Compromise is not a remedy for human rights

From Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner in their op-ed with the New York Times:

Both sides, then, have unfinished agendas. L.G.B.T. advocates want broader civil rights protections than the Supreme Court’s relatively narrow decision provided. Religious-liberty advocates want some carve-outs for faith-based institutions. Both sides could — and indeed might — hope to win in the courts. But that strategy is unpredictable and risky, since the Supreme Court is closely divided and protective of both L.G.B.T. civil rights and religious liberty. In any case, waiting for the courts would take years, if not decades, during which friction would only grow.
There is an alternative. In December, the American Unity Fund and a consortium of mostly conservative religious groups unveiled the Fairness for All Act, an L.G.B.T. nondiscrimination bill that seeks to model a negotiated compromise. The bill would provide extensive nondiscrimination protections, but, unlike the Equality Act, it couples them with carefully defined carve-outs for religious charities and schools and for retailers with fewer than 15 employees.

You are free to believe what you want—nobody should be able to be persecuted for their beliefs. But when your beliefs cause you to act in a certain way, those actions are not sheltered by your beliefs: they are born from them, and are not protected.

There is one other thing that dialogue, negotiations and accommodation can provide that the culture-war mentality doesn’t offer: the chance to widen the aperture of understanding between people of different life experiences and perspectives, and to learn from others. That has certainly been the experience in our own friendship, between a gay atheist and a straight Christian.
Our point is not to endorse all the specifics of the Fairness for All Act, much less to predict its enactment. Our point is that the bill provides a starting place for negotiation. It opens the conversation the country needs to have now, when fracture and polarization seem to be reaching unsustainable levels. It demonstrates a meliorating, positive-sum style of politics. In an age when politics is laced with hate and contempt, that is worth quite a lot.

Compromise is sorely lacking in this country, I agree. What I find so disconcerting is that you view this as compromise. Defined as “an agreement or a settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions”, I ask you what concessions are being made? What is being compromised when the compromise enables the expansion and application of religious liberties? How can anyone compromise or negotiate their human right and feel a sense of compromise has been met?

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jamie@example.com
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