While eating lunch today, I was reading my RSS feeds when I saw a very interesting post come across titled, “Why can’t we accommodate florists denying services to gay couples?” This was on my religious feeds, so I thought it might be interesting, so I gave it a read. Here are two paragraphs that stuck out at me, and actually prompted this post:
If you think small business owners should be allowed to discriminate against any customer on the basis of any sincerely held religious belief, then fine. Be it same-sex marriage or interracial marriage or interfaith marriage or whatever marriage, the objecting service provider gets to have her way.
But if you want to forbid florists from refusing service to mixed-race couples but allow Baronelle Stutzman et al. to refuse service to a same-sex couples, you have to come up with some persuasive secular reason for considering discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation less deserving of legal protection than discrimination on the basis of race.
Basically, the courts CAN NOT decide if a particular religious belief is valid or represents a religion, only that it is sincerely held. You can state that your religion is that it is right to kill and eat people, and to have sex with rabid monkeys, and all the court cares about is that it is sincerely held. That’s all.
So why don’t we then have rampant murder and cannibalism? Simple. Because some laws override religious beliefs — often laws that impact someone else other than the person holding the belief. We don’t allow murder because it is someone else getting killed (the whole abortion debate is about when a foetus becomes “someone else”, because you are allowed to do whatever you want with your body). Similarly, in the case above, the question is what takes precedence over what: are laws about discrimination more important than laws about religious practice. In general, we have said yes: sincerely held religious beliefs must give way if they are discriminatory. TL;DR: You can’t discriminate based on race and use religion to make your case.
So, following on to this, we as a society have decided that one cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation. That impacts someone else. Thus, given that discrimination takes precedence over religion, that means even if you believe that gays cannot marry, you still need to make them a cake. The quality of the cake — which is what ensures repeat business, is a separate issue.
This, by the way, is where the whole transgender bathroom issue is going (which, you know, is really not about bathrooms). As a society, we are moving in the direction of not discriminating based on gender choice (or whatever the term is — I’m not sure). That means that bathrooms must be open to all, as discrimination takes precedence over religion. So how would that be fought? By finding something that takes precedence over discrimination — safety. We can discriminate against sexual predators because of the safety to children. So the same argument is used against trans. Never mind that it is a false argument. The hysteria permits the discrimination. [Which, by the way, is why we must fight it: false facts are false facts.]
P.S.: Speaking of false facts, did you know that chemtrails can protect against vaccine injuries?
