Arizona's Failed Anti-Gay Bill Shows 'Religious Liberty' Is Bad For Business

Even as it crests, with at least half a dozen states pushing similar laws, the latest “religious liberty” movement is foundering. The latest blow came Wednesday when Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a bill that would have granted legal protections to businesses that refused to offer services to same-sex weddings on the grounds of religious belief (and possibly other gay-themed things, or hundreds of possible conflicts between commerce and belief: the proposed law wasn’t very specific).

The biggest problem with these laws is they’re based on a peculiar idea of religious liberty having little to do with the traditional meaning of the term: the freedom to practice a religion. Their religious dimension is vague, based more on shared cultural sentiments than tradition. If God opposes same-sex marriage, does He object to making a flower arrangement for a wedding between two men? (There is no Christian Talmud to address such questions.) “Religious liberty” becomes the ability to exercise your beliefs and preferences anywhere and everywhere, even if they inconvenience and discriminate against others. To create a kind of legal-political bubble insulating you from certain social practices that are becoming broadly accepted.

These conflicts are real, of course. People feel what they feel, for whatever reason. But appeals to religious liberty here are a sad coda to the history of religious expression in America.

But there’s a subtler and worse problem, too: the application of laws and constitutional principles to social and economic situations that should work themselves out on their own. It’s litigious liberty we’re really talking about.

The vetoed Arizona bill, for instance, was a response to a New Mexico case in which the owners of a commercial photo business were sued for refusing to photograph a commitment ceremony between two women, in violation of that state’s law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation. Arizona, however, has no such statewide law, though Phoenix, Flagstaff and Tucson have local ordinances. (Needless to say, it’s LGBT people, not Christian business owners, who deserve state protections.) Had Brewer signed the bill, its vagueness seemed likely to generate a huge legal snarl over legalized discrimination.

Fortunately, players in Arizona’s business community saw that this was more trouble than it was worth, and urged Brewer to veto the bill. With things like the Super Bowl on the line, it’s just bad business. And that’s the best dynamic possible here.

In most cases, let’s assume this narrow situation – refusing to provide wedding-related services to same-sex couples – will work itself out without a resort to legal action, and that social trends continue to favor same-sex marriage. A gay couple won’t want to patronize a firm that discriminates; discriminating will be unpopular, and business will suffer; eventually discriminating on religious liberty grounds becomes a luxury few can afford. This is the market in action. We should let it work.