Religion How? Deliberative Democracy and Proposition 8

Daniel Susser
SUNY – Stony Brook

Title:
Religion How? Deliberative Democracy and Proposition 8

Deliberative democratic theorists—Habermas chiefly among them—have lately been calling for a new openness to the influence of religious opinions on public political debate. And while I find many of their arguments persuasive in regard to some kinds of religious influence, I do not in regard to others. By examining the way certain religious organizations participated in the debate over California’s Proposition 8, I attempt in this paper to open up a conversation about what exactly we mean when we talk about ‘religion’ in relation to democratic politics.