Separating Church and Market: The Duty to Secure Market Citizenship for All

Abstract

This Article intervenes in the debate concerning the conflict between religious liberties and LGBTQ rights. Strictly focusing on the market, it makes three salient contributions. First, it reveals the appearance of a preemptive legal strategy that has started to generate unprecedented jurisprudence in lower courts. This latest shift is the peak of an ecopolitical practice called “market evangelism,” which the Article defines as the organized project that uses market activities, entities, and tools to evangelize society by excluding LGBTQ parties from the marketplace. Second, the Article adds to the current argument regarding the harm that market evangelism inflicts. It depicts the recent concerted efforts to conceal the damage and explains market evangelism as an intentional effort to humiliate LGBTQ people, causing intense and enduring harm that spreads from LGBTQ individuals to their entire community. Third, the Article proposes an original resolution particularly tailored to the market. It argues that business activity that relies on corporations and contracts must include an attached obligation to serve all; this is the price of what the Article conceptualizes as market citizenship. Significantly, the proposal goes beyond adding strong arguments for the necessary passing of the Equality Act. It further includes a novel call to utilize private law, namely corporate law and contract law, to bar market evangelism and secure a market open for all.