I’ve been watching with detached bemusement the whole manufactured brouhaha over the state of Indiana’s so-called “Religious Freedom” legislation that Governor Mike Pence finally signed into law on Thursday – legislation that the Indiana legislature was forced to water down in the face of an entirely media-spawned “Days of Outrage” that featured every sort of liberal blowhard from Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy, the NCAA, and – of course – homosexual and transsexual activist groups and organizations of all stripes descending upon Indiana like a pack of hungry hounds being tossed a ribeye.
It was oh-so sickening yet oh-so predictable.
First, let me say it’s a damned shame Republicans and conservatives feel the need to have to wade into such troubled waters like this, but the fact is that religion in America is under assault by the mainstream liberal media, the liberal courts, and, of course, gay-rights activists and organizations who somehow feel the need to make everyone miserable so they can feel good about themselves and the lifestyles and relationships they have chosen to participate in.
Think that’s hard? I don’t. Anytime you have florists, bakeries, and all kinds of businesses being fined and threatened with closure simply because out of their own religious convictions they denied to provide services to gay couples seeking to marry that should be an alarm bell to religious-freedom lovers everywhere. The horror of it! I mean, you would think that rather than declining to bake a cake or create a floral arrangement they had threatened to blow off the heads of prospective gay customers with a sawed-off shotgun. But that’s what you get in an America increasingly-driven by a liberal media hell-bent on instituting tolerance and acceptance when the very folks making these kinds of accusations as a means to drive the gay-rights agenda are anything but.
Listen, I don’t care who others choose to sleep with or spend their lives with. That’s their business. Are they living in sin? Well, orthodox and traditional Christianity thinks so, but then again so aren’t millions of other folks living in heterosexual arrangements outside of what the Church defines as “traditional marriage”. And when it comes to discrimination, let’s be clear about what discrimination is and what it isn’t. If a business refuses to do business with a group based on color, creed, sexual orientation, or whatever, that’s discrimination. But it is not discrimination to refuse to provide services to individuals based on behavior or requests you don’t agree with. Just as a church might, say, refuse to offer the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, and/or ask a couple (same-sex or otherwise) to leave the premises because they’ve been kissing and/or making a scene of themselves during a service, so may an up-scale restaurant also refuse to seat me were I to show up in a Harley-Davidson tank-top and jeans. Just as an atheist florist may not refuse to do business with Jews, Muslims, or Christians as a group, a bakery should be able to refuse a request for, say, a bachelorette party cake featuring a phallic symbol as its centerpiece.
There is little doubt that religion as a whole – and Christianity in general – is under attack in America. Unfortunately, that attack is coming from a relatively small yet extremely media-savvy and powerful group of activist organizations hell-bent on enforcing their own political agenda on everyone else. I believe most gay people are good and decent and just want to live their lives in peace like everyone else. Problem is, in this day and age where social media is everywhere you have activist groups whose sole purpose is to be offended and push folks around whenever they detect any kind of offense or potential for same. And their utter hypocrisy is beyond breathtaking: look at Apple’s Tim Cook – he’s all pissed off about the Indiana law because of its supposed potential for discriminating against gays, yet he has absolutely no problem with exploiting the poor by choosing to manufacture Apple products in sweatshops around the world and selling Apple products in Middle East countries where gays are not just discriminated against, but killed simply for being homosexual.
Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw summarizes the whole Indiana brouhaha far better and more eloquently than I ever could:
When Mike Pence decided to modify the RFRA to ensure that no business would “discriminate” against LGBT persons, he essentially caved in to the forces of narrative media machine and turned the law into little more than lip service which protects nobody. The more we allow a politically powerful minority which is favored by the media to cow both elected representatives and justices on our courts, the less control we have over our own lives. And worst of all, we will continue to dilute and poison the definition of actual discrimination until it becomes a laughing stock.
Indeed.
“But it is not discrimination to refuse to provide services to individuals based on behavior or requests you don’t agree with.”
Sorry, bro, but the law disagrees with you on that point.
A few points:
1. People who claim that their religious beliefs keeps them from “participating” in something against their creed are no more “participants” than the electric company who keeps the lights on or the gas company who heats the church. They are all vendors and vendors may not discriminate.
2. If you open your doors to the public, you don’t get to pick and choose which members of the public you may serve, unless you know them to be dishonest or unethical in their dealings.
3. You’ve to to ask yourself, what specific problem(s) are these laws designed to fix? The only answer thus far is that it would allow someone of faith to pick and choose (discriminate against someone else) based solely on their sexual orientation.
In the big scheme of things, I am one of the most tolerant guys you’ll ever find. I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t try to take my life, liberty or property through the use of force or fraud, and I promise to treat you the same way. Two or more consenting adults are free to do what they want within the rules I articulated above, as far as I am concerned.
But you’ve got to question the religious beliefs of those who would discriminate against others that were also allegedly created equal to them at the time of their birth.
Comment by Dave Richard — April 4, 2015 @ 7:00 am
And to your earlier point about being refused service while dressed inappropriately at a high-end restaurant?
You can always change clothes and come back and be served.
How does the gay couple change from being gay?
Comment by Dave Richard — April 4, 2015 @ 8:35 am
Sorry, bro but you are the one that’s wrong. If a Christian bakery, pizzeria, or florist hung a sing out front saying “No Gays Allowed” that would be discrimination. Choosing not to provide a particular form of service isn’t discrimination. A Jewish bakery refusing to do a “Heil Hitler” cake for a white supremacist group would be perfectly in their right to decline that request.
The only reason why this whole thing has become a big deal is because certain LGBT activist groups seek this kind of crap out. Any gay couple wanting to get a cake for their wedding could go to the local Fry’s and buy a cake. Or, they can order a cake from anywhere and buy their own little groom-groom or bride-bride figurines and stick then on top of the cake themselves.
This is crap political correctness and LGBT activism pure and simple. I don’t want to change gay people to anything, I simply want them to simply respect the religious convictions of others.
Comment by The Great White Shank — April 4, 2015 @ 7:37 pm
Nope, the Jewish bakery could legally refuse because the white supremacist group is the one initially being discriminatory, and that discrimination isn’t based on the supremacist’s religion. You can refuse if the organization making the request is the one discriminating in the first place.
Gays aren’t discriminating against the florist or bakery in question.
Yes, there is too much sensitivity regarding this issue, however, injecting your religious beliefs into a business transaction is discrimination – plain and simple.
Just as there are no absolutes to freedom of speech (you may not yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater), there are no absolutes to freedom of religion. That freedom ends when it is used to discriminate against someone’s actions that are not illegal, dishonest nor unethical.
Comment by Dave Richard — April 4, 2015 @ 8:52 pm
The bottom line here is that the goal of LGBT activists is to eliminate tax-exempt status for churches that refuse to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies. Is that what you want? because that’s coming. Just as LGBT activists are looking to eliminate from any set of laws marriage as defined between a man and a woman. And once that is eliminated you have a slippery slope. Why not two men and three women? Why not a woman and her pet hamster? A guy and his Harley Davidson? You might laugh, but this is where it is all headed. The moment you eliminate any kind of protection offered to people baaed on their religion and teachings you might as well forget everything this country was founded upon.
With all due respect, if you don’t see the direction that this is headed you’re daft.
Comment by The Great White Shank — April 4, 2015 @ 10:22 pm
Actually, I’d like tax-exempt status eliminated from ALL churches.
As to legalizing marriages other than one man and one woman, I have no problem with what two (or more) consenting adults want to do with their marital lives. Their choices – their problems.
(And note I said two or more CONSENTING ADULTS, which shuts down the hamster and Harley nonsense)
Again, as long as they are not trying to take my life, liberty or property through the use of force or fraud, I don’t care what anyone else does.
Comment by Dave Richard — April 5, 2015 @ 7:02 am