Bakers, Caterers…and Printers

by on

If, as LGBT activists believe, bakers and caterers (and photographers and wedding planners) must take all assignments, even those they find morally disagreeable, is the same true of printers?

As the Cato Institute’s Ilya Shapiro writes on the Cato at Liberty blog:

Hands On Originals, a t-shirt printing company in Kentucky, refused to print t-shirts promoting a gay-pride event, the Lexington Pride Festival. Its owners weren’t objecting to any customers’ sexual orientation; instead, they objected only to the ideological message conveyed by the shirts.

The Gay and Lesbian Services Organization nevertheless filed a complaint with the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission under an antidiscrimination ordinance that bans public accommodations from discriminating against individuals based on sexual orientation.

While the Commission ruled against the printers, the state district court reversed on free speech and free exercise grounds. The case is now before the Kentucky Court of Appeals, where Cato filed an amicus brief.

The case raises a number of interesting parallels: should a gay printer be forced to print anti-gay Christian Reconstructionist literature? Should a Jewish printer be forced to publish anti-Semitic tracts?

While some LGBT advocates of the “they will now do our bidding” school would probably argue No (see, completely different, no comparison whatsoever), others who are more honest might say Yes, since business providers have no right to accept or reject any job they are offered. As Cato’s Walter Olson noted, “Many advocates of the anti-discrimination principle appear to believe that it trumps virtually any other liberty or value.”

More. The Washington Examiner reports this week, citing research by the Barna Group:

…the percentage of all millennials who are “very concerned” about additional restrictions on religious freedoms in the next five years has increased 10 percentage points since 2012, to 25 percent.

In August, the Examiner cited research by Caddell Associates, which found that:

Americans reacting to the Supreme Court’s approval of same sex marriage desire a truce between religious freedom and gay rights, but if pushed, overwhelmingly side with protecting the liberty of their faith by a margin of 4 to 1, according to a new national survey.

The degree of their fierce support for religious freedom and liberty jumps when given this choice: “Suppose a Christian wedding photographer has deeply held religious beliefs opposing same sex marriage. If a same sex couple wanted to hire the photographer for their wedding, should the photographer have the right to say no?”

A huge 82 percent said yes.

Given the backlash against high-handed political correctness that’s gaining steam, these findings should be a warning to the “they will now do our bidding” school of activism.

23 Comments

Hillary Tells a Tale

by on

Via BuzzFeed: There’s No Evidence In Clinton White House Documents For Clintons’ Story On Anti-Gay Law.

Yes, Republicans were/are worse—sometimes much, much worse—on marriage equality. That doesn’t mean we should excuse every attempt by the Clintons, Obama and others to make themselves look much more nobler than they were. Truth should mean something other than spin.

Scott Shackford has more. Hillary Clinton’s Bizarre Gay Marriage Revisionism Doesn’t Fool Those Who Remember. And he tweets: “There are now gay people semi-defending DOMA in order to protect Hillary and I honestly don’t know what to say.”

10 Comments

The Progessive Campus Anti-Speech Movement

by on

There was a point, not so very long ago, when students and outside speakers advocating gay legal equality might not have been welcomed on campuses. That model of closed-mindedness isn’t something you might suppose those calling themselves “progressives” would aspire to emulate.

Later, when being gay was no longer anathema but support for same-sex marriage was a decidedly minority position (even on liberal campuses), discussions of marriage equality weren’t closed down. An open engage of conflicting ideas was viewed as central to a liberal education.

But today, progressives believe it is their responsibility to make sure no views outside their echo chamber, including conservative speakers and student op-eds, are permitted, lest they mislead those whose minds are not completely closed. Two cases in point, from Wesleyan University and at Williams College, expose the barely concealed authoritarianism that lurks behind much of progressive activism.

More. Feminist pioneer and committed leftist Germaine Greer is the wrong kind of feminist/leftist (not supportive of transgender rights). So:

While debate in a University should be encouraged, hosting a speaker with such problematic and hateful views towards marginalised and vulnerable groups is dangerous.

Brendan O’Neill responded:

The Cardiff censors say Greer’s ideas are ‘problematic’. That is what the PC say instead of ‘haram’.

Furthermore. The Williams student group that invited and then disinvited conservative author Suzanne Venker later reinvited her after being embarrassed over the fallout that followed their caving in to the student censors. At that point, Venker had apparently had enough and declined.

Late addition. Robby Soave writes at reason.com, citing Colorado College’s student newspaper, The Catalyst, that LGBT student activists at the college are demanding that the movie “Stonewall” is too offensive to be shown on campus by the college’s Film and Media Studies Department, which wanted to moderate a discussion about the controversy. Instead, they are demanding that the administration cancel the upcoming screening.

“I think Colorado College should cancel the screening because the safety and well-being of queer and trans students surpasses the importance of a critical discussion,” one student told The Catalyst. Said another: “If CC is really as dedicated to diversity and inclusion, they would never have agreed to screen a film that queer students have repeatedly stated is a threat to our identity and our safety. … It is fallacious to equate the rights of students to view a movie with the rights of students to exist free of violence.”

Soave comments regarding the students’ response to the film, directed by openly gay filmmaker Roland Emmerich, which positively depicts gay people fighting for equality in 1969:

That’s right: the film isn’t merely offensive to gay and trans students (despite having a truly gay-affirming message), it’s actively dangerous to their physical well-being…. This is a complaint emotionally-coddled students often make: that some kind of expression is so triggering that allowing it to proceed constitutes an act of violence. Such complaints are usually pure hyperbole, but hyperbole doesn’t even begin to cover the opinions of Colorado College’s precious snowflakes.

22 Comments

A Good Fight

by on

Via National Journal: Group Aiming to Change GOP’s Anti-Gay-Marriage Platform Plank Expands:

American Unity Fund, a well-funded Republican group supporting same-sex marriage, is absorbing Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry’s effort to change the party platform.

Good luck to them, but:

Social conservatives, led by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, are expected to staunchly oppose any changes to the party’s marriage platform.

Gay GOPers and their supporters may not succeed this time, but a generational change is underway, even in conservative circles.

That the pace of change on the right has slowed somewhat following the Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage is probably in response to the linkage of the right to marry with the denial of the rights of small businesses not to be forced to provide their services to same-sex weddings.

38 Comments

Yes, the Bakers Again

by on

Because, despite the seeming absurdity of it, this is where LGBT progressives have decided the frontline of “the movement” should now be—eliminating the horrific scourge of religious conservatives who own small businesses and who would rather not participate in same-sex weddings.

This was one of the main drivers behind the shift by activists away from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) toward support for the Equality Act, which also covers “public accommodations” with no religious exemption for private business owners.

In a new blog post, John Corvinio, professor and chair of philosophy at Wayne State University, delves further the matter. He writes:

Do I believe that we should force people to make cakes they don’t want to make? It depends. I support anti-discrimination laws, which do indeed restrict the range of acceptable reasons for turning away customers from a place of business. On the other hand, I generally don’t believe in picking fights just to make a point.

If you live in an area with lots of gay-friendly options, and you deliberately seek a same-sex-wedding cake from bakers known to oppose same-sex marriage, then you are not much better than someone who deliberately seeks a Bible-shaped “God hates gays” cake from bakers known to be gay-friendly.

This is one area where the moral rules are at least as important as the legal ones, and the relevant moral rule is clear: Don’t be a jerk. None of the paths discussed [earlier in his post] will eliminate jerks, but they may provide options for those seeking to minimize conflict while upholding the values of liberty and equality.

(Added: To reiterate, this is about suing or otherwise seeking government action against independent business providers; other posts have discussed the very different situation of government officials refusing to treat all citizens equally under the law, which, ludicrously, is where religious-conservative activists have decided to make their stand.)

And speaking of deeply misguided activism, conservative media is having a field day with a rash of fake hate crimes concocted by LGBT students and others who you’d think might know better. What are they thinking, you have to wonder, beyond glorifying their own victimhood and advancing the progressive narrative.

More. Yes, physical abuse and lesser forms of bullying are unfortunately still with us. I never said all such instances were hoaxes. But the problem of politically (as in “correct”) motivated fabrications is real as well and—although ignored by LGBT and mainstream media—it’s doing damage to those who actually want to confront real instances of abusive behavior.

It’s not just on the LGBT front, of course, Faked instances of misogyny or, even worse, rape, have the horrific effect of undermining reports of actual abuse and rape. So the question of why these students (and others) are motivated to serve the cause by creating false narratives that they no doubt think are useful in mobilizing the masses must be addressed.

A large part of the explanation for this behavior is the need to perpetuate a sense of victimhood, which takes us right back to those activist-minded couples who feel justified in compelling small business providers to service their weddings. Don’t want to work on my marriage celebration—it’s like Selma and we’re marching with Dr. King…or standing up to the police at Stonewall.

You say you have religious objections to accepting this gig and want to recommend the florist, caterer, photographer down the block? You’re Bull Connor and we will destroy you and your business, using the power of the state to punish. And then we’ll tell each other how very special we are.

32 Comments

Kiss and Clash

by on

The Washington Post‘s Civilities columnist Steven Petrow looks at the case of a gay male couple that was asked to leave Louie’s Sports Bar & Tiki Bar in Fayetteville, N.C., by the bar’s female owner. The incident: Around 11 p.m. on a late summer night, Andrew Deras put his arm around his boyfriend Dustin Baker and gave him what he later described as a “very minor” kiss.

Noting a few similar incidents, “Could the kiss be the next big milestone in LGBT rights?,” Petrow asks.

In the comments below the article on the Post‘s website, one commenter said:

Of course this has to be litigated. The Equal Protection clause of the Constitution means that gays can do the same things as straights in public.

Others pointed to the need for new, rigorous anti-discrimination legislation, to which another commenter responded:

As a gay Libertarian, I have regularly parted ways with the activist-type gays who always want a new law… and when they get that new law, they want another new law, and another and another and another…..You don’t like that bar that threw out the gay couple for kissing? Then boycott the bar and shine the light of bad publicity upon them.

Other commenters quickly chimed in that such a viewpoint was no different than sanctioning Jim Crow segregation against African Americans.

Not long ago, I referenced a fine analysis by John Corvino on the differences between anti-gay discrimination by a smattering of private small businesses in 2015 and systemic, frequently state-imposed racial discrimination in the pre-civil-rights South. And it’s no surprise that I’d rather see civil action against establishments that discriminate over unequal public displays of affection than lawsuits and state-administered punishments.

Along those lines, Scott Shackford has an updated version of his Is this where gays and libertarians part ways? piece is in the November issue of Reason, now online. An excerpt:

[W]e have little reason to believe that most people want to discriminate against gay, lesbian, or transgender customers. The burden created by those who do is remarkably small and can be remedied without government intervention. …

Libertarians care more about restraining government authority over the individual than allegiance to anybody’s “side.” Support for the rights of religious conservatives to discriminate should not be taken as endorsement or encouragement for their goals or moral framework.

As a gay libertarian, I support the right of a baker to decline to produce a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, but don’t expect me to buy so much as a cookie at their shop. And now that government-enforced oppression and discrimination is ending, I’d much rather see my peers embrace a world where we are all equally free to decide the terms by which we deal with each other, not one where we seize the same government powers that were once used to abuse us and use them to pummel our ideological opponents.

49 Comments

Diehards on the Anti-Gay Right

by on

A Statement Calling for Constitutional Resistance to Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, was recently issued by anti-gay social theorist Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, and co-signed by others on the anti-gay right.

Their statement calls on “all federal and state officeholders” (1) To refuse to accept Obergefell as binding precedent for all but the specific plaintiffs in that case; (2) To recognize the authority of states to define marriage, and the right of federal and state officeholders to act in accordance with those definitions; (3) To pledge full and mutual legal and political assistance to anyone who refuses to follow Obergefell for constitutionally protected reasons.

The arguments proffered by the statement’s signers are, basically, that the majority’s reasoning in Obergefell was wrong and therefore it is not binding (apparently, officeholders are only sworn to uphold Supreme Court decisions they agree with). They also contend, as do others on the far right, that Supreme Court rulings are only applicable to the those specific parties that brought the suit and that the court has no power to overturn state laws passed by legislative majorities.

Some of this language is intended to sound vaguely libertarianish, but libertarians don’t believe in upholding majority dictates that violate individual rights.

The Constitution’s framers sought to limit the power of the majority to curtail the liberty and rights of individuals. As George Will recently pointed out, “In a democracy, the strongest force is the majority, whose power will be unlimited unless an independent judiciary enforces written restraints, such as those stipulated in the Constitution.”

Interestingly, some on the political left have also, when it suited their needs, argued that it is improper for courts to overturn laws passed by a legislative majority. These arguments were recently heard in some of the defenses of Obamacare after it came under judicial scrutiny.

Although the anti-gay-marriage statement’s co-signers high-handedly compare Obergefell to Dred Scott, their own actions are similar to southern segregationists who believed that Brown v. Board of Education was not binding on states that preferred to continue treating black students as separate and unequal.

The George manifesto was trumpeted by anti-gay activist Maggie Gallagher, who notes that George has also launched a PAC, the Campaign for American Principles, to support like-minded office seekers.

Be that as it may, this is all a rearguard action by the defeated. While they may envision a nation full of Kim Davises, those officials who believe their allegiance to fundamentalist religion supersedes their duty to uphold the law as interpreted by the highest court will remain few and far between.

And they have done a disservice to those private citizens who argue for the right to be left alone and not compelled to provide services to same-sex weddings. The cause of these independent businessowners is now, to their great disadvantage, mixed together with that of intransigent government officials whose very job is to treat all citizens as equal under the law they have sworn to uphold.

Elsewhere, blogger Jon Rowe reveals in Really Professor George, et al.? that George’s statement selectively quotes (or, in effect, misquotes) Abraham Lincoln, who, Rowe shows, “obviously disagreed with Dred Scott” and urged working to overturn it, but (despite George’s assertion) did not believe Supreme Court decisions could be summarily ignored.

More. Dallin Oaks, a member of the Council of Apostles, the LDS church’s governing body, repudiates Kim Davis (and the whole Robert George crowd), signaling Mormon officeholders not to be lured into their folly:

“All such [government] officials take an oath to support the constitution and laws of their jurisdiction. That oath does not leave them free to use their official position to further their personal beliefs—religious or otherwise—to override the law. Office holders remain free to draw upon their personal beliefs and motivations and advocate their positions in the public square. But when acting as public officials they are not free to apply personal convictions—religious or other—in place of the defined responsibilities of their public offices. All government officers should exercise their civil authority according to the principles and within the limits of civil government. A county clerk’s recent invoking of religious reasons to justify refusal by her office and staff to issue marriage licenses to same-gender couples violates this principle.”

25 Comments

Religious Liberty Isn’t Just ‘Code for Discrimination’

by on

Speaking at the Values Voters Summit, what most of the GOP presidential candidates said on LGBT issues presented a rogues’ gallery, as the Washington Blade reports.

But I again take exception to this common flippancy by LGBT activists and media: “protecting religious liberty…is considered code for conservatives to mean promoting anti-LGBT discrimination.” Certainly in the case of government officials like Kim Davis and her right-wing defenders, religious liberty is misused to justify government discrimination against gay people. But in civil society there is an important right to religious dissent and noncoercion that the government can and does violate, as I’ve previously discussed (most recently here).

Both social conservatives and progressives have proved to be blind guides on this matter, ginning up hysteria and supporting the violation of individual rights for their own purposes.

77 Comments

Value Voters Summit: Road to Nowhere

by on

Via The New Republic:

Despite the hallelujahs, what this year’s [Value Voters Summit] ended up highlighting was not the resurgent power of Christian conservatives in the Republican Party, but how much their influence on the policy debate has diminished. As usual, most of the major GOP presidential contenders—even the unlikely figure of Donald Trump—came courting the crowd of 2,700 who’d registered for the event. But they offered little besides effusive praise for Kim Davis and utterly vague—if not utterly unrealistic—promises to champion religious liberties in the White House. When the summit-goers left Washington to scatter back to their hometowns across America, they left with no clear idea of what to fight for next—or how.

And let’s note the GOP contenders who avoided the whole bigoted circus, including Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Carly Fiorina.

More. Via Reason: “Donald Trump Literally (& Hypocritically) Promises to Save Christmas.”

17 Comments

The Left’s Embrace of Francis

by on

Many on the left who celebrate Pope Francis’s hostility toward capitalism and support for climate apocalypticalism also claim he is moving the Roman church forward on gay issues. Many have cited his 2013 remark “Who am I to judge” as if he were referring to gay people in general. He was not; Francis was specifically asked about celibate gay priests, and the remark, in context, implies that if the priests are celibate, than who is he to judge them because of their sexual orientation, which they are (supposedly) not acting on.

When Francis said “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods,” he meant that he was just as, or more, concerned that his church focus on climate hysteria and antagonism toward market-driven economic development.

News reports have said Francis’s remarks to Congress offered something to liberals (anti-development and a response to climate change that demands more government control over, well, everything) and to conservatives, especially this (via USA Today):

“I cannot hide my concern for the family, which is threatened, perhaps as never before, from within and without,” Francis said. “Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family. I can only reiterate the importance and, above all, the richness and the beauty of family life.”

Yes, Francis offered something for liberals and conservatives, but little for libertarians.

More. Via Reuters:

Pope Francis said on Monday government officials have a “human right” to refuse to discharge a duty, such as issuing marriage licenses to homosexuals….

Maybe The Advocate would like to rescind its 2013 Person of the Year.

Furthermore. He’s actually even worse than I suspected: Vatican Confirms Private Meeting Between Pope Francis and Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis, in which he encouraged her to “stay strong” in her intransigence. Time for the LGBT Pope-defenders to apologize.

And more. No, it doesn’t change things that Francis also agreed to meet in Washington with a gay former student and the student’s long-time boyfriend (and other family members), and was gracious. As CNN also reports, “the Vatican has refused to recognize France’s ambassador to the Holy See, Laurent Stefanini, who is openly gay. And Francis has shown little inclination to adjust church doctrine on sexuality.” That’s the context in which he then met with Kim Davis; that’s what matters.

And then this: Pope asserts marriage is forever at start of family meeting. But hey, he’s anti-capitalism, has a clear soft spot for socialism, and thinks climate apocalypse is upon us for the sins of industrialization, which makes him heroic in the eyes of the left.

60 Comments