 Čakaj, John, for bringing together a group of leading UK scholars in this field. And for mistakenly thinking that I'm part of this group, but I'm happy to be here, of course, and to enjoy your mistake of judgment. And before I start, I was told that I have a tendency to offend people, and I make my arguments. So, yeah, put this closure so you will not be able to argue that you're a tattoo audience. You will won't. This is what I will try to do. I will argue that accommodating conscientious objection is closely related to the question of the limits of tolerance. I will then describe the limits of tolerance when it comes to conscientious objection from equality laws, from laws that relate to dress codes, religious dress and symbols. I'm not sure that I will have time to talk about dress codes and religious dress, but I will try to talk about conscientious objection to performing abortion. All will be done within this conceptual framework. That will be an introduction to what I'm about to say. The relation between accommodating, in fact, tolerating conscientious objection and the limits of tolerance. I take it without trying to defend this definition that tolerance means making an adverse judgment about the other, an adverse judgment that resorts in having reasons to harm the other, yet refraining from acting upon these reasons. There are other definitions, but again, I'm not going to try to defend my definition here. I mean, I also argue that accommodating conscientious objection, also or typically by granting conscientious exception, is almost always an expression of tolerance, at least with regard to cases in which the law, the general rule, takes a moral stand about a certain issue. If the law doesn't take a moral stand regarding certain issues, if the law is neutral from that aspect, then exempting objectors from that law doesn't have to be an expression of tolerance. It can be, but it doesn't have to be. But if the law does take a moral stand, then exempting objectors from the law is always an expression of tolerance, which means that when we decide whether to accommodate conscientious objection or to exempt conscientious objectors, we've always made a decision about the limits of tolerance. And when we decide the limits of tolerance, we can take into consideration two types of consideration, content-neutral considerations or content-based considerations. Content-neutral considerations may include, for example, possible harm that may be caused to third parties and so on, and Robert will be talking about the harm principle shortly, so I will say almost nothing about content-neutral considerations. I will focus on content-based considerations. And why is it important to acknowledge that exempting conscientious objectors from the application of the law is always, almost always an expression of tolerance, because it means that when the state enacts a general rule and by that taking a moral stand regarding that rule, the state inevitably thinks that the conscientious objector is wrong. The state doesn't share the conscientious objector's values or their ways of balancing between values. That also means that the fact that the state almost always doesn't share the conscientious objector's values, the fact that the state almost always thinks that the conscientious objector is wrong can be a sufficient reason for not exempting the objector from the general rule. If the fact that we think the state, the legislation, if the fact that we think that the conscientious objector is wrong is a sufficient reason not to tolerate the objector, not to exempt him from the rule, then we won't have conscientious exemptions ever, because we always think that they are wrong. We need something on top of that. We need another reason why not tolerate the conscientious objector. That reason can be either content neutral, harm that may be caused to others or to publicators, but that reason can also be content based. And here I suggest the following, that would be the core of my arguments. The state must take a stand, a moral stand in cases of conscientious objection. And the case must do that by differentiating between two cases. Cases of type 1, in which claims for exemption or accommodation or toleration are directly based on refragrant, unjustly intolerant, anti-liberal and ultimately illegitimate claims. Case of type 2 claims, which are based on values that may be vashen on stupid, morally misguided, infunded, but are not necessarily unjustly intolerant or morally illegitimate. So we do take a moral stand, we do take into consideration the content of the conscience, but it's not enough to ask to disagree with the conscientious objector. We need to establish the fact that the conscientious objector is not just wrong, but also holds morally illegitimate values. I will use the case of conscientious objection to equality laws as an example of an example of objection of type 1. Type 1 claims, which are based on illegitimate value. The typical cases are cases in which we have homophobic, racist, disogenist views, which typically lead to refusal to provide services, excluding groups from the public sphere, applying separate but equal practices and so on and so forth. We are all familiar with these leading UK cases. Obviously there are meaningful differences, significant differences between these cases, but all these cases give rise to one common problem. In all these cases we have a refusal to provide a service because the service provider makes an adverse judgment about others, about others because of who they are, because of their sexual orientation, and these others may or may not be customers. This adverse judgment is being made on the ground of the customers or non-customers protected characteristics. So, regardless of the meaningful differences between these cases, they do give rise to one common problem. We have relatively easy cases. When the refusal to provide a service is a refusal to serve members of a protected group, that customer is a member of the protected group. The customer, in our case, is, in fact, gay. And here we have only two possible options. In all these cases, the conscientious objection relies on religious values, and this is, of course, not coincidental. We will come back to this point later. We only have two possible options when we have this clash. The freedom of religion allows religious believers to discriminate against others, in our case, gay customers, because they are gay. Or the principle of equality defines the limit of freedom of religion. My argument is that equality must prevail. And it must prevail not because I think that equality is more important, I do, but this is beside the point. It must prevail because the state already took this down and it enacted the equality law. And also because religion is not special and also because the purpose of equality acts and I will explain. We have equality laws and we have equality act. Not because the state wanted to prevent gay-friendly liberals from discriminating against gay people. We have equality law because the state wanted to prevent homophobes from discriminating against gay people. The state took a moral stand by enacting the equality act according to which equality matters, equality defines the limit of freedom of religion. If we exempt religious objectives from the application of the law, we will have to exempt each and every conscientious homophobic objective from the application of the law unless we think that religion is special and I hope that we don't think that and if we exempt all conscientious homophobic objectives from the application of the law, then why we have the law to begin with? More specifically, the purpose of the equality act was to target, I think, especially religious homophobic people because as a matter of fact, religious people are more likely to discriminate against gay people and again, what would be the point of enacting such a law that takes a moral stand if we exempt those who are the reason for the law from the application of the law? So this is a complex argument of both descriptive argument and normative argument. Descriptive argument, this is what the state already does. This is a choice that the state already made. Legislature already made that choice. It's for the court to apply this choice properly. It's also a normative argument that this is what the state should do anyway. As to the allegedly hard case, which is not a hard case at all, it is a hard case in a sense that the customer itself, or the fact that the customer was gay if he was gay, that wasn't the reason for refusing the law. The reason for the refusal was the content of the message on the cake. And here we have false comparisons that were offered by others, people who suggested that the bakery should be allowed, legally allowed to refuse the service in this case. And people suggested that, for example, a Catholic-owned bakery certainly should be allowed to refuse to sell a cake with a poor abortion icing. Or a Muslim-owned bakery surely should be allowed to refuse selling a cake proclaiming Jesus is our Lord. Or that a secular-owned bakery surely must be allowed to refuse selling a cake with a slogan, the fool says in his heart, there is no doubt. I accept the argument that these service providers should be allowed to refuse the service, but the comparison with the Ashes bakery case is completely misguided. Why? The refusal to provide the service first relied upon values which are not morally repugnant. There is nothing morally repugnant in Catholic view in being Muslim on being secular. So the reason for the refusal to provide the service resulted from not the identity of the customer, but the views of the customer. And there is a huge difference between discriminating against others because of who they are because of their identity and discriminating against others because of their values. The right comparison should be when we compare Ashes baking case to other cases is our refusal to sell a cake calling for supporting interracial marriage. People who refuse to support interracial marriage or simply they oppose interracial marriage so illegitimate values. And their refusal relies not on the views of the customer but on the identity of others. So we need to differentiate between identity and belief between illegitimate values and misguided values. There are many ways to explain the nature of the difference between identity and belief. I will focus just on one. Belief or opinion Belief or opinion may or may not be morally legitimate. Not all beliefs not all opinions, not all values are morally legitimate. Some are morally repugnant. Some do not deserve any respect whatsoever. Some are illegitimate. Identity, however, can't be illegitimate. Identity can't possibly be a reason for treating other differences. And this is what the sellers in the Ashes Bacon case think. They refuse the service because they made an adverse judgment about gays because they are gays and because they are gays they think that they have less rights. They don't have or should not have the right to be married as gays or who they are. This is a morally repugnant point of view that should never be granted anyway in a liberal democracy regardless of its religiosity. As I promised I will not have time to talk about religious stress but I will make a case about the type 2 of cases. Which is quite common. From Jesus' objection where we have misguided irrational maybe intolerant still legitimate values held by the conscientious objective. And we have a long list of typical cases which all fall within this category. I will focus on the case of abortion. And I will not say anything meaningful about the dual case just not to inform you that it exists if you haven't heard about this case before. How can we approach the issue of abortion or conscientious exemption from abortion in light of what I've just said. People who object to performing abortion do not do that because they hold illegitimate values. People object to performing abortion because they think mistakenly that the fetus has a right to life that the fetus is a human being and therefore abortion equals murder. Just to clarify my point of view on this point I'm a radical poor choice. I think that a woman should have the legal right to perform abortion at any point, any day until the last day of the pregnancy and even after the pregnancy it was over. Some might call it anegia but I would call it late abortion. But this view is beside the point. I acknowledge the fact that those who object to performing abortion hold misguided value yet legitimate value. There's nothing morally illegitimate in thinking that the fetus is a human being who has a right to life. Misguided, but legitimate. Abortion laws on the other hand are not neutral. They can't be neutral. They take a moral stand. When the state allows abortion or decides not to criminalize abortion and therefore it poses a duty on professionals to perform abortion. When the state does that it does take a moral stand but it's not a moral stand for abortion. It's a moral stand for choice, for autonomy. The moral stand is that women should have choice whether to have abortion. Which means that we can tolerate conscientious objection to performing abortions up until the point when the purpose of the law is frustrated. The purpose of the law in our case is to allow women choice to give them choice whether to perform abortion. And the purpose of the law must be allowing free and easy access to the abortion procedure. As long as we can guarantee easy, affordable access to this medical service there's no moral reason why not to tolerate those who mistakenly think that abortion is met. As long as we don't frustrate the purpose of the law and to come back to my original argument about the links between conscientious objection and the principle of tolerance even when we exempt professionals from the duty to perform abortion we don't do that because we respect them or because we respect their value on the contrary we are merely tolerating them. We think that they are wrong. If we thought much like conscientious objectors to abortion that abortion is met, we would not have enacted abortion laws to begin with. If the state enacted abortion laws the state must think that abortion is not met. That the fetus doesn't have a right to life. The state made this choice took this moment to begin with. The state merely tolerates those who think differently up until the point the purpose of the law is frustrated. And this is important because in the Dukant case we can find many quotes in which the court says we respect the point of view of other we respect freedom of conscience of others, we respect the values of those who object to abortion. No we don't. We think they are wrong. And we hope that we won't have too many of those around because there will be big trouble. We are willing to tolerate them as long as they are a very small minority. As long as our purpose, abortion laws choice autonomy is not being frustrated. Thank you very much.