  There is a tension, then, between construals of Respect (2) that take seriously the claim that the distinctive feature of persons is their capacity to respond to reasons and construals of Respect (2) that can ground a principle of state neutrality that has the kind of wide scope associated with common understandings of the principle. There may be no cogent construal of Respect (2) that both does justice to the thought that persons are owed respect in virtue of their rational capacities and grounds a principle of state neutrality with wide scope. Moreover, Respect (1) remains an eligible interpretation of the norm of respect for persons and, as emphasized here, it cannot ground a principle of state neutrality of the sort that proponents of the principle traditionally have wanted to defend.