Gay marriage ruling limits religion in political process

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, media coverage has focused on public reactions, immediate effects of the decision and responses by government officials. In Texas, more specifically, much attention has centered on Attorney General Ken Paxton’s opinion that county clerks need not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples if doing so would conflict with their religious beliefs.

However, casting the conflict as one between the religious freedom of county clerks and gay couples seeking marriage licenses shrouds the deeper issues present in Justice Anthony Kennedy’s sweeping majority opinion. While the opinion has the immediate effect of legalizing samesex marriage, its language could have lasting effects on the way religious principles surface in law and public policy.

Over the past few decades, much of the nation has come to see same-sex relationships as legitimate, and the belittling effect gay marriage bans have on the LGBT community has been pushed to the forefront of public debates.

It now seems obvious that gay marriage bans are embarrassing and stigmatizing for same-sex couples who are unable to express their affection through the sacred covenant of marriage. Kennedy’s opinion emphasizes this stigmatic harm through some of the most powerful prose the Supreme Court has ever published.

However, the opinion’s one-sided focus on the effects same-sex marriage bans have on the gay community obscures the effects of the opinion for those who support such bans based on their religious beliefs. More particularly, Kennedy fails to see the stigmatizing effects that his opinion will have on religious people. While Kennedy goes to great lengths to convince us that he is disparaging neither those who believe gay marriage is immoral, nor the “honorable religious ... premises” from which their convictions are drawn, his arguments fail to notice the real harm his opinion works on those for whom religion is important: It suggests their beliefs are improper for the political process.

By indicating the impropriety of advocating for religious beliefs through the political process, Kennedy has questioned the legitimacy of those beliefs, whether he intended to or not.

Voters generally are capable of choosing legislators who encapsulate their political preferences or lobby officials in attempts to pass legislation that aligns with their world view. Often, the animating force behind policy preferences has its origin in religious convictions. Until now, the average citizen could use the political process to breathe life into his or her convictions, and he or she could do so with the belief that these laws would pass constitutional muster.

Now, advocacy efforts aimed at embodying religious principles in public policy seem ill-advised. Political participation appears to require leaving religious convictions at home when headed to the polls. After Kennedy’s opinion, the political pro- cess seems open only to those whose beliefs are secular.

Obergefell is significant because it signals the lesser status of religious convictions in legal debates. Kennedy highlights how far our nation has moved away from the comfortable interaction between religion and law, and suggests that religion is being demoted to a lower level of importance in our increasingly pluralistic society. The sacred position that religion occupied in American society has shifted, and use of religious principles to support one’s argument in political debates seems constitutionally forbidden, especially when those principles are used to question another person’s lifestyle, choices or conduct.

Moving forward, Kennedy’s opinion will be monumental, not simply for its radical restructuring of traditional marriage, but for the way it signaled an alteration of the way religion is thought of in the United States. After Obergefell, legislation passed as a result of religious principles may need new justification to survive the Supreme Court’s scrutiny. More importantly, the religious right might need new ways to engage in the political process.

In Texas, the debate needs to shift and focus on the real issue. The important debate is not about the conflict between county clerks’ religious beliefs and same-sex couples who want a marriage license. It is about religion’s place in the political process.