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Conservative Christian Cause Lawyering, Pluralism, and Same Sex Marriage

By ADF Alliance Alert

Hensley, Jonathan, Conservative Christian Cause Lawyering, Pluralism, and Same Sex Marriage (2009). APSA 2009 Toronto Meeting Paper. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1450896 The idea of ?cause lawyering? is usually associated with liberal legal advocacy groups. However, over the last three decades, conservative cause lawyers, including those advocating conservative Christian causes, have become more active and influential. Conservative Christian legal advocacy groups have been most successful in promoting their causes when they have accepted the notion of pluralism, and taken the position that the conservative Christian viewpoint is one voice among many that must be allowed to express itself in a pluralist society. This strategy has led to successes in issue areas such as abortion protestation and church/state issues in public schools. However, the increasingly prominent issue of same-sex marriage poses a challenge for these groups. With gay marriage now recognized in four states, and ?civil unions? or their equivalent in a few others, conflicts between religious freedom and recognition of same-sex marriage - and between competing versions of pluralism - seem likely. This paper reviews the use of pluralist arguments by Conservative Christian litigation groups, and then examines the arguments made by the same groups in several recent state supreme court cases concerning same-sex marriage. The results show that, for the most part, conservative Christian legal advocacy groups have abandoned their previous commitments to pluralism in their arguments against same-sex marriage.

Full post as published by Constitutionally Correct on September 02, 2009 (boomark / email).