Alarmed by the broad expansion of same-sex marriage set in motion by the U.S. Supreme Court, religious conservatives are moving their fight to state legislatures — seeking exemptions that would allow some groups, companies and people with religious objections to refuse benefits or service for gay spouses.
But sweeping carve-outs for faith-affiliated adoption agencies or individual wedding vendors will be an uphill battle. Public attitudes against exceptions have hardened, and efforts by faith groups in states where courts, not lawmakers, recognized same-sex unions have had little success.
“When the judiciary does it, they don’t do the kind of balancing that legislatures tend to do,” said Tim Schultz, president of the 1st Amendment Partnership, which has organized legislative caucuses focused on religious liberty in 20 states.
Every state legislative debate over gay marriage has addressed the question of whether religious objectors could be exempt in any way from recognizing same-sex unions. But in states where same-sex marriage became law through the courts, only one, Connecticut, followed up by enacting significant new exemptions. Massachusetts, Iowa and New Jersey have provided no opt-outs for gay marriage opponents.
Gay advocates say broad carve-outs perpetuate the very discrimination they had been working to end.
That argument gained currency after the Hobby Lobby ruling in June, in which the high court decided the arts-and-crafts retailer and other closely held private businesses with religious objections could opt out of providing employees certain contraceptive coverage required by the Affordable Care Act.
The religious-exemption fight includes faith-affiliated associations that rent their properties to the public for wedding receptions; religious charities that provide adoption and other social services, often with government funding; and individual religious objectors such as justices of the peace, government clerks or business owners.
State Rep. Jacob Anderegg, a Utah Republican, said he plans to reintroduce a religious-exemptions bill he had shelved temporarily amid the federal court cases on gay marriage in the past two years.
“The bill reasserts and re-establishes fundamental principles: I have a religious objection. You can’t force me or compel me to do it,” Anderegg said.
