A Concrete Example

[Steven Jamar]

I don't think I agree with this.  I think they all value religious liberty a
great deal, but view the religious as separate from the government in every
way.  And they are not sensitive to the range of religious experience and
don't have the imagination or desire to understand the religious experience
of the other.
It is not that they don't value religious liberty in the abstract (they
would not want an established church; they would not want their freedom to
believe and act in their religious traditions), but they don't understand
others.  And don't want to make the effort to understand.

So the accommodation/exception claim falls on deaf ears not because they
don't value religious liberty, but because they don't see it or value it in
the way it is being asserted.

This may be a distinction without much difference in result, but I think it
important to understand that unless we can connect our liberty arguments to
what they do value, we will not be able to reach them.

We all have this attribute.  Marci's take is quite different from mine in
many ways, but I think we can understand each other because we value the
idea and think about the idea of religious liberty.  But few people have the
time or inclination or training to do this sort of thinking and evaluating.

But they do value liberty.

Steve


On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 9:03 PM, Douglas Laycock <laycockd at umich.edu> wrote:

> I think Chris is exactly right that some significant number of government
> actors place zero value on religious liberty.  Some others seem to place
> affirmative value on saying no exceptions and making people who want
> exceptions conform to the rules.
>
> Given either of these situations, if you want some value placed on
> religious liberty, then overriding instructions, judicially enforceable, are
> the only solution.
>
>
> --
Prof. Steven Jamar
Howard University School of Law
Associate Director, Institute of Intellectual Property and Social Justice
(IIPSJ) Inc.
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