Listen to Elder Oaks talk, “Religious Freedom.” BYU-Idaho has posted the audio of the talk as downloadable mp3 or podcast [iTunes link].

Please read or listen to it. There is so much more to the talk than what the selective outrage has focused on.

Religious belief is obviously protected against government action. The practice of that belief must have some limits, as I suggested earlier. But unless the guarantee of free exercise of religion gives a religious actor greater protection against government prohibitions than are already guaranteed to all actors by other provisions of the constitution (like freedom of speech), what is the special value of religious freedom? Surely the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion was intended to grant more freedom to religious action than to other kinds of action. Treating actions based on religious belief the same as actions based on other systems of belief should not be enough to satisfy the special place of religion in the United States Constitution.