Non-heterosexual marriages and the ‘registers’ of conscience. Pitting truth and dignity against freedom

Vazquez Cintron, Melisa Liana

Writing - Original Draft Preparation

2025-01-01

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Abstract

Conscientious objection claims have a long and varied history, spanning military service, abortion, euthanasia, contraception, vaccination, and more. Religious belief is frequently called into play as the motivation behind the objection. This essay focuses on the religiously grounded objections made by public officials tasked with registering same-sex marriages (or unions) in Italy, France and the US. An analysis of these cases sheds light on an underexplored aspect of these conflicts: the pitting of unilateral visions of both truth and freedom against each other to the subsequent impoverishment of both. When conscientious objection is claimed, the legal argumentation has mainly addressed whether/how to accommodate/support subjects—public officials with religious convictions—whose religious freedom is encroached upon in the performance of their duties. When objections are not accommodated, the argument is on ‘practical’ grounds (state employees must obey the law without exception) or ‘dignitarian’ or ‘identitarian’ grounds (the dignity or identity expression of the denied party is threatened). Religiously oriented arguments likewise claim that the dignity and identity of the objectors is being denied. None of these positions, however, address the relational implications of what is being assumed as ‘truth’ and what as ‘freedom’. ‘Dignity’ in these contexts becomes a kind of wild card whose relational nature is not considered. Instead, there is a silently operating moral architecture which defines truth, freedom and dignity in advance, invalidating and negating all three. There are instead relational understandings that could reanimate these terms to more successful ends. However, until this dynamic is addressed, meaningful solutions that respect the democratic constitutional contexts that host them will be difficult to achieve.