Washington and Lee law professor Robin Wilson recently argued in a LA Times op-ed for conscience protections to be incorporated into sam sex marriage legislation. She returns to the question of whether "new laws recognizing same-sex marriage can put faith and business on a collision course" in a contribution to the ongoing blog symposium on faith and corporations at The Conglomerate:
With the advent of same-sex marriage, a whole host of new questions for businesses arise: may a Catholic university that provides married student housing decline to offer housing to same-sex couples because doing so would violate its religious tenets? May a therapy practice offering Christian marriage counseling serve only heterosexual married couples? What about a Christian bed and breakfast---can it open its doors only to heterosexual married couples or require same-sex couples to stay in separate rooms? ...
For example, a Methodist-affiliated group in New Jersey, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, that refused to allow same-sex commitment ceremonies on its boardwalk pavilion lost its property tax exemption--resulting in a tab for $20,000 in back taxes. Elsewhere, New Mexico’s Human Rights Commission fined a small husband and wife photography shop more than $6,000 for refusing for religious reasons to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony.
It would be nice to believe that people of goodwill will work these sort of problems out through a process of mutual respect and accomodation. It also would be nice to believe in the Easter Bunny. The scope of religious conscience carve-outs is going to be a major hot button issue, which the political process needs to address or the courts will.
