Banning My Family Won’t Make You Free

Like many proud parents, I have chronicled my daughter’s growth on social media. People from all parts of my very diverse life have commented on photos and told me how much they have enjoyed seeing her grow from baby to high schooler. And yet, for all the affection they feel toward my family, some of them are still ok with states like Tennessee banning others like me from having this wondrous experience. Why? Because of an imaginary version of religious liberty.

Tennessee has kicked off 2020 by becoming the 10th state allowing adoption agencies and foster care providers to ban LGBT parents, even as those same institutions receive federal and state monies. The actual fact of children going unplaced every year matters less than the religious beliefs of the people being paid to find homes for those kids.

The logic is this: It is a burden on people of faith to have to serve those whose morals they disapprove of; making them deal with fellow humans they believe to be sinners would cause them to sin themselves. Not requiring them to do so allows for their religious freedom, according to this logic.

That all sounds very persuasive until you look more closely. Actual liberty means that people may privately do a lot of things and make a lot of choices within the bounds of the laws we all share. But we are not talking about private…