Court’s decision gives us reason to fear

To the editor:

The July 8 letter, 'Ruling a victory for religious liberty” inveighs against pundits and politicians expressing fears that the recent U. S. Supreme Court decision sanctioning same-sex marriage potentially threatens religious liberty. Its author steps through a series of constitutional and statutory points, proposing that religious liberty, curiously, is somehow enhanced by the action.

The dissenting justices, in fact, sharply disagreed with that view, pointing to 'hard questions” that will arise when free exercise of religion and the right to express principled objection to same-sex union are seen to conflict with the new right to practice said union. Their perceptive analyses lucidly show how this judicial usurpation of the public debate and democratic process leaves these cherished rights substantially vulnerable to future legal attack.

Indeed, anyone expressing or acting on a counter-opinion may legitimately fear being branded a 'bigot,” accused of 'hate speech” or of 'violating equal opportunity.” Such was the fate of the Oregon couple seeing their bakery business destroyed and suffering severe financial forfeiture for exercising their freedoms of religion, association and conscience.

The court employed a creative reading of 'equal protection” and 'due process” in the Fourteenth Amendment to discern an implied 'right” never imagined by the authors of that amendment. It is not hard to envision a future (liberal) court likewise mangling the First Amendment into something unrecognizable. There is abundant reason to fear.

Dale Fitzgibbons

Cedar Rapids