Religious Freedom as Freedom

In recent decades, the exercise of religious freedom is increasingly associated with oppression. This is not only due to the disagreement between religions and some governments concerning sexual expression matters—contraception, abortion, same-sex relations, and transgender identity—but is also due to diverging convictions about the substance and sources of freedom. This Article will examine a current and highly visible set of convictions about the contents of human freedom, which together suggest that a thriving religious witness threatens freedom itself. These convictions often surface in the context of laws touching upon sexual expression.

It will then contrast these convictions with those found in earlier and largely non-sexual-expression law, according to which religious witness enhances human freedom. Finally, it will offer four observations about these contrasting notions of freedom.