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Stephen Prothero 7:20 p.m. EDT March 29, 2015

Supporters and opponents of Indiana's Religious Freedom bill at the state Capitol in Indianapolis.(Photo: Robert Scheer, AP)

After Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed a state religious liberty bill last Thursday, liberals lined up to ravage this "anti-gay" legislation as a "license to discriminate." Indianapolis-based Angie's List said it was shelving a headquarters expansion plan that would have brought the state a thousand jobs. Hillary Clinton and Apple's Tim Cook objected. Even singer Miley Cyrus weighed in, writing that "the only place that has more idiots than Instagram is in politics."

I support gay marriage. I support anti-discrimination laws protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) citizens. But I also support religious liberty. These commitments sometimes conflict. But it is a sad day when there is so little support for the liberties of U.S. citizens, especially among liberals who should be their staunchest defenders.

Religious liberty took a big hit in a 1990 Supreme Court decision that went against American Indians fired after they ingested a hallucinogen in a Native American Church ritual. A law can prohibit any form of worship, Justice Antonin Scalia argued for the majority, as long as it is "neutral (and) generally applicable."

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Outraged over this reasoning, which would have outlawed using wine at the Catholic Mass during Prohibition, Congress responded (nearly unanimously) in 1993 with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Signed by President Clinton, this act instructed the judiciary to return to its prior approach, in which burdens on individual religious liberty would be unlawful unless the government could show that the burden was necessary to achieve a "compelling government interest" and that the law doing so employed the "least restrictive means."

After the Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that the RFRA applied only to the federal government, states responded with mini-RFRAs requiring this "compelling government interest" test in their religious liberty cases. Of these, Indiana's RFRA is the 20th.

There is no excuse for refusing to serve a lesbian couple at a restaurant and to my knowledge no state RFRA has ever been used to justify such discrimination. But if we favor liberty for all Americans (and not just for those who agree with us), we should be wary of using the coercive powers of government to compel our fellow citizens to participate in rites that violate their religious beliefs. We would not force a Jewish baker to make sacramental bread for a Catholic Mass. Why would we force a fundamentalist baker to make a cake for a gay wedding?

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