This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

A thoughtful commentator recently expressed surprise that in a political season prominently featuring talk about a wall, there had not been much invocation of Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall." Particularly the thought that the narrator mischievously wants to plant in the mind of his neighbor:

"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down."

The poem is a work of art, not a political lesson, and its message is complex. However, this thought is a good starting point for considering a recent proposal to enact a new law in Salt Lake City that would make it against the law for business owners to deny public accommodations, if doing so is motivated by the potential customer's sexual orientation or gender identity.

Pursuing inclusive laws that promote equality and fairness is a laudable goal. However, will the public accommodations proposal reflect these values, or will it send the message that people who live and think differently than the city's political leaders are not welcome? The former will build strong communities, but the latter will build walls of inequality, intolerance and unfairness.

For instance, will Salt Lake's public accommodations proposal treat the identities of traditional religious believers and LGBT individuals similarly under the law, or will it uphold one as loving and vilify the other as discriminatory? If it's the latter, then the city will be building a wall of inequality.

Will Salt Lake's public accommodations proposal encourage both traditional religious believers and LGBT individuals to express their core beliefs about marriage, or will it endorse one belief while punishing expressions of the other? If it's the latter, then the city will be building a wall of intolerance.

Will Salt Lake's public accommodations proposal protect both an LGBT individual's right to hold ceremonial celebrations and a traditional religious believer's right to not be coerced into participating in such ceremonies? If it only protects one, the city will be building a wall of unfairness.

Salt Lake's consideration of a public accommodations law presents an opportunity. Doing things the right way — protecting the identities, expressions of core beliefs and rights of both LGBT individuals and traditional religious individuals — broadcasts nationwide that we are enlightened enough to recognize the common humanity in all people, even those we fundamentally disagree with. Doing things the wrong way walls out people who hold sincere beliefs on marriage and sexuality that are contrary to the majority of political leaders. It also signals that claims to inclusiveness, equality and fairness only extend to "those who think like us."

This kind of exclusionary line-drawing would in fact violate those claims. It would also be at odds with the spirit, if not the letter, of Utah's balanced legislative approach to employment and housing law, which was designed to protect everyone's expression of sincere beliefs about marriage and sexuality.

Another careful exercise in line-drawing will involve the difficult question of private facilities in the context of public accommodations. Here again the Legislature has given the example in housing and employment: give employers appropriate discretion in figuring out how to accommodate the reasonable privacy interests of employees. Surely, that could be done for customers as well.

Though sometimes the words can be misused, inclusion and equality demand that we aim higher than simply walling out either those with sincere religious beliefs or those in the LGBT community. At a minimum, they require careful thought about what laws are needed and the likely implications of those laws, keeping in mind that some of those implications may not be readily apparent. This careful, balanced approach avoids giving unnecessary offense and will send a signal that all are truly welcome in Utah's capital city.

It's worth getting right.

William C. Duncan, J.D., is the director of Sutherland Institute's Center for Family and Society. Derek Monson is director of public policy at Sutherland Institute.