LGBTQIA+ Scholars Series: “Conscience, not Bigotry” and Other Framings in Conflicts over LGBTQ+ Rights and Religious Liberty

Featuring Linda McClain, Robert Kent Professor of Law

In this talk, Linda C. McClain, Robert Kent Professor of Law at BU Law, will evaluate the different rhetorical framings of whether and how religious liberty and LGBTQ+ rights appear to collide in Supreme Court cases involving marriage equality and public accommodations laws, such as Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), and, more recently, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021). Drawing on her book, Who’s the Bigot? Learning from Conflicts over Marriage and Civil Rights Law (Oxford Univ. Press, 2020) and more recent work, McClain will look at the work done in these cases by the rhetoric of bigotry and by analogies to religious opposition to desegregation and to interracial marriage and to landmark civil rights statutes and cases prohibiting such discrimination. McClain will also explore how competing understandings of pluralism and what limits government may place on the “free exercise” of religious liberty in the “public square”—both in the marketplace and in public/private partnerships (as in Fulton, with foster care services)— shape these controversies. She will also consider what clues, if any, Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) (holding that Title VII protects against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity) offers as to how the Supreme Court might resolve future cases on these conflicts.