The title of David Masci’s Pew Research Center memo is encouraging: “States that allow same-sex marriage also provide protections for religious groups and clergy who oppose it.” Alas, the memo documents virtually the opposite.

The memo is a brief overview of what’s happened to religious freedom in the 12 states that have legislated same-sex marriage and the 4 states where judges have decreed marriage redefinition. What Masci actually documents is that just about all that the legislatures or courts have protected is freedom for “religious groups and clergy” not to “solemnize or participate in same-sex weddings.”

How generous is such religious freedom protection? Masci notes that some states have written in an exemption for religious fraternal societies that provide insurance (such as the Knights of Columbus), and that two states protect certain faith-based social-service agencies with religious convictions about same-sex marriage–but only “as long as they do not receive any state funds for the program in question.” That’s not very broad protection!

Beyond that, the memo notes that there is not any protection for “businesses who, for religious reasons, might not want to provide services (such as catering or wedding photography) to gay and lesbian couples.” Oh. What’s more, it turns out that it actually makes no difference whether or not legislators bothered to put into their laws a provision protecting clergy from performing weddings because “even without any of these state-level safeguards, legal scholars say clergy and religious groups are already protected by the U.S. Constitution . . . .”

In other words, despite the title of the memo and the claim in its first paragraph that in the states that have legislated same-sex marriage “politicians and others have also debated how to best protect religious freedom,” little meaningful protection in fact has been provided. What’s been written into the laws-the freedom for churches not to perform or celebrate same-sex weddings-already existed. In sharp contrast, the protections really needed–for religious organizations not to have to treat same-sex marriages as valid–have rarely been granted.

The memo should have been entitled, “States that allow same-sex marriage do as little as possible to protect religious freedom.”