Posted on 04/08/2015 4:30:58 AM PDT by Kaslin
Bake me a cake, or go to jail!
Sadly, that is the new message from "inclusive" America. If you don't want to cater, photograph, preside over, sell pizza at, sell flowers to or otherwise participate in a gay wedding, you will be punished. If you don't want your business to pay for a kind of birth control that you consider murder, you will pay fines until your business is bankrupt.
Personally, I think both birth control and homosexuality are just fine, and gay marriage is as valid as straight marriage. But forcing everyone to act as if they think that way is just wrong. We have moved from "inclusion" to totalitarianism.
The list of people you must treat carefully keeps getting longer. Protected classes now include sex, race, age, disability, nationality, citizenship status, pregnancy, family status and more. I'm in two of those groups. You better treat me well!
Why force someone who disapproves of your actions to bake you a cake? Lots of other bakers would love the business. This debate has moved from inclusion to demanding that everyone adopt your values.
In a free country, bigots should have the right to be bigots. Americans should also have freedom of association.
American lawyers talk about special protection for religious freedom, and in the Hobby Lobby case the Supreme Court said you could escape onerous parts of Obamacare by paying lawyers a fortune and convincing judges that you are a closely held corporation with religious objections. But why must you be religious to practice what you believe? This should be about individual freedom.
Of course, government must not discriminate. The worst of American racism and homophobia -- slavery, segregation enforced by Jim Crow laws, bans on interracial marriage, anti-sodomy laws, etc. -- was government-enforced discrimination. That was wrong, and it was right for the federal government to intervene.
But private actions are different. If I start a business with my own money, I ought to be allowed to serve only libertarians, people who wear blue shirts, whatever. It's my business!
My customers have choices. If I am racist or anti-gay, the free market will punish me. Enough people would boycott my business that I would probably lose money quickly.
It would actually be useful to see which businesses refuse to serve one group or another. Tolerance is revealed by how people behave when they are free. American law fosters the illusion that everyone is unbiased, while their real feelings remain hidden, making them harder to boycott, shame or debate.
Punishment from the market is enough. The heavy hand of law is not needed here.
However, given America's history, I accept that there are a few exceptions. In the South, people banned from a lunch counter had few other choices. The Civil Rights Act's intrusion into private behavior was probably necessary to counter the damage done by Jim Crow laws.
But today such coercion is no longer needed. Even in the difficult days of Reconstruction, after the Civil War, business began to bring together whites and blacks who might not always have liked each other but who wanted the best deals. It took several years for racists to get Jim Crow passed so they could put a stop to that erosion of the old racist ways. Government helped keep racism going for several more decades.
Individuals should be allowed to discriminate. I discriminate all the time. I favor people over others when I choose my friends, jobs, hobbies, clubs, religion, etc. So do you.
Elizabeth Taylor married nine times. Had she married again, should the EEOC have ordered her to marry someone from an ethnic minority?
A homophobic baker shouldn't stop a same-sex couple from getting married. Likewise, a gay couple shouldn't force a baker to make them a wedding cake. No one should ever force anyone to bake them a cake.
If you cannot discriminate, you are not free.
Until the 1st amendment right to peacefully assemble (freedom of association) is restored, I would advise Christian bakeries / florists to create a service or offering targeted to the gay wedding community.
This offering should be of a witness nature. For example, a cake with the cross and the text of Leviticus 18:22 - “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.”
Allow them to change the color of the frosting or the text and the type of cake. Do not offer custom wording on gay wedding cakes. In this manner, you are providing a service that addresses the needs of the gay community and technically meeting the letter of the law and at the same time providing a witness to God.
Florists can do a similar thing by providing an arraignment of dried flowers with a similar scripture. Not sure how a pizza parlor should respond.
I believe that it may be possible to limit your catering business to “club members”, charge a refundable $1 membership and then refuse membership after a background check. This would remove the catering portion from the public business.
Today it's jail. Tomorrow the camps.
Opposition to "gay marriage" has nothing to do with bigotry Mr. Stossel; it is about concern for the success of future generations, the children of these "families."
I'm so sick of this stupidity.
Religious freedom is explicitly protected in the Constitution. Homosexual rights are not.
Freedom of association is an inalienable right. Why few conservatives complained as this right has been denied over the years I'll never no.
Tell a liberal that one should have the right to discriminate and they'll call you a bigot.
Tell some so-called conservatives the same and they will run away from the issue.
And people who are adhering to their religious teachings are not bigots, Mr Stossel!
But the writer really undermines his libertarian position by applying the term "bigot" to those who are really only asking to be let alone; to have their own preferences, not the Government's preferences--or the preferences of some agitation group.
He also looks ridiculous when he states this belief: "gay marriage is as valid as straight marriage." Anyone with intelligence enough to grasp what marriage has been all about in civilized nations for thousands of years, that is sanctifying the family formation & the procreation of the next generation; ought certainly to understand that that belief is absolutely unsustainable in the realm of reason & logic.
I generally respect what the writer has had to say on a great many subjects. But whatever his personal bias; he needs to recognize when reality trumps any one's wish list.
William Flax
Absolutely!
If I am racist or anti-gay
Meaningless words without definition
the free market will punish me
Punish you for what? Maybe, but again without true definition this is meaningless rhetoric. Hell the 'free market' may reward your stance depending on what it is.
I don't know if Stossel meant that. I think Stossel is saying that we have a right to both bigoted and non bigoted discrimination. I don't think he identified that the adherence to religious teaching is the former.
EXACTLY!!!!!!
The Constitution says I have Freedom of Association.
It also means that I have FREEDOM of NON-ASSOCIATION.
“A right to discriminate” does not mean that “It is right to discriminate.” That depends on particular situations.
In context, in between the other two sentences, it does sound like he is assigning the slur ‘bigot’ to those who have religious convictions.
It also means that I have FREEDOM of NON-ASSOCIATION.
Imma sue Taylor Swift into the poorhouse because she won't associate with me.
That'll show her.
Stossel should be thrown in jail for his intolerance, as shown by this article!
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