By now you probably know
The lawsuits are based on the belief that declining to be part of that event was discrimination based on sexual orientation.
However,
there's a problem with the argument that she discriminates on the basis
of sexual orientation. She has consistently and happily done business
with people who identify as gay for years, including the individuals
involved in this case. She considered them friends.
Still,
the perpetrators of these lawsuits have found a way to rationalize
their attempts to ruin the life of a perfectly decent grandmother whose
life is a model of how to be charitable without abandoning your
convictions; something we used to value in this country.
Since
there is no evidence that she actually discriminates based on sexual
orientation, they have redefined what discrimination means in order to
make it illegal to have a business and disagree with them about same-sex
"marriage".
The
old definition of discrimination meant that you couldn't have a policy
of refusing to business with a protected class. Meaning, you can't say
"no Mexicans allowed" or "Protestants only".
The
new definition of discrimination means this: if you offer a particular
service for any purpose, you must offer that same service for every
purpose. In her case, if you're willing to do a wedding for a man and a
woman, you must be willing to do a wedding for two men.
Where their argument stops no one knows.
Is
Mrs. Stutzman obligated to decorate for a Satanic wedding as well? Can
she be forced to do a wedding for a thruple (three people of various
genders or maybe no gender at all)? If a family member was to be
involved in a wedding she did not personally support, will she be
compelled to attend at gun point if the family member was willing to pay
for her services?
Or maybe gay is the only thing you're not allowed to say no to? No one knows, yet.
Whatever your business is, stop and think about how this new understanding of "discrimination" could affect what you do?
If
you're a general contractor, surely you can imagine a contract you
would decline out of personal conviction. The new ISIS community center
perhaps.
You're
a website designer. You probably want the right to decline to build a
support group page for pedophiles or a memorial site for "Great, but not
forgotten, Nazi heroes"?
Every
lawyer has both a right and obligation to decline a case if he feels he
cannot provide zealous representation for the client.
You think the Christian thing to do is to decorate for the gay wedding? Great, have a great time decorating for it.
But
we should be able to agree that people shouldn't be forced to choose
between their business and their faith. That's what they do in Cuba,
China, and Russia.
Once
the government has created a religious litmus test in order to run
certain types of businesses, are they not discriminating on religious
grounds?
Of course they are. But from their perspective, this is good discrimination necessary to prohibit bad discrimination.
In
other words, "you shouldn't be able to use your religion to hurt
people, so I should be able to use the government to hurt you."
In
their mind, the harm associated with needing to find another florist is
a greater harm than bankrupting a grandmother because of her beliefs
about homosexuality.
In
one sense we should be sympathetic. There's an old saying that "hurt
people, hurt people". When you encounter someone who is genuinely
interested in harming another person who offended them, they are
inevitably acting out of a lot of real pain. The homosexual community is
filled with people who have real stories of real pain because they have
been legitimately wronged.
But
that doesn't justify their attempts to use political leverage to
destroy the lives of good people in an act of general revenge.
There's
an important parallel to the Islamic Terrorists who shot the
cartoonists in Paris. While so many on the left are insisting that Je
Suis Charlie, in reality, the left in America has been playing the same
game with (thankfully) different weapons for a long time.
Without
question, mass murder is orders of magnitude worse than the tactics the
militant gay lobby has been using to make examples of the people who
disagree with them.
But the root problem is the same.
A society cannot remain free if the people within the society seek the personal destruction of those who offend them.
The
law exists to provide a remedy for real harms. But if we now believe
that finding another florist after a polite conversation is an injury
requiring the attention of our nation's leadership we might as well drop
any remaining pretense of adulthood and return to our pacifiers.
The
essence of tolerance is the ability to disagree agreeably. Barronelle
Stutzman has proven to be a model of how to do that. The other
folks...not so much.
We
have different stories, beliefs, and experiences. Each of us can learn
something from our neighbors,especially our neighbors who are very
different from us.
We
all can agree that everyone should have the same opportunities in life
regardless of what groups they are a part of. In that sense, we all
oppose "discrimination". But if
"discrimination" has now been redefined to have nothing to do with
opportunities and everything to do with feelings, count me out.
I prefer the adult world.
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