Wedding cakes for gay marriages and contraceptives for Christian craft stores. What would Jesus bake? And for whom? Religious liberty, artistic freedom, and …the end of western civilization?!?
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Regarding the cake-making and photography issue – you guys fail to mention the importance of being under a legal contract of giving your services equitably to all. Let’s say I’m a Christian baker, opposed to gay marriage, working in a wedding cake shop and two men come into the shop asking me to design their wedding cake for them. Because I am under contract IN A BUSINESS that distributes its services fairly and equally to all its clients, I cannot say that I will not design their wedding cake. My contract under that establishment requires me to serve everyone who comes into the store, and I can get fired if I fail to do so. And if I do, then so be it – I stood up for my beliefs. More power to me, in that case. But I have no choice but to design their wedding cake for them…but the catch is that I can design it however I please so long as they don’t tell me, “Okay, we want these designs, this frosting, this shape, and, OH, two men on the top.” In that case, I’m given instructions, and I have to follow through, unless by some chance the establishment doesn’t have the resources for the couple’s requests – in which case, yes, I can say, “Oh, sorry, we don’t have *insert missing item here*.” But if they only tell me, “Hey, we’re a gay couple and we want you to design our wedding cake,” end of story, then I can decide what I put on that wedding cake (meaning I can decide not to put 2 men on top of the cake). But I can’t outright refuse to make them a cake. My employment, my paychecks, and my contract outlines that I must give them the service they ask of me.
Same thing with the photography issue, though it is a little different. If the photographer was part of a photography company or lab, then he has no choice but to photograph the couple. He can be unhappy about it, sure – most of us are unhappy with some of the things we have to do for our jobs. He can complain about it all he wants – but he still has to do it. He has to give the couple the service they want. But if he’s a FREELANCE photographer, and is his OWN employee…that’s a vastly different side of the coin. He can, then, outright say, “I’m sorry, I will not photograph you two” (and he’ll hopefully be that vague as well instead of saying, “I won’t photograph you because you’re gay”). In that case, he gets his paychecks at will and is really under no contract, so he can accept or refuse anyone he wants. Hey, he’s only losing out a week’s paycheck by refusing the gay couple, anyway, so in the end, it’s really his own loss, despite the fact that he stood up for his religious beliefs and denied someone equal treatment.
Just think if you were a waiter at a restaurant and two gay people came in – you can’t refuse them because you don’t agree with their sexuality. You’re an employee in a business; therefore, in order to continue working and getting paid, you have to follow what your business dictates as equitable treatment, and you must serve them, whether you want to or not.
It all comes down to what the business outlines in a worker’s contract, or whether someone is working under a business at all. Heck, if the business somehow gets away with saying that its workers don’t have to serve gays or Jews or black people or white people or women or whatever, then the worker, by contract, then, doesn’t have to. Otherwise, the worker has to provide for his employer and make the cake or take the photos anyway.
Govt Mandates: Christian, As a woman, the govt has passed laws that woman have been upgrade from chattel.
It sounds as though if I want to discriminate against somebody that I only need claim “artistic integrity”.
The golden rule still applies.
Of course it does, but how do you write that as legislation? People do a lot of harmful things to themselves . . .
So, if the government should not restrict a religion’s views and practices on marriage – does that mean the Joseph Smith’s and Brigham Young’s adherents should be able to practice polygamy?
We’re probably headed in that direction. If we can’t define marriage… we can’t define marriage.
Wonder if we could define it better we could better strengthen it.
Seems like Christians make more noise about what marriage is and is not rather than enabling traditional marriages so compelling that the alternative options are no longer attractive?
One last note on this topic would be the cartoon appearing in the Chattanooga Times Free Press of a bracelet with the initials
WWJDA? Translated as Who would Jesus discriminate against?
You guys should invite Mollie Hemingway on your podcast. She’s very smart about these issues and definitely disagrees with Skye.