Nothing gets the juices and the comments flowing better than a column on religion and the liberal state. But before attempting a response to the issues raised by readers of my previous column, I would like to offer a couple of clarifications.
First, by “liberal” and “liberalism” I do not mean, as some posters assumed, a position on the political continuum at the other end of which would be “conservative” and “conservatism.” Liberalism is the name of an enlightenment theory of government characterized by an emphasis on procedural rather than substantive rights: the law protects individual free choice and is not skewed in the direction of some choices or biased against others; the laws framed by the liberal state are, or should be, neutral between competing visions of the good and the good life; the state intervenes aggressively only when the adherents of one vision claim the right to act in ways that impinge upon the rights of others to make their own choices.
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