Samuel Cole

The key contention of this thesis is that freedom and equality have still not been secured for LGBTQ+ citizens in liberal societies. This thesis identifies several areas in which LGBTQ+ citizens still face injustice, in both the law and the family. It leverages the theoretical resources of political liberalism – a substantive normative ideal of freedom and equality – to diagnose those injustices and justify measures to secure the free and equal standing of LGBTQ+ citizens. Where those theoretical resources do not exist, this thesis develops them. The Introduction motivates the thesis’s focus on LGBTQ+ citizens in liberal societies and justifies the choice of political liberalism as the appropriate normative framework by which to analyse the injustice LGBTQ+ citizens in those societies still face. Chapters 1 and 2 critically examine the morality of denials of service to LGBTQ+ customers in the marketplace for same-sex wedding cakes. Chapter 3 identifies an expressive harm of conversion therapy and suggests a liberal approach for regulating conversion therapy on the basis of that harm. Chapter 4 develops a political liberal conception of self-respect. Chapter 5 uses that conception to argue for a duty on parents to refrain from expressing heterosexist beliefs to their children. The Afterword identifies that political liberalism, correctly understood, is not a formal doctrine of equality but a strongly expressive doctrine of equality. It also warns liberals that the future of LGBTQ+ rights is under threat amid rising homophobia and transphobia in liberal societies.

This paper analyses the moral structure of claims to religious exemptions that appeal to the logic of balancing, or the idea that one’s higher-order interests are unequally burdened relative to other parties’ higher-order interests and this burden requires easing through exemptions. In particular, I discuss whether the logic of balancing can justify a religious exemption in an idealised version of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. This case before the Supreme Court of the United States involved religious bakery owners claiming for a religious exemption from anti-discrimination law in order to refuse service to a same-sex couple of customers seeking a wedding cake for their wedding. I consider two kinds of possible interest that could ground balancing in this case: integrity-preservation and equal-opportunity. I conclude that neither can.