In my column last week, I argued it was odd politics for the Libertarian Party to run against social conservatives, in part because neither major party has a socially conservative nominee.
Jen Rubin, who is neither a libertarian nor a social conservative, derided my argument as “raging” and “screeching.” I didn’t intend it as such. I intended it as an olive branch: Hey, Govs. Gary Johnson and Bill Weld, if you’re looking for undecided voters, there are some politically homeless people over here who are finding out how evil government can be. Maybe don’t run AGAINST them?
David Harsanyi at the Federalist addresses Rubin’s post well. I wanted to tack on a note about freedom of conscience, which Johnson and Weld seem to want to wave away.
If this was just about bakers, who comprise slightly more than one in one thousand workers, this may indeed by a minor and obscure issue. It’s also not simply about “defending the freedom of bigots to be bigots,” as some put it. Freedom of conscience, which includes religious liberty, is a bigger deal than that.
First off, Rubin and Gary Johnson don’t seem to appreciate the distinction between (a) refusing to serve someone because of his identity, and (b) refusing to participate in a ceremony to which you object. You’d expect that conflation among liberals, but not from someone who values individual liberty, such as Johnson.
Second, bakers and wedding photographers aren’t the only people affected here. There have been multiple federal lawsuits about religious liberty. Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor cases have made it to the Supreme Court.
And while it’s evil in itself to force the bakers, the photographers, the nuns, and the Christian employers to go out of business or violate their consciences, we social conservatives also worry about seeing these issues as vulnerable bulwarks. If government can smash or narrow any parts of the First Amendment’s protection of free exercise, the most intimate parts of our lives are at risk.
The future of homeschooling seems at risk. What if we want to send our kids to single-sex schools? What if our church believes the priesthood is reserved to men? What about the Catholic hospitals the ACLU is trying to force to abort babies? Will Child Protective Services come after us for not putting our daughters on the pill? Some U.S. lefties applauded Denmark when they banned the Kosher slaughter of meat. These are the worries that sound paranoid until they become reality. I could give more examples, but I don’t want to give Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell any more ideas.
This is a big issue. Socially liberal libertarians and Washington Post bloggers may think these are silly quibbles, but one man’s silly quibble is another man’s crisis of conscience. That’s the beauty of libertarianism: it includes fighting for even those of us living alternative lifestyles.
Today they come after the Humanae Vitae types, the pro-lifers, the Bible-thumpers, the Kosher types. Tomorrow they come after the other conscientious objectors.
Do the Libertarians want to be the party of the conscientious objectors like the Little Sisters? Or do they want to be a tool for the cultural elites to impose their morality on the rest?
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
