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As we walk the path of spiritual liberty in these last days, we must understand that the faithful use of our agency depends upon our having religious freedom.—Elder Robert D. Hales, “Preserving Agency, Protecting Religious Freedom”

Growing up as one of the few Mormon kids in a very un-Mormon part of Oklahoma, I had plenty of chances to feel uncomfortable. Usually this discomfort had something to do with my religious belief, so I gave it a much grander name than it deserved. I called it “persecution.”



For example, there was the time in 8th grade when our geography teacher was telling us that the early inhabitants of America came across the Bearing Strait, and I shouted out “NOT TRUE.” Everybody laughed at me and the teacher told me to be quiet. Or the time that I started crying in class when the history teacher recited a derisive poem about the statue of Brigham Young in Temple Square. I still remember the poem: “Here stands Brigham / High on his perch / His hand toward the bank / And his back to the Church.” It would be years before I actually saw the statue and understood.

An then there was the time when some of the kids in my high school psychology class saw The Godmakers, and we ended up devoting a whole class to the delusions of Mormonism. I was a senior then, and seniors don’t cry. But seniors get mad and go home and tell their parents to write a letter of complaint to the principal. Fortunately, parents know better.

When incidents like these occurred, I almost always found myself trying to describe them as issues of “religious freedom,” which they were not, instead of “religious discomfort,” which they were. But it just didn’t seem possible to me that the Constitution would allow me to feel bad.

I didn’t find a good answer to my teenage complaints until I was the teacher listening to them—that is, until I was teaching English 115 at BYU and a student came in to complain about the “secularist” story he had to read in my class (it was Tolstoy’s “Three Hermits” for those of you keeping track of secularism at the BYU). I said that the English department had adopted the textbook and I was required to use it. He said that being forced to read secular humanist propaganda violated his rights. I told him not to be silly; “you do not have a right to be comfortable all the time.”

Yeah, I came up with that one on the fly. But the more I think about it. The more I think I was probably on to something. I think that Elder Hales’ recent conference talk was right on target. Religious freedom is a hugely important part of our Republic, and it is a necessary ingredient of our faith. Religious comfort is not. When we confuse these two things, we end up using a very powerful rhetorical tool to defend a principle that is, ultimately, just not very important.

The 800 pound gorilla in this conversation, of course, is same-sex marriage. In the current incarnation of the public sphere, that is pretty much all that anyone means when they say “religious freedom.” So let’s go there.

Some people strongly believe, for religious reasons, that homosexual relations are immoral. Such people should not be forced to have them. Also, some religions believe that it would be sinful to solemnize a same-sex marriage. These religions should never be compelled (or even pressured) to perform them. These are genuine religious freedom issues that, I believe, we must defend.

But I am much less concerned with preventing religious discomfort. A whole lot of people are really, really uncomfortable with the idea of two people of the same gender getting married. But that discomfort does not inherently create a religious freedom issue. Nor, I would argue, does the fact that some of these people provide goods and services for use in weddings in jurisdictions that afford anti-discrimination protections on the basis of sexual orientation.

It is kind of a big deal, I think, to set aside the law to accommodate a religious belief. If laws are to mean anything, those requesting such accommodations must prove very clearly that the law substantially burdens actual religious practice. I can imagine a scenario where a photographer or cake baker could meet this standard, but it would be difficult—much more difficult than simply claiming a religious objection to homosexuality or same-sex marriage. It is not at all obvious to me that baking a cake for somebody that one disagrees with creates an insuperable burden to the free exercise of religion–no matter how much discomfort it may produce.

In his talk, Elder Hales articulated four cornerstones of religious liberty: 1) “the freedom to believe”; 2) “the freedom to share our faith and our beliefs with others”; 3) “the freedom to form a religious organization, a church, to worship peacefully with others”; and 4) the freedom to live our faith.” These are wise words and true principles.

Nowhere on the list, however, is the right to avoid discomfort–even when this discomfort arises from a religious belief. Being uncomfortable with stuff is part of living in a society that protects other people’s beliefs and practices to the same degree that it protects our own. We all have to learn how accommodate each other a little bit, even if it makes us uncomfortable to do so, if we are going to have a country that protects everybody equally. It is possible for a society based on these principles to overstep and, in the name of tolerance and diversity, burden somebody else’s religious practice unjustly. I believe that we must prevent this. It is a hill that I and many others are willing to die on.

But we must take great care that we die on the grand hill of religious freedom and not the tiny little mound of religious discomfort.