More Than Just About Gay Rights and Religious Freedom

“I will force you.  You WILL do this!”

“Oh, no you don’t!  I have a right to say NO.  I refuse!”

A baker chooses not to do a wedding cake for a gay couple’s wedding celebration.  The gay couple sues.  They’re going to make sure he can’t refuse them.

Is it about religious freedom, freedom of faith and conviction?  Is it about civil rights, gay rights, illegal discrimination?  Yes…and no.  It may very well be more about hatred, anger, and resentment.  It’s more about attitude, spirit, and motive, power and control.

Let’s begin with the baker.  The baker refuses to do a wedding cake for a gay couple on the bases of his Christian convictions.  And let us acknowledge that it is a good thing for people to have religious and moral convictions.  It makes for good character and good citizenship.

But, I have to wonder.  Would this same Christian baker, on the bases of his convictions and the keeping of a clear conscience, also refuse to sell his goods and services, his baker’s bread, cookies, pies, and wedding cakes, to known prostitutes, drug-addicts, alcoholics, gamblers, adulterers and fornicators?  Would he also refuse to sell to known atheists and agnostics or followers of other competing faiths such as adherents to Islam, Buddhism, or members of the Transcendental New Age movement?  My guess is that the answer is probably not—he would not refuse them service or sales.

So I wonder, is the baker applying his religious convictions too narrowly and/or preferentially?  Obviously he is against gay unions, gay marriage, and gay rights.  The gay community knows this and they are outraged.  Thus, they are on the attack, while the Christian baker digs in his heels defiantly.  It is a battle of wills and obstinate spirits.

It should be asked, “Why do Christian businessmen and women refuse service to gays on the bases of religious freedom of faith and conviction but seem to have no such qualms when it comes to selling or serving people who may be guilty of the many other well-known Biblical sins, such as those already mentioned?  In short, why the specific focus on gays?  And why the anger; indeed, for some, it is not just anger but thinly disguised disgust and/or hatred of gays?

To an extent, it seems appropriate that a private business owner should have the right to refuse service to anyone he/she wants (within reason).  For example: Have you never seen a sign in front of a restaurant, perhaps while at the beach, that says, “No shirt, no shoes, NO service!”?  By refusing to serve people without shirt or shoes, a business is exercising a right to choose its clientele.  This, of course, stays within acceptable social limits.  For it took a Civil Rights movement to finally deal with discrimination against African Americans.  Thus, there are always limits and boundaries to all freedoms and rights.  It is a way society prevents unfair practices and unjust extremes.  Out and out discrimination against a designated people—Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and Other—is just wrong.

Now let’s look at a gay couple demanding that a baker sell them a wedding cake.  I have to ask, are there no other bakers in town?  I’m sure there may even be a bakery owned and operated by an outstanding member within the gay community.  Why not go there?  Why force the issue?  Why make the demand of a Christian baker who makes it clear that he wishes not to serve gay couples because of his personal faith convictions?  Why?  Because they want to make an example of him, for one; and more importantly, they don’t want this particular baker or any other particular business person to have the power to be able to say NO to them.

It comes down to a naked power struggle.  It is a struggle for out-and-out control in the public square, the public arena.  They are forcing the baker’s hand.  “You will NOT say no to us—EVER!”  Such a fighting spirit comes from years of discrimination, years of anti-gay bashing, years of denial and second-class citizenship status, years of pain, hurt, grief, and rejection.   The gay community will no longer stand for it.  They’ve had enough.  And so they are fighting mad.  Many are therefore seething with hatred for the so-called “homophobic, anti-gay, right-wing, bigoted, conservative Christian.”  Given that many gay people have literally suffered physical abuse, sometimes beaten to the point of death, just for being gay, they are ready to fight tooth and nail for their demands and their perceived rights.

Thus, in its worst case scenario, the struggle becomes one of mutual hatred, hatred versus hatred, condemnation versus condemnation, judgment versus judgment.  In such a context the ability to listen and agree-to-disagree with mutual respect in the face of conflicting convictions/beliefs is not only lost but deliberately avoided, stamped out, and rejected.  It becomes a “win-all” or “lose everything” confrontation.  It becomes total warfare—all or nothing.  Even though individual battles may be won here and there, the nature of the war itself will have destroyed something in everyone on both sides.  Both sides become losers with no one really winning.  It is the nature of fighting for revenge and/or fighting in the spirit of hatred, wanting to totally destroy one’s opponent and completely bury his/her cause.