Religious Intolerance at the Townhall

I was blissfully unaware that the Democrat presidential candidates had a townhall on CNN last Thursday, focused on LGBT issues—which, in case you haven’t figured it out, means focused on religious discrimination. But Ben Shapiro did his job by suffering through it for the sake of Friday's podcast at The Daily Wire.

He’s not usually very emotional. Rational is really a good descriptor of his approach to things. But I think this got him as riled up as he gets. Because, when presidential candidates say they’re coming to take away your rights to your beliefs and to share those beliefs with your children—you don’t sit quietly and acquiesce.

Ben Shapiro, from Friday, October 11, 2019
screenshot from here

It started with Beto O’Rourke, who seems to be making a campaign of speaking aloud the things we all know Democrats intend, but that they keep quiet about so as not to wake up the voters. Here’s the question and his answer:

Moderator: Colleges. Churches. Charities. Should they lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage?

Beto: Yes. There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break, for anyone, any institution, any organization in America that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us. And so, as president we’re going to make that a priority. And we’re going to stop those who are infringing upon the human rights of our fellow Americans.

Let’s clarify a few things. He’s talking about a lot of organizations. The university I went to, Brigham Young University; Hillsdale College, Liberty University, Baylor, Notre Dame—maybe a majority of private higher education. He’s also talking about taking away your right to attend the church you believe in—unless the church is willing to change its doctrines to suit President Beto. And any religion-affiliated charities—they should be shut down, because they're so evil.

Note that, for the most part, these institutions do nothing to prevent LGBT people from associating with anyone else they choose and doing whatever they want. They aren’t taking away any rights; they’re just not offering any particular services that conflict with their beliefs. If you want a same-sex wedding, go to a church or reception facility down the road that caters to what you want.

But Beto is saying that the very holding of the idea he disagrees with is tantamount to disqualifying behavior. So, all churches, schools, and charities, regardless of their behavior toward LGBT people, must be punished.

But he’s saying just not rewarded by tax-exempt status; that’s not the same. Right? Let’s connect the dots. I’ll let Ben Shapiro do that.

Once you remove their tax-exempt status, and you say they don’t have tax-exempt status anymore, you treat them like a normal LLC. Well, if you have anti-discrimination laws in states like California, or if you’re the Democratic Party and you’re trying to pass the so-called Equality Act, which is really a way of cracking down on religious institutions and forcing people to abide by social rules that they don’t want to abide by (and in violation of the First Amendment—blatant violation of the First Amendment. The Founding Fathers are spinning so fast in their graves, they’re drilling directly to the core of the earth at this point). The fact is that the goal here would be to, then, kick these religious institutions from 501(c)3 tax-exempt status institutions into normal LLC territory and then declare that those LLCs are in violation of non-discrimination policies and shut them down as violative of law.

We’ve already seen them do this with Arlene’s Flowers in Washington State, where, if you are a florist who is religious and only will cater to weddings that are traditional, you’ll be shut down or fined. The same with photographers. We’ve seen it with Jack Phillips, the baker in Colorado. We’ve seen all of that. Again, we’ve seen the Democrats and the left do this.

They’re going to do that to your church. They’re going to remove tax-exempt status, and then they’re going to shut it down.

Beto O’Rourke wasn’t the only one letting long-held beliefs escape into the spoken word. Corey Booker helped with that. Here’s what he said:

Corey Booker at Thursday's CNN Town Hall
screenshot from here

Corey Booker: And so, for me, I cannot allow, as a leader, that people are going to use religion as a justification for discrimination. I could respect your religious freedoms but also protect people from discrimination. And, as I said in an earlier answer, I grew up in a household where my parents talked to me about how people used to use religion to justify the discrimination against African Americans

How sad for him that he grew up in a household that taught him lies. Religion is the reason slavery ended. Historically, did some slaveholders try to justify their behavior with religion—probably. But not successfully. Because God is no respecter of persons. And, we should add, ALL of those who held those beliefs were Democrats. Republicans—and a majority of religious people among them—gave their lives and treasure to put a stop to it.

It’s practically an aphorism today among those who seek power through tyranny, poverty, and savagery that “religion” is the evil thingin itself. Just like pagan kings in ancient times who set up their own religions—often making themselves the personification of god—as a means to control the beliefs, and thus the behavior, of their people.

Here’s Ben Shapiro’s not exactly calm response:

“I cannot allow”? Who the “F” are you, dude? You cannot allow? Guess what? That’s not your right.

My right is to act in ways that don’t harm anybody else. And if I choose to have an institution where I am going to elevate heterosexuality above homosexuality, that is not harming anyone else. You don’t have to participate in that institution. It’s a free country.

I mean, you have institutions where you don’t tolerate my religious beliefs. I don’t expect that when I walk into a mosque that suddenly they’re going to start practicing Judaism. I don’t expect that when I walk into an atheist meeting, they’re going to start keeping kosher. And I don’t expect that when I walk into the offices of the Human Rights Campaign, that they’re going to start handing out literature from Leviticus.

Why in the world would you not express the same degree of tolerance for people who disagree with you as people you agree with? If you are only tolerant of people who agree with you, this is a good indicator you are not a very tolerant person.

Religious freedoms—and, along with that, parental rights to the upbringing of their children—are at risk whenever there’s a chance of a tyrant gaining power.

Walt Heyer on the Candace Owens Show
October 13, 2019
screenshot from here

On a related issue, this Sunday Candace Owens talked with Walt Heyer. He’s been through a lot. In his 40s, he transitioned, including surgery and hormones, to live as a woman. The problem was, he always knew those outward changes didn’t actually change who he was. There were things he needed to address, from childhood, that had made him reject who he actually was and try to be something else. Eventual therapy led him to deal with those things. And he transitioned back, as much as that is possible, after seven years.

The original change cost him his family and his job. So to admit that was a huge mistake was very hard. If only he’d had the therapy he needed in the first place! It was after just the second visit that his doctor diagnosed him with gender dysphoria and told him the treatment was to transition through hormones and surgery. He barely knew him. He explored nothing about co-morbidity—other problems typically linked with transgender (and other LGB) issues.

Since transitioning back, he has been outspoken, and has created a ministry to help those who have transitioned and find no solution to their problems there.

His issues started very young, when a grandmother used to dress him up, and keep it their secret; and she would tell him how cute he was, and give him affirmation for pretending he was a girl. When his parents found out, they discontinued contact with that grandmother. But an uncle sexually abused him, and his parents didn’t believe him. So he came to believe both that there were things he couldn’t tell adults, and that there was something wrong with who he was.

That experience is not uncommon among people with gender dysphoria. An idea gets planted very early. If talked through, or even left alone, often the mistaken idea gets resolved and the person goes on to lead a normal life. But the transgender activists today seek to intervene, even against parents’ wishes, and castrate and mutilate the prepubescent child, making them forever unable to live a normal life.

Here’s what Heyer says about our children and schools:

When you begin to introduce these ideas that you can change your gender, change your sex, you begin the early sexualization of children, which is abhorrent. It shouldn’t be done, and it shouldn’t be allowed.

We’re interfering with their natural development. These are children that are exploring every opportunity and trusting adults to guide them and to nurture them properly. But introducing all of this sexuality, and all of these things at such an early age, is very disturbing.

Today I work with hundreds of people who’ve been through this. And what I’m seeing is, up to 50% of them have been sexually abused. And so, sexual abuse is kind of a common issue that happens with this ideology.

A healthy psychological society is built on families. And kids are the core of the next generation. And if we’re ripping our kids apart in school with this ideology, we’re ruining even the next generation. And this is why it’s so critical to address this issue.

We should not be teaching children in school that they can change genders. It’s not a vending machine for genders. This is a critical issue that needs to be removed from the school. LGBT material doesn’t need to be in our public schools. Reading, writing, arithmetic is what we need in our schools, not LGBT agenda stuff.

You can’t give in on one uncompromisable issue and expect that the others won’t follow.

We are in a culture war. While we’re set up to allow a great deal of difference of opinion in our society, the intolerant side has to be prevented from gaining power over us—because they do not allow dissent.

Those of us who honor God, life, and family (and we could add the other two: truth and property ownership) are heretics in the religious worldview of Corey Booker and Beto O’Rourke—and all the other Democrat presidential candidates, none of whom would dare to disagree. That means we have an obligation to ourselves, our children, and civilization as we know it to keep these intolerant religious bigots out of power.

Perceiving What Is Real

Sunday morning, while I was getting ready for church, I had BYU Radio playing, and there was a short clip of a 2014 talk by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. I looked up the whole thing later, but here’s the transcript of the clip I heard[i]:

It was less than a century ago that most astronomers assumed that our Milky Way galaxy was the only galaxy in the universe.[ii] They supposed all that lay beyond our galaxy was an immense nothingness, an infinite void—empty, cold, and devoid of stars, light, and life.

screenshot from here

As telescopes became more sophisticated—including telescopes that could be launched into space—astronomers began to grasp a spectacular, almost incomprehensible truth: the universe is mind-bogglingly bigger than anyone had previously believed, and the heavens are filled with numberless galaxies, unimaginably far away from us, each containing hundreds of billions of stars.[iii]

In a very short period of time, our understanding of the universe changed forever.

Today we can see some of these distant galaxies.[iv]

screenshot from here

We know that they are there.

They have been there for a very long time.

But before mankind had instruments powerful enough to gather celestial light and bring these galaxies into visibility, we did not believe such a thing was possible.

The immensity of the universe didn’t suddenly change, but our ability to see and understand this truth changed dramatically. And with that greater light, mankind was introduced to glorious vistas we had never before imagined.

He then introduces the main question of his talk:

It seems to be a trait of humanity to assume that we are right even when we are wrong. And if that is the case, what hope is there for any of us? Are we destined to drift aimlessly on an ocean of conflicting information, stranded on a raft we have poorly pieced together from our own biases?

Is it possible to find truth?

He then uses the earlier telescope observation as a metaphor:

Scientists were struggling to understand the breadth of the universe until instruments became sophisticated enough to gather in greater light so they could understand a more complete truth.

The Apostle Paul taught a parallel principle regarding spiritual knowledge. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,” he wrote to the Corinthians, “for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" [1 Cor. 2:14]

In other words, if you want to recognize spiritual truth, you have to use the right instruments. You can’t come to an understanding of spiritual truth with instruments that are unable to detect it.

That got me thinking. Because I am able to perceive spiritual things even when many in the world don’t—and further, claim that I don’t.

I was thinking of another analogy. We had some books when our children were young, called Magic Eye. There would be a picture of apparently chaotic color. But if you stared at it long enough, and relaxed your eyes a certain way, suddenly a three-dimensional image appeared.

It took some practice. For us,, in our family after we’d figured out how to see the image on one page, we’d get quicker at seeing it on the next.

Not everyone can manage to see the image. But it’s there, whether a person perceives it or not. As an aside, there’s a half-decade-old lecture by Jordan Peterson, called “Reality and the Sacred,” in which he discusses how miraculous it is that we can perceive anything. Sight, for example, is so far impossible for artificial intelligence; there’s too much complexity involved in perceiving and understanding what we see. 

Anyway, it’s hard to explain the process of seeing that extra-dimensional picture exactly. You stare. You relax your eyes a bit, let go. And it happens. That’s not very exact. And it’s not very helpful to those who are struggling to see and cannot.

Those of us who have spiritual experiences, who can see the metaphorical additional-dimension image, encourage the non-see-ers. There are methods and steps that work for many of us:

·        Suspend disbelief and be open to the possibility of something beyond your five senses.

·        Pray.

·        Read spiritual texts that have record others’ spiritual experiences and lead many to have spiritual experiences from reading them.

·        Listen to the thoughts, ideas, impressions, or feelings that come in answer to prayer, or as inspiration even in between prayers.

·        Act on these promptings.

·        Record the promptings and results.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time listening to debates between believers and atheists. The atheists are not persuasive to me, because they dismiss my experience simply because they have not had those experiences. [Writing on this theme is adding up. See here, here, here, and here, for example.] 

I don’t know why they don’t get them and I do. Sometimes it might be due to willful blindness on their part. Sometimes they’re decent people just not looking at things in a way that allows them to see the extra dimension that I see. But their not seeing something I’ve experiences doesn’t convince me that I’m somehow mistaken. The evidence is in my favor.

image from Wikipedia

Remember the children’s story Horton Hears a Who, by Dr. Seuss? This elephant, with enormous ears and excellent hearing, and a kind heart, hears the sounds of the people on a world that exists on a dust speck on a clover. He knows they’re there, and so he protects them. But the non-hearers all around him, while they could simply ignore him and let him do his thing, are determined to stop him from believing he hears something. They threaten, and connive, and work to destroy. Why? Does Horton’s belief (knowledge that they can’t perceive) harm them?

In the end, Horton is able to convince the Whos down in Whoville, the people on the speck, that they need to rally and make enough noise to be heard. The final addition of one small child is enough to make them heard by the ears of all the others in Horton’s world—similar to the development of telescopes so we could see distant galaxies.

What if the Whos hadn’t been able to muster enough noise? Would they have still been there? Yes, Horton knew it, whether the others knew or not. (It’s fiction, I know, and therefore not actually real. I’m talking within the realm of this story.)

The inability to perceive does not determine whether something exists. This is particularly evident among believers in God and those who don’t.

It is not limited to our day; this has happened many times in history. But today, again, there is a vocal segment of nonbelievers that act like those conniving bullies in the Horton story. If believers commit to live better lives than they otherwise would—more honest, more committed to family, more hardworking, getting rid of corruption and trying to remove evil tendencies from their hearts—why should that garner the ire of nonbelievers?

Yet that’s what is going on when the attack companies like Chick-fil-A, or Hobby Lobby, or small business owners like florist Baronelle Stutzman or baker Jack Phillips.

Then there’s this story about a Christian charter school in Maryland that was eliminated from the voucher program for holding biblical views on sexuality. 

There’s this story about Amazon discontinuing selling books by a Catholic psychologist, with a large body of work spreading over decades, because of pressure from LGBT lobbyists. 

This isn’t confined just to America. Canadians, a supposed freedom of religion nation, just passed a law prohibiting public employees from wearing religious symbols or clothing at work—no Christian crucifix, no Jewish yarmulke, no Sikh turban. 

Further in that same story, the Ontario Court of Appeals has ruled that all doctors must give up their religious beliefs or get out of medicine:

Doctors must abort, euthanize, provide transgender interventions or any other legal medical procedure—or find a doctor who will, called an “effective referral.” In other words, Ontario forces doctors to take human life or provide services he or she might consider mutilating, even if the doctor considers it an egregious sin—either that, or be ghettoized into areas of practice such as podiatry in which no such requests are likely to be made. And if they don’t like that, as one judge put it, they can get out of medicine altogether.

Elsewhere in the world, such as Syria, Christians are persecuted to the brink of extinction, making everything I talk about here seem minor. Still, I believe we need to address the relatively minor attacks while that is what they are.

We mentioned Chick-fil-A above. They’ve been persecuted for years. Recently, during a gay pride parade in New York, a Chick-fil-A restaurant was vandalized, and the vandals ironically accused Chick-fil-A of being the haters. 

There are sparks of goodness, still, because so many people want to be good and are trying to figure that out for themselves. One man tweeted this response to the Chick-fil-A attack: "I’m gay. I eat Chick-Fil-A. I love Chick-Fil-A. They have different beliefs than I do. We can agree to disagree on things. Doesn’t mean I hate them. Not seeing tolerance. Not seeing love."

Another good story is that the near-century-old Bladensburg WWI Veterans Memorial, in the shape of a cross, is being allowed by the Supreme Court to stand.

Bladensburg WWI Veterans Memorial
image from here

The odd question is why there would be so much hatred against a religious symbol in a country that is founded and dedicated on Godly principles—including, and maybe especially, the freedom to believe as we choose.

Like those bullies in the Horton story, I’d like them to stop with their screed long enough to explain why they are so desperate to stamp out the possibility that other people perceive something they have not.

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[i] The entire talk is here, with both video and transcript. There’s an additional video within the text of a shorter clip, with illustrations, which I used for screenshots.

[ii] See Marcia Bartusiak, The Day We Found the Universe (2009), xii.

[iii] See Moses 1:33,35 in The Pearl of Great Price, and note that this was revealed in June 1830, nearly a century before Edwin Hubble announced his discovery of distant galaxies.

[iv] See, for example, the Hubble Heritage Image Gallery at heritage.stsci.edu/gallery/gallery.html.

On the Side of Reason and Science

In Canada, the courts ruled that protecting the wishes of LGBT people is more important than protecting the inalienable God-given right to religious freedom. 

Trinity Western University
image from here

It was about accreditation of a Christian university, Trinity Western University, which has students sign an honor code that they will not have sex outside of marriage. (The Christian university I attended, BYU, here in the US has that in its honor code.)  And they define marriage as between a man and a woman. So, homosexuals who aren’t married are treated the same as heterosexuals who aren’t married. It’s unclear whether any “married” same-sex couples wanted to attend the Christian school but felt excluded by that honor code.

Lower courts supported the school’s right to set its behavior code according to the religious beliefs of the institution. But the high court disagreed. Here’s how the high court stated its reasoning:

"The [law society of British Columbia, which denied the accreditation] has an overarching interest in protecting the values of equality and human rights in carrying out its functions. Approving or facilitating inequitable barriers to the profession could undermine public confidence in the (law society's) ability to regulate in the public interest."

Meanwhile, remember Jack Phillips, the cake baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, whose case went to the Supreme Court? Even though SCOTUS ruled in his favor, the state of Colorado is after him again. This time it’s for refusing to make a cake celebrating a person’s “transition” from male to female. 

Jack Phillips
screen shot from here

The first ruling was narrow—about the state’s stated prejudice against him for his religion, quite specifically. So, they’re at it again, and this time claiming it’s about him discriminating against a person. Granted, that’s what they said the last time. He didn’t actually discriminate against anyone; all comers could buy what he was willing to sell. But he was unwilling to make and sell a product that celebrated something against his religious beliefs. This was in character for him; he also refused to make Halloween-themed products and a variety of other messages he found offensive.

So, the Supreme Court spent an inordinate amount of time talking about what was a cake  and what was a message. It was twisting what he was doing to be about the people—whom he served in every other way—instead of about the message. A cake that celebrates a same-sex “wedding” is not the same thing as a cake that celebrates a traditional, real wedding. It was always about the event.

So how are things different this time? The Court says he’s discriminating against people. As First Assistant Attorney General LeeAnn Morrill said in court: "If you make product 1 for customer 1, you must make product 1 for customer 2."

But Jack Phillips didn’t refuse to serve the customer, who was transgendered; he would have sold any product on hand, or products for other purposes. He only refused the particular request for a cake that celebrated changing genders. Again, a cake celebrating a birthday or a graduation is not the same as a cake celebrating what can be seen, quite literally, as body mutilation.

In other words, the state is attacking Jack Phillips again for his religious beliefs. The only difference might be if they refrain more carefully from saying so.

In both of these cases, there’s an assumption being pushed on society, using the courts as well as media, to insist that religious freedom is a “license to discriminate.” 

But when you get the emotional hand-wringing out of the way, the discrimination is decidedly against religious people. And activists for the LGBT etc. group are not looking for equality; they are looking for special prominence, promotion, and power.

A few months back, Tucker Carlson interviewed a woman who was pressing for parents to stop having boy or girl babies, and just have “theybies,” non-gendered until the child is four years old or so when the child then decides what it is. Carlson says, “We acknowledge biology and nature as real. Right?” The woman doesn’t actually respond to reality; she just keeps insisting it’s irrelevant: “It’s just a little human.”

Tucker Carlson (left)
screenshot from here

Yes, it is a little human. But humans, as other species of mammals, come in two sexes, biologically determined. Maybe the reason (and let’s use that word in its full sense) the woman looks foolish is because she denies reality and claims that will make society better.

In all these cases, someone is denying science and nature. And the side recognizing the common sense of science and nature is being vilified as bigoted. Those claiming to ask for “fairness for all,” through SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) laws penalize people who believe in biology—and common sense.

And, let's be clear, religious believers are on the side of science and reason.

Partial Victory for Religious Freedom

It’s June, the Supreme Court ruling season. Today the Supreme Court announced its ruling in the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission case. It was a 7-2 ruling in favor of Masterpiece Cakeshop.

But it was a very narrow ruling, answering almost none of the questions surrounding the issue, and mainly just telling the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that they were wrong to express their hostility toward religion during their prosecution of the baker.

screenshot from this video

It’s good that the case informs this particular Commission, and possibly similar commissions in other states, that religious people have the same rights as other people.

But it is so narrow that the Court says nothing about protecting a creative person’s First Amendment rights if the state has a “compelling interest” it sees as greater than that person’s religious freedom, and it prosecutes without expressing hostility.

So I’m glad it’s not worse, but I wish it were better.

That seems to be how we feel most of the time when so much extra-Constitutional power is granted to these nine unelected judges.

At the bottom, there’s a video from November about the case. But here’s a quick review.

A Colorado appellate court ruled in August 2013 that, when Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips declined to design and create a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple, he had violated their civil rights. This was in 2012, two years before same-sex “marriage” was legally recognized in the state; the couple got married in Massachusetts, where it was legal.

The couple was not denied service; only their particular commission for a custom product for a particular event was declined. Nevertheless, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission prosecuted and ruled that Phillips must “take remedial measures, including comprehensive staff training” on how conscientious objection must bow before anti-discrimination law in same-sex situations, and to “file quarterly compliance reports” with the state regarding the mandated retraining.

The appeal by Phillips claimed that whether to create a custom cake for a same-sex “wedding” is protected by two parts of the First Amendment: freedom of expression, and freedom of religion.

The ruling doen’t really settle either the freedom of expression or freedom of religion questions. But it gives a nod to respecting the rights of religious people.

Court drawing of Justice Kennedy announcing the ruling
image from here

In his ruling, Justice Kennedy showed this usual pattern of behavior by the Commission:

On at least three other occasions the Civil Rights Division considered the refusal of bakers to create cakes with images that conveyed disapproval of same-sex marriage, along with religious text. Each time, the Division found that the baker acted lawfully in refusing service. It made these determinations because, in the words of the Division, the requested cake included “wording and images [the baker] deemed derogatory.”

In other words, the Commission didn’t always require a baker to act against conscience. However, when it came to this case, the religious conscience was not respected.

Here’s what the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had testified, which was at issue:

Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the holocaust, whether it be—I mean, we—we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to—to use their religion to hurt others.

One, the couple was not hurt. They were politely sent where they could get the services done by a willing provider. Two, religion isn’t rhetorical; it is deeply held belief. Even non-religious believers have deeply held beliefs, which constitute their religion, whether they call it that or not. Three, religion is an effort to live a good life, not to do evil. It was religion that led to the elimination of slavery, after it had existed in most cultures for millennia. Further, it was not religion that led to the holocaust, but hatred and bigotry—something differing from the Commission’s hatred and bigotry only in degree of power.

What is despicable is this Commission’s distortion of history in its zealousness to malign religious people.

So, at least the Court got it part right.

SCOTUS has no business deciding whether a baker should be forced to bake a cake—for any purpose. We don’t want the Supreme Court determining nitpicky laws compelling how we conduct our personal lives and businesses. So, in some ways it’s good the Court did not make a sweeping ruling.

An excellent analysis of the opinions is found on the SCOTUSblog, by Amy Howe. But I’d like to walk through the issues, just for clarity.

Two inalienable First Amendment rights were at issue: the free exercise of religion, and freedom of speech, often referred to as freedom of expression. These go up against a state’s “compelling interest” regarding another civil “right.”

The “right” these inalienable and also enumerated Constitutionally protected rights were up against was the “right” to buy a custom product from a particular creative businessperson regardless of that person’s willingness to create it.

That one’s not enumerated in the Bill of Rights, or anywhere else in the Constitution. That doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t a right. Any God-given rights not enumerated are still vested in the states and the individuals.

But there is a simple way to know whether you are looking at a God-given natural right: were you born with it? You’re born impoverished, ignorant, and naked; you have a claim on your parents to care for you until you can care for yourself. But there’s no natural right to cake-by-the-maker-of-your-choice. You can’t have that as a right without enslaving someone else to provide it. So it’s not a right.

The issue isn’t really about getting a cake; the cake artist (his cakes are literally edible works of art, not just pretty, fancy cakes) politely recommended other cake shops that could meet the needs of the couple.

another screenshot from this video

The issue isn’t really about service to homosexuals, either. The cake artist gladly served all customers, and had a long history of doing so. It was a specific event—the same-sex wedding—that he did not want to use his art to promote.

As David Harsanyi wrote this about the case a year ago: 

Everything in his shop was available to gays and straights and anyone else who walked in his door. What Phillips did was refuse to use his skills to design and bake a unique cake and participate in a gay wedding. Phillips didn’t query anyone on his or her sexual orientation. It was the Colorado civil rights commission that took it upon itself to peer into Phillips’ soul, indict him, and destroy his business over a thought crime.

I’d like to try to translate this in terms that seem less inflammatory than “he just hates gays, and that’s wrong, so he should be forced to do what they ask.”

I have a friend who is an excellent artist. He makes his living doing works of art and selling them. Much of his work is on commission. That means a person comes to him (it used to be in a shop/studio, but now his studio is at his home). And they describe the work they are hoping he can create. Sometimes these are portraits or family groups. Sometimes they are religious works or historical pieces.

He doesn’t take every commission that comes to him. Sometimes it’s a matter of timing; if he takes on too many, he could overwork himself, and the quality would suffer, which would probably bother him more than the clients, but it’s an important factor.

But he also needs to do things that are worth putting the artistic effort into.

Suppose someone came to him asking for something he might find ugly. It could be something with nudity, or explicit sexual behavior, or something anti-Christian, or something racist. Even if the work would have no words on it, art expresses a message. And he might not want his name—or his style and reputation—attached to something repugnant to him.

It might even be that the person asking for the commission is personally disagreeable to him. That happened with an artist who was asked to paint a portrait of Pres. George W. Bush; he declined, because his personal views were at odds. That may have meant he wouldn’t have put his heart into doing the work. Or it might have meant he was afraid people would interpret his work as approval of someone he disapproved of, so it would seem untruthful to him. Or maybe life is just too short to put time and energy into something you don’t want to do. Someone else did the portrait, which turned out to be better for everyone.

So that’s how artistic endeavors work. If you want something creative/artistic done for you, you find someone whose work you like, and you ask to commission the work. The artist gets to say yes or no based on whatever reason he might have—and he doesn’t even have to tell you why.

The only difference with the bakery is that it is a shop; all comers are invited to come in and buy his wares. Still, he’s free to take on a commission for custom work or not. Owning a shop does not make someone a slave to every party who walks in the door.

Good business says he’ll do what he can, and if he doesn’t take on a commission, he makes suggestions of where the customer can go.

This kind of creative situation is also true for florists, photographers, T-shirt printers, stationery printers, and others related to wedding and other services.

It’s pretty clear that, if declining the message is “approved” by this Commission or some other ruling or influential body—a message such as something racist or profane, or even of an opposing political viewpoint—the creative person can turn it down without legal repercussions.

I think it would also be clearly legal for a Muslim baker to turn down work that goes against her beliefs—maybe even if she turned down a same-sex “wedding” cake. Certainly such a baker could turn down anything pro-Israel, or even anything pro-pork industry. A sensible customer would recognize and respect who they’re dealing with.

So what is it that makes same-sex “marriage” celebration, at a time when such a “marriage” wasn’t even a legal reality, a state interest of such great import that it overrides the most essential—and therefore first enumerated—of self-evident natural rights?

We don’t know, since SCOTUS doesn’t actually answer that question with their opinion. In fact, they leave all other creative religious people at risk of enslavement—as long as those prosecuting them don’t overtly mention their antipathy toward religion. “Try again, but be careful not to verbalize your religious bigotry next time,” is what the Court seems to be saying.

It was the narrowness of the opinion that allowed it to be 7-2, rather than 5-4 or 4-5. So, again, I’m torn. The Supreme Court has no business ruling on this issue; they had no business creating same-sex “marriage” in Obergefell. They have overstepped their authority repeatedly on issues related to same-sex “marriage,” and have put religious people in this predicament by their cavalier overreach.

But if the Court has any useful purpose in upholding the Constitution, they would have done well to say, “Of course you can’t enslave a human being to do work that directly violates his conscience, simply to serve a vocal minority group favored by the elites in media, academia, and socialist ideology.” That would have been helpful.

If we didn’t have activist judges on the Court, we might have gotten a more satisfying ruling. Gorsuch and Thomas seemed willing to give it.

But, as long as Kennedy is on the Court, he will rule with his gut on critical issues more often than with the Constitution. Justices Breyer and Kagan were only with Kennedy on this because the Colorado Commission had verbalized its meanness.

Meanwhile, Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor were perfectly aligned with a pro-slavery ruling, as long as it makes them look like they favor a popular minority.

The best way to settle these divisive issues? Stop repeating the lie that religion is simply a cover for doing evil. Stop assuming evil of everyone whose opinion is different. Actually tolerate. Respect differences of belief, and don’t prosecute over them. Because prosecution over belief is tyranny, with all the ugly that attaches to that word.

Refusing Service

I’ve mentioned here a couple of times that all our kids (plus a daughter-in-law) spent their teenage years and beyond working at Chick-fil-A restaurants. They worked for the owner of two of the top five Chick-fil-As. They worked hard, and fast. But were expected always to be courteous, respectful, and service oriented. During rush hours, that could be challenging, but that was just the way those places were run.

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.

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.

The Soup-Nazi, from Seinfeld

Here’s what I think: a businessperson should have the right to refuse service to anyone. Like the soup-nazi in Seinfeld.  By virtue of owning his own business, the proprietor gets to decide what legal exchanges of his services for money he is willing to make.

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.