Is Religious Freedom Merely a Right to Discriminate?

Over at Public Discourse, I have an article on Religious Freedom as Freedom to Discriminate?

There I argue, among other things:

The current suite of religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws could be swept aside and replaced with more robust protections of religious freedom defined not by what is exceptional but a positive account of freedom of thought, speech, conscience, and association. In the long run, exemptions should be replaced by vigorous reasonable legislation for religious freedom modelled on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The aim would be to simply put into law what religious communities and organizations have always—until recently—had the freedom to do. However, until such a time, anti-discrimination exemptions are in many places the only bulwark protecting religious communities against litigation and punitive actions by state actors who are attempting to cabin religious liberty in favour of a deliberate totalizing agenda.