quote:

Gutmann does not make clear how far she thinks the antidiscrimination measures she advocates ought to be extended to religious organizations. She does insist, though, that a group allow its members to be "educated" about alternatives to it, that "respect for culture cannot mean deference to whatever the established authorities of that culture deem right," and that religious groups "should not . . . be treated with special consideration." So should we conclude that the Catholic Church, say, ought to be forced to ordain women and that Catholic schools should be forced to teach children that there are alternative paths to salvation, regardless of what 2,000 years of popes have taught?

If we fear we know already how a frank and consistent liberal would have to respond, that is because liberals seem to have become exactly what they claim most to despise: a narrow-minded tribe of bigots, merely one "identity group" alongside others eager to impose their own idiosyncratic and highly contestable scruples on everyone else. Why the rest of us ought to regard such liberal tribalism as any better than the other kinds is a question to which Gutmann gives no answer.