Silence kills: More from Ryan Anderson

The current issue of WORLD Magazine includes an interview with Ryan Anderson, senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation and the author of the newly released Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom. For other excerpts from the interview, see “Growing up Ryan Anderson” and “Ryan Anderson on natural law.”

What is the future of religious liberty in relation to the same-sex marriage debate? I think there’s a divide between the activists and the ideologues on the left and ordinary liberals on the left. The activists and ideologues want to see Kim Davis in jail, the grandmother florist fined thousands of dollars for not doing same-sex wedding flowers, and bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein fined $135,000. Activist ideologues on the far left cheer such a story but ordinary liberals are uncomfortable with those outcomes because, even if they’re in favor of same-sex marriage, they have a family member who they disagree with on this issue.

They don’t want everyone to bow down, or else? Our best chance is to get reasonable liberals to say, “The unreasonable liberals have become a little totalitarian.” We’ve had people who were pro-choice say, “I don’t think pro-lifers should have to pay for or perform abortions.” My average classmates at Princeton were pro-choice, but they understood why I was pro-life and they respected my conscience. My average classmate still does not understand why I believe what I believe about marriage, and it’s precisely because they think the Westboro Baptist Church speaks for me that they think they need to limit my freedoms in the public square.

Silence kills? It’s incumbent upon us to speak for ourselves. I wrote Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom in part because I want my classmates to say, “I understand why Ryan thinks what he thinks. I think he’s wrong, but we can tolerate him. We can accommodate him.”

Tell us about the North Carolina law that is an accommodation. The law says any clerk who objects to issuing marriage license can notify their superior and be reassigned. The clerk can do all the hunting licenses or all the DMV records or the wills and estates. There are a lot of things going on at clerk’s offices. That way everyone will get a marriage license and no one will have a violated conscience.

The left did not like that? Activists on the left demagogued it, saying it promoted separate but equal status. That’s why North Carolina’s governor vetoed it but the legislators, unintimidated, overruled the veto. Kentucky could do something similar in regard to Kim Davis’s objections. You could have marriage licenses issued by the government but without an individual’s name and title.