Will Same-Sex Marriage Collide With Religious Liberty?
By PETER STEINFELS
Published: June 10, 2006

Is same-sex marriage on a collision course with religious liberty? It wasn't surprising that before the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage died in the Senate this week, several senators supporting it raised that danger.

But when highly respected legal experts on civil liberties, including ones favoring same-sex marriage, raise the same possibility, their concerns cannot be dismissed as partisan debating points.

Marc D. Stern, whose many years handling religious freedom cases for the American Jewish Congress have made him an expert in the area, can hardly be identified as a conservative agitator. Yet he firmly believes that legal recognition of same-sex marriage will make clashes with religious liberty "inevitable." the rest