One of the biggest myths many in our nation hold sacred is the idea that the government is neutral toward all viewpoints and worldviews. It isn’t. And the recent conflict pitting Disney against the Florida legislature demonstrates how, on some very important questions of morality, neutrality is not only impossible but also at odds with the ideals of a just political community.
It’s important to consider the claim of neutrality itself. A famous phrase from a 1943 U.S. Supreme Court decision, West Virginia v. Barnette, gets breathlessly invoked by civil libertarians as though it were American orthodoxy. In the opinion, Justice Robert Jackson wrote, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
