The majority’s refusal to address the free speech issue in Masterpiece explains the intractability of debates over the scope of its free exercise ruling because, surprisingly, the two issues are linked. Two concurrences implicitly address the free speech issue. There the conservatives’ case is stronger, and supported explicitly by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor in dissent. In light of it, the Court’s Masterpiece ruling should provide robust protection for other creative professionals.
Author: Sherif Girgis (Sherif Girgis)
The Christian Baker’s Unanswered Legal Argument: Why the Strongest Objections Fail
The Supreme Court is about to decide whether a baker has a First Amendment right not to be compelled to design and create cakes celebrating same-sex weddings. The baker’s best legal argument is simple, and it survives the best objections filed by the ACLU and Progressive scholars.
In Defense of Elizabeth Harman: Taking Pro-Choice Philosophers Seriously
If we believe that all human beings deserve respect, we ought to act like it. That means we should use our rational faculties to understand and answer bad arguments, not ridicule those who make them.
Can the Pope Change Catholic Teaching?
Some people hope that Pope Francis will change the Church’s teaching on contraception. He won’t. He couldn’t even if he wanted to—as Church history and Scriptures show. Part two of two.
The Historic Christian Teaching Against Contraception: A Defense
The Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception, common to all Christian denominations for 1900 years, is not arbitrary. It reflects a moral truth. And the Catholic Church can never revise it. Part one of two.
How Sex Difference Makes a Difference: A Reply to Ilya Somin
Courts heighten scrutiny of policies that classify people by sex and other “suspect” traits. But laws defining marriage as a male-female union are different in structure. The very form of policies based on the male-female pairing—unlike every other classification—demonstrates their connection to the common good. So courts shouldn’t subject them to the special scrutiny applied to other laws that classify by sex.
Putting to Rest a Bad Argument: Marriage Law and Sex Discrimination
The Supreme Court closely scrutinizes policies involving racial, sexual, and other “suspect” classifications. But unlike almost every other classification imaginable, marriage laws use a criterion necessarily linked to an inherently good social purpose that we didn’t just invent. This criterion isn’t truly suspect and shouldn’t get heightened scrutiny.
Why Fight For Marriage?
We are all called to defend marriage so that the truth can change hearts, minds, and lives. As the early pro-life activists did, we must invest the long-term political, legal, cultural, and spiritual capital to win down the line. The final installment in a three-part series.
Philosophy and a Life Well-Lived
The next generation of true culture-makers will be shaped purely by bad philosophy if its arguments go unanswered. As individuals and communities, we will be swayed by moral thought no matter what: the only question is whether it will be well thought out. The second in a three-part series.
Reason and Revelation: Why Christians Need Philosophy
Many Christians question the value of philosophical arguments for conjugal marriage, preferring to appeal to revelation. But our natural moral knowledge in some ways precedes revelation and helps us to understand it. The first of a three-part series.
What Makes a Marriage? Love, Sex, or Comprehensive Union
Prof. Charles Reid thinks love makes a marriage. He claims we think sex makes a marriage. In truth, comprehensive union makes a marriage. And getting marriage right matters for everyone.
The Supreme Court, You and Me, and the Future of Marriage
What happened yesterday at the courthouse matters, and we must keep up our witness to the truth about marriage, by word and deed, until it is safely beyond judicial overreach.
Check Your Blind Spot: What Is Marriage?
Marriage as a human good, not marriage law, has an objective core whose norms the state has an interest in tracking and supporting—in a way that respects everyone’s freedom.
The Bishops and the Mandate: Principled Witness vs. Politics as Usual
The controversy over the HHS mandate is not a spat about wonkish detail or tribal privilege. It remains a struggle for the principle of religious freedom, the soul of civil society.
Morals and Mandates
Morality is not about keeping as long a leash as you can on the harms you cause. It is about keeping upright intentions and rejecting unfair tradeoffs—neither of which Obama’s proposed revision even pretends to affect.
Philosophy, Marriage, and Moral Grandstanding
In a discipline whose point is dispassionate reasoning and discourse, some would shut down debate and silence dissenters on a deep and complex moral-political issue. And the view they would anathematize, far from irrational, is more coherent and more compelling than their slippery and ill-defined 'default'.
Democratic Bioethics and Eugenics
Prominent bioethicists Arthur Caplan and Robert P. George on the role of bioethics in a democracy and the dangers of eugenics.
Stem Cells: The Scientists Knew They Were Lying?
Prominent bioethicists Arthur Caplan and Robert P. George on the danger of discounting ethics and overselling science.
Does Marriage, or Anything, Have Essential Properties?
A reply to Northwestern Law Professor Andrew Koppelman's second critique of "What is Marriage?"
Marriage: No Avoiding the Central Question
A reply to NYU Law Professor Kenji Yoshino’s second critique of “What is Marriage?”
Marriage: Merely a Social Construct?
A response to Northwestern Law Professor Andrew Koppelman.
The Argument Against Gay Marriage: And Why it Doesn’t Fail
A response to NYU Law Professor Kenji Yoshino.
A Real Compromise on the Same-Sex Marriage Debate: An Invitation to Rauch and Blankenhorn
A recent compromise on the same-sex ‘marriage’ debate granted too much to revisionists and too little to traditionalists. A better compromise will respect the societal importance of marriage while also providing for the real needs of domestic partners.
The Pro-Life Case Against Barack Obama . . . and Doug Kmiec
The Obama apologists are at it again, this time attacking Archbishop Charles Chaput for speaking out against their candidate's pro-abortion views. But the latest salvo from Doug Kmiec is a tangled web of falsehoods and fallacies.