It gives me no pleasure to note that the discussion around same-sex marriage is continuing to obey what writer and blogger Rod Dreher christened the “Law of Merited Impossibility”, which goes something like this: “legalising same-sex marriage will result in no negative consequences for religious liberty or freedom of conscience – and those bigots will deserve it everything they get.”

An article in Christianity Today from three law professors, titled (somewhat optimistically) “How to Protect Endangered Religious Groups You Admire”, makes the case for a First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), to protect religious groups who take stances deemed ‘unacceptable’ from being deprived of the tax exemption that the US gives religious nonprofits, or penalised in other ways.The legislation is necessary, the writers argue, because pressure to shut these groups out already mounting.

Last fall, for example, the US representative for a Boston area congressional district told the president of Gordon College that he would do everything in his power to force the small liberal arts school to change its beliefs about sexuality. In California, government actors have forced student ministry organizations off campus because those organizations would not accept “all-comers” into their membership and leadership structures, even those who rejected their religious commitments (and in 2010, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court backed those government actors in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez). And within days of the Court’s decision in Obergefell, New York Times columnist Mark Oppenheimer wrote that the government should eliminate tax-exempt status from “organizations that dissent from settled public policy on matters of race or sexuality.”

You can see the same pattern at work in the announcement by a Conservative MP that the UK’s “Extremism Disruption Orders” (what a title) would be deployed against teachers who oppose same-sex marriage. In Mark Spencer’s own words:

“The new legislation specifically targets hate speech, so teachers will still be free to express their understanding of the term ‘marriage’, and their moral opposition to its use in some situations without breaking the new laws. The EDOs, in this case, would apply to a situation where a teacher was specifically teaching that gay marriage is wrong.”

In Ireland, the head of the Broadcasting authority only a few months ago said that same-sex marriage was now “settled law”, and that debates about it and related issues wouldn’t have to be subject to normal balance rules. He walked that back rather quickly, but I honestly wonder how long that will last.

This whole attitude is terrible, not just for discussions of same-sex marriage, but for discussions of anything. In the words of the Christianity Today writers:

Mr. Oppenheimer (the New York Times columnist) failed to acknowledge that in a pluralistic and democratic society, government routinely recognizes the tax-exempt status of organizations that differ from “settled public policy.” For example, not that long ago, the Human Rights Campaign (a major gay-rights advocacy group) was tax-exempt when it differed from settled policy on matters of sexuality; the same is true of organizations, like the Sierra Club, who push for changes in environmental regulation, or anti-war groups, who oppose US military policy. One of the principal purposes of civil society organizations is to challenge “settled public policy.”

People who employ these kinds of tactics seem to believe that the shoe will never be on the other foot: that, being righteous and right-thinking, they will never be the ones having government power used to freeze them out.

And, in the long run, they are always wrong.