When the Supreme Court
made same sex marriage legal in 2015,
many people thought
the conflicts over gay rights were over.
LGBT people are represented widely
in movies and television shows
and a few even hold political office.
The culture wars are over, right?
Not exactly.
In 28 states, it's perfectly legal to fire someone
for being gay.
And some religious people
believe they are being persecuted for their beliefs.
The two sides haven't found a way to work together.
And the fight is getting a lot nastier.
"The Supreme Court can do many things,
but the Supreme Court cannot get Jesus Christ back into the grave."
That's all I'm asking, is a safe place for me
and people like me to go to the bathroom.
You've probably heard about recent religious freedom bills,
like laws in North Carolina and Mississippi
and the bill that got vetoed at the last minute in Georgia.
New legislation is creating protections for people,
mostly Christians, who have religious objections
to homosexuality, same sex marriage,
and transgender identity.
At the heart of these bills are tough questions about
rights and discrimination.
Should a baker have to bake a cake for a gay couple
if he believes homosexuality is a sin?
Here's what's showing up in these laws.
Some bills concern bathrooms.
This is what we saw recently in North Carolina
where the legislature is requiring transgender people
to use bathrooms that correspond
to their biological sex at birth.
But this is very difficult to enforce.
The government can't really expect teachers
or state employees to check peoples genitals
to make sure they're using the right restroom
There really isn't any way
for anybody to operationalize this rule.
This is just literally
a sop to people who are afraid of something
that they haven't really seen
or ever engaged.
Another protects clerks and judges
who don't want to marry gay couples at court houses
or sign their marriage licenses.
Remember Kim Davis?
She was the Kentucky clerk
who refused to sign her name on gay marriage licenses
and was jailed for refusing to do so.
Finally,  some for-profit business owners
don't want to provide services
to same-sex marriage ceremonies.
This includes photographers, bakers, florists,
DJs and more.
But, in many places, these claims are somewhat ironic.
In most states, businesses can already choose
no to serve LGBT people.
I don't believe it's morally decent
to say to two gay guys who come in for a cake,
"Ok, you need to go down the street to this other place."
As you might imagine,
LGBT advocates want to change that.
They want to make it explicitly illegal in all 50 states
for employers to fire people
or landlords to refuse to rent houses or apartments to people
or businesses to refuse to serve people
because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
So far,
there hasn't been much dealmaking with religious conservatives.
Utah is the only state that's passed
a so called "Compromise Bill"
which combined LGBT protections,
with exemptions for religious groups.
"I would be very disappointed if
if I had a bill for religious freedom
that did not include anti-discrimination."
So in the United States,
we're facing a new set of questions
about what rights mean
and about what discrimination means.
The question is how you put those two ideas
in conversation with one another.
Where one person's rights stop
and another person's rights begin.
What's the difference between discrimination
and protection?
