Religious Liberty

Religious liberty is the right to hold, practice, and express religious beliefs — including acting on those beliefs in business, education, and public life — without government compulsion to violate those beliefs or private institutional retaliation for holding them. It is protected by the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause and by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and it is among the most actively contested civil liberties in contemporary American law and culture.

What it means

High-profile religious liberty cases have included: Christian bakers and florists compelled by state law to provide services for same-sex weddings against their beliefs; religious organizations compelled to provide insurance coverage for contraception; Christian schools required to admit students living contrary to their stated moral standards; and faith-based adoption agencies required to place children with same-sex couples. The legal outcomes have been mixed, and the cultural and institutional pressures on religious liberty are significant regardless of legal outcomes.

Religious liberty is also the principle at stake in social media and payment deplatforming of religious organizations and individuals — forced removal of accounts for stating religious beliefs is a form of compelled silence with real economic and social consequences.

How it works on Gab

Gab's free speech platform is one of the primary places where religious liberty is practically exercised online. Expressing traditional Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or other religious beliefs on controversial social topics — marriage, gender, sexuality, life — without facing deplatforming is what free speech means for religious communities. Gab's protection of this expression is a direct application of religious liberty principles to a social media platform.

Related terms

First Amendment protection is the legal basis. Christian faith and traditional values are what's being protected. Deplatforming of religious content is the threat it addresses.