Liberals have come up with a variety of rationalizations for their turn away from the American tradition of religious liberty. Over at Bloomberg View I look at a few of the latest, including the claim that conservatives are abusing religious-liberty claims in ways that impose costs on third parties.

Catholic nuns seek to avoid facilitating contraception; some Christian bakers don’t want to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples because they think it would amount to blessing their union. These complicity-based claims inflict harms on other parties: employees who want contraceptive coverage, gay couples trying to get married.
But religious exemptions often entail costs to other parties. Letting churches discriminate on the basis of religion will cause some people to miss out on jobs. Letting priests refuse to testify about what they’ve heard in the confessional could cause serious harms to some people. Allowing conscientious objectors out of participating in wars — something we’ve historically done precisely because those objectors don’t want to be complicit in activity they consider immoral — means that other people have to make sacrifices that are potentially even bigger than having to pay for contraception out of pocket, or to find a baker a few blocks away.