply take their business elsewhere.

Related Reading:

Does rescinding laws banning private discrimination make a moral statement in support of bigotry?

How to Overcome Bigotry in a Free Society

Gay Marriage: The Right to Voluntary Contract, Not to Coercive “Contract”

On the Gay Marriage/ Religious Discrimination Double Standard

In the comment section of the New Jersey Star-Ledger’s editorial regarding NJ Reps. Chris Smith and Scott Garrett and their proposed religious discrimination exemption law, the First Amendment Defense Act (the subject of my last post), a correspondent wrote:

Now that the Supreme Court has decided this issue, that gay marriage is a civil right as well as a human right, people with a religious objections need to defer to civil society. Civil law trumps religious law when it comes to civil rights. The Equal Protection Clause is the law of the land, like it or not. People like Smith and Garrett, who believe in religious exemptions to discriminate against other American Citizens, are trying to impose religious laws on society. Haven't we recently had state legislatures in the US pass laws stating that Sharia Law shall not supersede Civil Law. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Here is my reply:

There is a fundamental double standard here. The cause of the double standard is to consider only religious convictions. What about non-religious matters of conscience? If it is wrong for religionists to impose their conscientious convictions about marriage on civil society by legally banning gay marriage, why is it not equally wrong for supporters of legalized gay marriage to impose their conscientious convictions on society by legally forcing Christian bakers to serve gay weddings? The answer is: It is just as wrong either way.

As a long-time supporter of marriage equality under the law, going all the way back to the legal battles over inter-racial marriage, I applaud the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage across America. Marriage is a right possessed by every adult, and should be protected equally under the law. But the broader right to freedom of association, from which marriage equality is itself subsumed, also deserves equal protection. Marriage equality stands on a foundation of associational equality. Marriage equality without associational equality makes no legal or moral sense.

Yes, conscientious objections—religious or non-religious—must defer to civil law. But the law itself must conform to the principle of protecting rights equally, which is the only purpose of law. Anti-discrimination laws targeting private associations do not meet that test. There is no right not to be discriminated against, because there is no right to force others to deal with you. Freedom of association means freedom for both parties; freedom implying the absence of aggressive physical force of any kind, including the legal variety. If you apply the Equal Protection Clause consistently, you would have associational equality both in marriage and in business, for religious and secular believers alike.

We who support marriage equality under the law should celebrate our victory. But I for one will not join the rights-violating crusade against Christian businesses, even though I consider their refusal to serve gay weddings to be irrational and unjust. To do so would be sink to the same moral level as those who fought to keep gay marriage illegal to begin with.  

Related Reading:

Gay Marriage: The Right to Voluntary Contract, Not to Coercive “Contract”

Fine Against Christian Baker Who refused to Serve a Pro-Gay Marriage Cake Exposes Hypocrisy on Both Sides

Gay Marriage, Freedom of Association, and Equal Protection of the Law

Two New Jersey congressmen, Reps. Chris Smith and Scott Garrett, touched a nerve by proposing a law protecting the rights of business owners to refuse to serve gay customers based on their religious beliefs. When the NJ Star-Ledger attacked Smith and Garrett and their First Amendment Defense Act in an editorial, I left these comments in answer to this Star-Ledger passage:

Granted, the government has no business passing judgement on anyone's religious convictions. But when those views are used to impinge on the rights of others, then government has a critical role.

I couldn’t agree more. But what rights do people who refuse to associate or contract with gays—by, for example, refusing to serve a gay wedding cake or host a gay wedding—violate? No one’s. There is no right to force an association on others. Voluntary contract is a form of freedom of association, and freedom of association—a fundamental inalienable right—should be protected equally for everyone. That’s what equal protection of the law means. That is the government’s critical role.

Every individual has a right to live by his own moral standards, even irrational ones, so long as his actions don’t violate the rights of others. This issue is not primarily about freedom of religion and conscience; rather, it is about freedom of association and contract. Marriage, in a legal context, is strictly an issue of contract, and same-sex couples have a right to marry based on their freedom of contract.

But private business owners, based on the same principle, have the right to choose their associations and to contract with customers on voluntary, mutually agreed terms. Freedom of contract means not only the right to voluntarily contract with others, but also to refrain from doing so for whatever reason or even no reason. A religious business owner’s refusal to host gay wedding ceremonies is certainly discriminatory, but it does not violate the rights of gays, who are free to take their business elsewhere.

Laws banning private discrimination contradict the proper purpose of government, which is to protect individual rights—including contract rights, marriage and business transactions alike—equally and at all times. Bigotry is never acceptable, whether against gays or blacks. But forced integration laws are just as wrong as the forced segregation laws enacted under Plessy v. Ferguson's “separate but equal” doctrine. The proper way to fight bigotry is through economic boycotts and competition, non-disruptive peaceful protests, freedom of speech and press, social pressure and ostracization, and other voluntary non-rights violating public and private activism, not laws. The government’s proper role is not to dictate private morals, but to enforce the terms of voluntary contracts and to mediate contractual disputes or remedy breaches of contract. It has no legitimate role forcing anyone into contractual arrangements against his will, regardless of artificial distinctions such as “public” vs. private accommodations. We shouldn’t enact laws like Garrett’s and Smith’s carving out special exemptions from anti-discrimination laws for religious people. We should repeal all laws banning private discrimination.

To fully and consistently uphold the rights to freedom of contract and association based on equal protection of the law is for government to enforce both the rights of gays to marry and the rights of business owners to serve or not serve, and hire and not hire, whom they choose. Being for freedom of association based on equal protection of the law does not make one “anti-gay”—or pro-discrimination—any more than supporting a Nazi’s or communist’s right to espouse their evil views based on freedom of speech makes one pro-Nazi or pro-communist. It makes one true to the principle that people have a right to their religious and moral convictions, so long as those views are not used to impinge on the rights of others—and that government’s critical role is to protect those individual rights equally, for everyone, at all times.

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A reply to my comments indicates the confusion between legally protecting the right to discriminate in one’s private associations and laws legally imposing segregation. Apparently responding to my statement that “But private business owners, based on the same principle, have the right to choose their associations and to contract with customers on voluntary, mutually agreed terms,” the correspondent replied:

Mutually agreed terms? Do gays today or did blacks during the Jim Crow years "agree" with the laws that allowed businesses to discriminate against them? Or did they have to adjust because there was no where else to go? If your customers uses public supported facilities to access your business then you do not have the right to deny them.

Here is my answer:

There were no laws "allowing" discrimination against blacks. There were laws forbidding businesses not to discriminate. There is a huge difference between leaving people free to discriminate, and legally enforced segregation.

"Public supported" facilities like roads should not be used by government to violate rights. The government should always be neutral regarding private associations, so long as no rights-violating actions are evident. "Public supported" facilities are supported by all members of the public, not only members with viewpoints approved by government officials.

Related Reading;

Does rescinding laws banning private discrimination make a moral statement in support of bigotry?

How to Overcome Bigotry in a Free Society

Gay Marriage: The Right to Voluntary Contract, Not to Coercive “Contract”

Kim Davis vs. Liberty Ridge Farm

I have argued strenuously that private individuals, including businesspersons, have a moral right, and should have the legal right, to discriminate. For example, when Liberty Ridge Farm, a banquet hall and catering business, refused to host a gay wedding and was subsequently sued and fined under New York’s laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, I defended the Liberty Ridge owners’ right to refuse the gay couple (though not the morality of their discrimination—See my TOS post Gay Marriage: The Right to Voluntary Contract, Not to Coercive “Contract”).

But how does this viewpoint on discrimination apply to the case of Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who was jailed in contempt of court for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples in defiance of the law? In short, it doesn’t apply. Why? Because Liberty Ridge Farm is a private business. The Rowan County Clerk is a government position.

Government has a fundamental duty to protect individual rights, including the right to irrationally discriminate, such as on race, gender, or sexual orientation. But the government itself can not discriminate. The government should always apply the laws equally to all persons at all times. The personal opinions of individuals in their capacity as government officials is irrelevant to their duties as employees of the government. When the Declaration states that “all men are created equal” possessing unalienable rights, and that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,” it means that all individuals are equal regarding their rights under the law. Rights precede government, so a government—whose sole purpose is to protect individual rights—may not arbitrarily decide whose rights to protect and whose not to protect.

Kim Davis and her defenders are claiming that her right to religious freedom and conscience justifies her actions. But her religious freedom is not at stake. She has an inalienable right to her religious beliefs, and to act on her beliefs so long as her actions don’t violate the rights of others. But her right to religious freedom does not give her the right to impose those beliefs on others through government coercion. Davis’s private religious convictions do not automatically extend to government action, and given that people cannot marry without a government license, Davis’s refusal is issue the licenses violates the rights of consenting adults seeking to get married.

The basic issue is not freedom of conscience. It is the proper role of government. The government should not be in the business of issuing marriage licenses. But as long as it does, its officials must not discriminate on the issuance of those licenses. Davis thus had two choices; set aside her religious convictions and perform her duty as a government official, or quit. Short of that, she should be fired.

Related Reading:

Title 2: Government vs. Private Action

America the Undemocratic

Fine Against Christian Baker Who refused to Serve a Pro-Gay Marriage Cake Exposes Hypocrisy on Both Sides

A Baker in Northern Ireland, where same-sex marriage is still illegal, was fined thousands of dollars for refusing to make a cake for a gay customer bearing the slogan "Support Gay Marriage" alongside a depiction of "Sesame Street" characters Bert and Ernie because doing so would have violated the bakery owner’s religious beliefs. The gay customer, Gareth Lee, had sued Ashers Bakery under Ireland's anti-discrimination laws and the auspices of Northern Ireland’s “Equality Commission.” As Shawn Pogatchnik reports for The Associated Press:

In her ruling, Belfast Judge Isobel Brownlie called the bakery's cancellation of the order "direct discrimination for which there can be no justification." The judge said the bakery was a business, not a religious organization, and therefore had no legal basis to reject an order based on a customer's sexual orientation or beliefs.

But what justification is there for the state to force any private business to serve any customer, or serve a particular product? None, if the right to freedom of association means anything. The government should be protecting everyone’s rights equally and at all times. Both gay marriage and a cake sale are contractual arrangements derived from freedom of association. The very basis of freedom of association is voluntary agreement and consent. If the state is to protect liberty, it must protect everyone’s right to associate or not associate according to one’s own judgement.

The inalienable rights of gays to forge a marriage contract recognized by law—or for anyone, gay or not, to advocate such views—does not include the right to force others to do business with them. It is just as wrong for Lee to exploit an unjust law banning discrimination to impose his values on Ashers Bakery by forcing it to serve him a cake advocating gay marriage as it is for the government to impose the bakery owners’ standards on gays by legally banning gay marriage.

The bakery owners' son, Daniel McArthur, was reported to have said on behalf of his family, "We just want to live and work in accordance with our religious beliefs.” But if that desire extends to favoring a legal ban on gay marriage, then it is not just a personal matter, because bans on gay marriage violate the rights of same-sex couples to freedom of contract and association. But as a personal matter, Ashers Bakery has every right to refuse to serve Lee the cake advocating beliefs the owners disagree with.

As a private business, Liberty Ridge has a right to choose its associations and to contract with customers on voluntary, mutually agreed terms. Freedom of contract means not only the right to voluntarily contract with others, but also to refrain from doing so for whatever reason or even no reason. Asher’s refusal to serve Lee his cake, however irrational their reasons may be, does not violate Lee’s rights or the rights of gays generally—as Lee was free to take his business elsewhere—just as a gay couple marrying does not violate the rights of Christians or heterosexual couples, who are free not to marry someone of the same sex or attend a gay wedding.

Shame on Asher’s owners for supporting a legal ban on gay marriage, if in fact that’s the case. And—though his anger at anti-marriage equality Christians is understandable—shame on Lee for forcing Ashers into court, and for supporting laws that force businesses to contract against their will. Gay marriage advocates undercut their own case for their contractual and associational rights by simultaneously fighting to violate the same rights of others. Likewise, Christian business owners who support bans on gay marriage have no credibility when they complain that anti-discrimination laws violate their religious beliefs. Both sides are hypocritical. The only resolution to the Ashers Bakery and similar conflicts is to fully and consistently uphold the rights to freedom of contract and association by defending equally the rights of gays to marry and the rights of business owners to serve or not serve whom they choose.

Related reading:

Gay Marriage Rights vs. Anti-Discrimination Laws

Archbishop's Misplaced Charge: Gay Marriage is a Threat to Freedom of Religion

How Property Rights Solve Problems—David R. Henderson for the Library of Economics and Liberty

Gay Marriage: The Right to Voluntary Contract, Not Coercive 'Contract'