“Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins,” or so said Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg about the right to exercise your personal religious belief back in 2014. Yet two hundred and twenty-five years before, an assembly of men determined that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Today, in 2016, we are still seeking to strike a balance between whose skin and whose nose.
In fact, a curious “challenge” from last year shows how this tension is coming increasingly to the forefront. For the first time, the Holy Bible made the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom’s “Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books” list—challenges that requested removal of the books because of content or appropriateness. Though the list includes books that discuss topics like teenage homosexual love in Two Boys Kissing, this year’s challenges had an explosion of objections because of “religious viewpoint.” Some say this list is a reflection of social concerns, and that the inclusion of the Bible shows the waning of public tolerance for religious expression. What is clear is that religious expression and religious tolerance have squared off for a twelve round heavyweight title match, and Corporate America is square in the middle of it.
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