When daughter Social Sphere worked there, they had a regular
customer whom workers, in privacy, referred to as the Dragon Lady. She was kind
of scary—long fingernails that looked like talons. Very short masculine
haircut. Sometimes dressed in business suits. Always intimidating.
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| Not the Dragon Lady's real hand, just for illustration, found here. |
She always had the same special order:
- Chicken strip salad
- No tomatoes
- Extra cheese
- Two packets of sunflower seeds
- Two dressings: one Italian, one ranch
- Put the fork in the bag, so she didn't have to get her own
- Tortilla strips
- And don’t you dare put in croutons!
She would spiel off the list very fast. If the worker asked
for anything to be repeated, she refused. “You should have gotten it the first
time.” Plus condescending roll of the eyes. Then she’d say, “And I’m in a hurry,
so you’ve got three minutes.”
The way a fast food place works is, standard salads are made
an hour or two ahead of rush hour. A custom salad has to be made fresh, so it
takes more time—while everything is moving at top speed behind the counter. So a
normal person would expect their custom order to take a little extra time. But
they’re done cheerfully—I know, because I always ask for custom salads. But it’s
kind of presumptuous to ask—for free—a lot of extras. The extra sunflower
seeds, the extra dressing, the tortilla strips, were all extras. But this order
happened day after day, without any extra charge, and without argument.
If the order didn’t meet the Dragon Lady’s criteria, she
didn’t just ask for it to be made right; she publicly berated the employee and
told them how stupid and incompetent they were.
Workers braced for her. The experienced ones knew the order—and
got it right! She wouldn’t go to that worker again. Social Sphere watched her
purposely leave her line to go to a different worker, to avoid her because
Social Sphere knew how to do it flawlessly. The Dragon Lady aimed for new,
inexperienced workers. Apparently so she could have an excuse to loudly berate
the worker and let everyone know how unhappy she was.
Who knows why it should be the highlight of someone’s day to
buy lunch with a heaping helping of bitterness. But that was the Dragon Lady.
One day she did this routine, maybe more severely than
usual, with a nervous newer worker. She yelled. She fumed. She put the worker
through more than anyone should go through for just a couple dollars over
minimum wage.
The owner was there. He stepped in. The confrontation went
something like this: “You come here every day. We’ve given you good service. We’ve
been nothing but respectful and kind. But you berate my people. You’re loud and
abusive. This has been going on for more than a year, and we’re done. You’re no
longer welcome in my store.”
In our household, we talked about how affirming it was for
employees to have a boss who would stand up for them, to let them know they
were worth protecting, even from a paying customer. What a good man!
So, I’m asking the question, did the owner have the right to
refuse service to that woman?
Under what circumstances does a proprietor have the right to
refuse service to a customer?
Because the courts (and the court of public opinion) have
been saying lately that, if someone comes in to your place of business, asking
for a product or service that you typically do, you must do it for them. Governor Pence of Indiana has gone out of his
way to say that the recent legislation he signed—pretty much the same as the
federal version and twenty or so other states—means people have religious
protection, but not when it comes to
refusing service to anyone.
RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) legislation was
highly praised in the 1990s when Bill Clinton signed it. It has a long history
or working relatively well. In that time, it has never been used to protect a
person’s bigotry. (A good explanation and graphic about how RFRA works is
available here.)
But suddenly people, even in states
that have RFRA laws, feel the need to vocally boycott Indiana because of its “anti-gay”
legislation. Which means that the agitprop is working.
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| The Soup-Nazi, from Seinfeld |
I’m not in favor of bigotry. And I understand there were
times, particularly in the South, where places refused service to significant
segments of the population because of their race. But it hasn’t been acceptable
in civilized society in decades. (Technically, a civilized society treats all
people according to their character.) If business owners are stupid enough to
cut off entire segments of the population over something so insignificance as melanin
content in the skin, they should suffer the loss of business from those people—and
the loss of other customers who don’t want to support a business owner who won’t
et their friends come with them.
Without any government intervention, at least in today’s
world, business owners should make their own decisions about what they’ll do
and whom they’ll serve.
But government has interfered. Instead of everyone being
treated equally before the law and society, some people are granted “protected
class” status.
Did I mention that the Dragon Lady was black? That detail
wasn’t relevant to how she was served and why she was refused future service.
Her behavior was the defining factor. But what if she had decided to sue,
claiming she was refused service because she was black?
Then it becomes an expensive and painful process for the
restaurant owner. Even though he would probably have prevailed, because she had
been served, as are all races in that store in our very demographically mixed
part of the country, and there were many witnesses to her behavior. But the
owner would be in danger simply because the Dragon Lady belongs to a
special protected class.
Making protected classes in the first place was probably a
mistake. Philosophically, it’s against the equal protection provided by the
Constitution. But it was a more particular mistake to make people with same-sex
attraction a protected class. Their differences are not inherent. They are not
genetic. They are not readily visible. They are differences in behavior.
And people can have reasonable differences of opinion about what behaviors are
acceptable—with some few areas of general agreement, like “thou shalt not murder” and “thou
shalt not steal.”
In many religions, including mine, sex outside of marriage
is always a sin. And marriage is as
it has been since Adam and Eve, between a man and a woman, a connection
intended for eternity. While people with same-sex attraction are God’s children
as well, they have the same expectations: complete abstinence outside of
marriage, and complete fidelity within marriage (to a marriageable person of
the opposite sex). We believe this is
the best arrangement for bringing children into the world and raising them in
righteousness. We believe God encourages families for our success and
happiness. And social science bears out that truth: family of a married mother
and father who raise their children are the basic unit of civilization.
That doesn’t mean we demean or avoid anyone who believes
differently, or behaves differently. But it should mean that we cannot be forced
to engage in activities that we, in
our hearts, perceive as celebrating and supporting a sin.
No one should be expected to give up their right to
freely choose what they will do simply because they enter into business to make
a living. Nor should there be a lot of debate about whether the thing being
asked is too much of an imposition. For instance, is baking a cake designed to
celebrate homosexuality really an imposition? But taking photography at the
ceremony--that would be participating. Our perception shouldn’t matter; the
businessperson’s perception is what should matter.
There’s a growing list of impositions on peoples’ religious
freedom (pretty good list here, starting a couple of pages in). And there’s particular prejudice against Christians, with laws being
enforced arbitrarily and intrusively. Overly zealous news/agitpropists have
even sought out people with religious beliefs so they could target them and put
them out of business just for having beliefs, not even for having refused any
service to anyone.
Muslim bakers in Dearborn, Michigan, are not required to
bake cakes for same-sex “weddings.” (Steve Crowder illustrates this, with
humor, here.) Non-Christian
bakers aren’t required to bake cakes that express beliefs against their beliefs—a
court just ruled in Colorado.
I’m assuming this case was done as a
test, not because someone actually had an event where those messages would be essential.
But it’s clear the court judges the messages being requested: some are
protected, along with their protected classes, and some messages are unpopular
and therefor unprotected by the courts.
What happens when a person planning a same-sex “wedding”
gets respectfully denied? They take a few extra minutes to go elsewhere and get
what they want. What happens when a business owner is required to use their
arts and skills to celebrate an event that goes against their religious beliefs?
They go out of business rather than offend God.
That is not justice.
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