Adam Gopnik: Power, Persecution and Pluralism

Published: July 10, 2015, 8 p.m.

Adam Gopnik wonders why religious people are feeling "persecuted" following the US Supreme Court ruling making same sex marriage legal in all fifty states. Can a religious person free to practice their religion actually feel persecuted? Are they just offended by the practices of a pluralistic society, or do they have a point? "Their complaint is, in its way, one that seems fixed in the political choices of the late Roman Empire: the only alternatives they can recognise as real are either power or persecution. Either you are the magistrate making rules, or else you are the martyr being sacrificed to them." Producer: Sheila Cook.