Brief response to Prof. Leiter on religion and public reasons

A few days ago -- I have been vacationing in Alaska -- Professor Brian Leiter posted a long discussion of the some bloggers' responses to Professor Stone's post, "Religious Rights and Wrongs", about President Bush's stem-cell veto.  My Prawfsblawg co-blogger Paul Horwitz and I (link) were among those to whom Professor Leiter responded.  I agree with Michael P. that the Leiter post is well worth reading, though I think others here at MOJ have highlighted some weaknesses or gaps in it.

Responding to my post, Professor Leiter writes:

"Public reasons" are, by hypothesis here, reasons that may properly ground legislation and exercises of state power.  The argument that religious reasons are not "public reasons" isn't that they lack a certain kind of foundation that genuine "public reasons" have . . . ; the argument is that they aren't public, i.e., that they aren't the kinds of reasons acceptable to all reasonable people in a pluralistic society.  Many "public reasons" in this sense may lack foundations of one kind or another, but that has no bearing on their public status.  To put it (a bit too) crudely, reasons are "public" largely in virtue of a head count, not in virtue of their having more robust epistemic foundations.  So, contra Professor Garnett, it is not apparent that the the foundations of the beliefs or reasons in question are at issue here.

It sounds to me (and, of course, I could be misunderstanding) that Professor Leiter is not ruling out the possibility that "public reasons" could have "religious" foundations (or, foundations that would widely be regarded as "religious"), or lack "robust epistemic foundations," so long as they were, in fact, widely accepted.  Or, would Professor Leiter's view be that "religious" reasons simply are not -- cannot be -- "acceptable to all reasonable people in a pluralistic society," because, in such a society, "reasonable" people do not regard regard "religious" reasons as "acceptable"?  Or, is it that a reason that is widely accepted by otherwise "reasonable" people is not, precisely for that reason, "religious"? 

In addition, I am afraid it is still not clear to me what, exactly, are the markers of "religious" motivations and reasons.  "The Bible says so" and "God told me last night" seem to be easy candidates.  But what if my motivation for supporting Policy X is that I believe that Policy X will better secure and respect, say, the dignity and authentic flourishing of human beings?  So phrased, this motivation would not, I suspect, be regarded by Professors Stone and Leiter as "religious."  But why not?  What if, behind this stated motivation, is a view that, really, the reason why "the dignity and authentic flourishing of human beings" is anything other than a fairy-tale construct is because human beings are made and loved by God?