It's easy, in the current American political climate, to see religious freedom and LGBT rights as two opposing values, permanently in conflict with each other. Much of this has to do with the backlash to advancements in LGBT rights from conservative religious groups. When the Supreme Court in 2015 affirmed the legal right of same-sex couples to marry, religious freedom laws began making their way through state legislatures and courthouses, demanding exceptions to anti-LGBT discrimination laws for individuals with religiously based views.
Brooklyn Law Professor Nelson Tebbe wrote his latest book, Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age, against this backdrop. “Expansion of equality law has contributed to a sense among some religious traditionalists that there has been an inversion,” he writes. “They feel they are now the minorities who require protection from an overweening liberal orthodoxy.” But now Tebbe's work has taken on a new meaning under the Trump Administration. The conflicts between religious freedom and equality law have been brought to the center of American politics, and the divide between the two sides appears sharper than ever.
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