Let us explore the supposed conflict between a right to discriminate and the right to hold religious beliefs and act on them.
Let's check in with Conway, where the matter pits the city council against state Sen. Jason Rapert.
What the city council did last week was adopt a policy amending its city government employee handbook. The new policy would bar discrimination in hiring and employment practices against groups including gays, lesbians and transgender persons.
That was not a general policy for the full city population, as Fayetteville passed for a time and Eureka Springs has enacted.
Rapert, conservative preacher and state senator representing the city, argued at the council meeting against the ordinance. He called the policy a "slippery slope" that would infringe on the free religion of persons believing homosexuality to be sinful.
He also said some man might call himself a transgender person and go into the women's restroom either to expose himself or gawk.
Wal-Mart, which has a similar corporate policy, has not reported such trouble in restrooms in its stores. A Conway woman told the city council that, in all her days, she'd never had anyone of either gender or of any declared sexual orientation accost her in a public bathroom in a naked condition.
Conway Mayor Tab Townsell said the issue of a transgender person's access to a public restroom exists already without regard for how the city government presumes to protect its own employees from discrimination.
In a few places, persons male by anatomy but identifying themselves as female have won the right under anti-discrimination laws to go into the female restroom in public facilities.
It's not a widespread practice. It's never been a matter of nude confrontation or sexual harassment, so far as we know.
Thus the issue is mostly alarmist. But I'm not going to write that it's out of the question that a male Conway city government employee would avail himself of this new policy to say he identifies as a female and will attend to his personal relief in the restroom with the women's sign on the door.
The rare and remote possibility hardly seems a compelling reason to deny any and all protections against discrimination to employees on mere account of sexual orientation.
Rapert's more general argument is that protections of gays will infringe religious freedom by forcing persons whose religious belief is that homosexuality is wrong to violate that belief by tolerating actions they deem sinful.
First: We tolerate sin all the time. All of us sin. All of us are protected constitutionally--or should be.
Second: In no conceivable way would a perceived sinner's right to escape discrimination impair the religious freedom of a person presuming to judge the perceived sinner.
A diner may sell a cup of coffee to a man cheating on his wife without being complicit in the infidelity.
In the state of Washington, a florist provided arrangements to a gay couple for years. But when she was asked to provide flowers for their newly legal wedding, she said she couldn't oblige. She said her religious belief was that marriage may only be between a man and a woman.
Here's the distinction that gets lost: The act she deems sinful is theirs. Her own action simply would be selling flowers. That would not make her a lesbian, much less a marrying lesbian. If selling flowers to sinners is a sin, then the woman is in serious trouble already.
The question is whether she may invoke her religious belief to discriminate against others because of her beliefs about their actions.
Free religion is a personal right. Under the establishment clause and by the separation of church and state, it is not a license to apply one's personal religion to another.
The Washington attorney general sued the florist and won in state court. The ruling has been appealed. Meanwhile, the florist has filed suit herself in federal court, saying that the state is infringing on her free religion.
All that will be worked out by the lawyers and judges. It has not much if anything to do with the Conway City Council's simple opting for fairness to all its employees in its handbook. And it has not much if anything to do with this state's new law saying no city in the state possesses the local authority to take a shot at enacting an ordinance protecting people on account of sexual orientation.
By the way: At 9 a.m. Sunday on the Talk Business and Politics show on KATV, Channel 7, you can watch my interview with Rapert on these and other matters. He and I are to sit for a recorded session Wednesday. I appreciate his willingness to do so.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 03/03/2015