The Maine SSM/Religious Liberty Fight: Follow-Up Lawprofs' Letters

The tussle over the upcoming Maine ballot measure to de-recognize same-sex marriage, in which BC lawprof Scott Fitzgibbon has played a role, has also touched on the memo-letters that several of us lawprofs (including Rick and I) wrote back in the spring to legislative leaders and the governor.  We proposed meaningful religious-liberty protections to accompany any recognition of SSM, so as to reduce the conflicts between traditionalist believers and same-sex couples.  Our earlier letters have been used and criticized, respectively, by the two sides in the current all-or-nothing fight: those who want to eliminate SSM recognition for (among other reasons) religious-liberty concerns, and those who want to dismiss those concerns and keep SSM with the minimal religious-liberty protections that the state enacted in recognizing it.

We've now written another pair of memo-letters (here and here), among other things to (1) answer public criticisms of our claims that SSM recognition will conflict with religious liberty and (2) point out that it's still possible to address the concerns of both traditionalists and same-sex couples by adding meaningful religious-liberty protections to the SSM recognition law.  The bitterness of the all-or-nothing debate, we argue, is an indicator of the value of proposals like ours.

Tom