The defenders of laws such as Indiana’s don’t like to talk about this. They act as if no one’s conscientious religious beliefs ever dictated discrimination. The defenders of these laws don’t want to acknowledge — what is surely true — that even today there are employers who do not want to hire women because their sincere religious belief is that women should keep the home and raise the children. The government does not allow those people to act on their religious beliefs. There is a sense in which that kind of coercion is tragic, but it is also progress. You can, legalistically, insist that the government’s interest in preventing race and sex discrimination is, in the language of those laws, a “compelling” interest that overcomes the religious obligation, but when did it become so compelling? Beliefs such as those, about women, would have seemed thoroughly mainstream just a few decades ago. They are not mainstream anymore, because they changed under pressure from society and the law.

That is what we are seeing now: one of those moments in history when pressure from the larger society pushes against religious belief and insists that believers, at least when doing business with the public, not act even on sincere objections to same-sex marriage. Already we have seen those religious objections diminish as religions accommodate themselves to the principle that gay people should not be discriminated against. But the process is incomplete. Of course there is room for debate about the pace of change, and there is always an imperative to act respectfully toward those with whom one disagrees. But this is a difficult, challenging conflict, the birth pangs of a new wave of equality. We should not expect it to be easy, and we should recognize it for the momentous event that it is.