A black man shouldn't be forced to bake a cake for a KKK party. A Jew shouldn’t be forced to bake a cake for a Nazi shindig. A Muslim shouldn't be forced to bake a cake with pork. A gay man shouldn't be forced to bake a cake for a Westboro Baptist Church’s "God hates F@gs" party and a Christian business should not be forced to participate in a gay marriage. For that matter, a Christian shouldn't be forced to bake a cake for an orgy, a Satanist mass or an atheist meeting either.
When you say that a Christian shouldn’t become a baker, florist or wedding photographer unless he’s willing to violate his religious beliefs, you’re directly contradicting the First Amendment which “prohibits the making of any law…impeding the free exercise of religion.” When you make it impossible for a Christian to enter a profession without violating his faith, then you are violating the First Amendment. That should make Freedom of Religion laws completely unnecessary and if that doesn’t do the trick, then common sense should do the job because businesses already refuse to serve customers for every reason under the sun.
Here at the beach, many businesses have a “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service” sign. In certain areas, bars and restaurants will ask you to leave if you’re wearing gang colors. If you make too much noise in a movie theater or even try to take in your own food, you will be told to leave. If a liberal atheist gives speeches for pay, you can’t legally force him to give a conservative speech to a group of Christians. For that matter, even Apple, which attacked Christians in Indiana and Arkansas who don’t want to violate their religious beliefs, can and does reject applications it finds offensive. Apple also does business with nations like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Iran and Qatar that despicably murder their own citizens for being gay -- but that’s a different column.
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Moreover, the people being discriminated against here are Christians, not gays. If you’re gay and a cake shop, florist, photographer or even a pizza place doesn’t want to participate in your wedding, you should go to the next one down the street. If you suffer any damage at all, it’s only to your fragile self-esteem that apparently can’t deal with the fact that someone exists who doesn’t approve of everything you do. On the other hand, a Christian company that lives up to its principles may be fined into oblivion or lose its business entirely because it refuses to abandon its beliefs. This isn’t a theoretical argument; it has happened multiple times already. Who’s actually the victim? The Christian who politely declines to cater an event because it conflicts with his values or the gay grifter who deliberately picks a principled small business to try to ruin, feigns shock when it won’t cater his wedding and then tries to turn destroying a decent person’s livelihood into a way to gain money and attention?
Of course, non-Christians might ask what the difference is between baking a cake for say, an adulterer, or creating one for a gay marriage. The answer is that we’re ALL sinners, but there’s a big difference between serving a sinner and actively participating in his sins. No Christian business should participate in a gay wedding and that’s not a controversial point among Christians. Gay marriage is incompatible with Christianity and if you are unfortunate enough to be at one of the relatively small number of churches that tells you otherwise, it has put pleasing the world ahead of being faithful to God and you should move elsewhere as soon as possible.
Even if that’s so, didn’t Jesus sit down with sinners? So, shouldn’t Christians cater to gay weddings? Jesus certainly did sit down with sinners, but He didn’t do it on their terms. Jesus was there to help people who had gotten off track, not to get down in the mud and sin with them. If Jesus was forced to lend His carpentry services to a gay wedding, chances are He’d tell the guests that they shouldn’t engage in sodomy and would suggest that they call off the wedding. Then, MSNBC would be railing against Him, Dan Savage would be calling Him a bigot and Jesus would end up making tens of millions in contributions to a GoFundMe Account set up in His name that He’d end up giving to the poor, because He’s just that kind of guy.
If people can lose their jobs for opposing gay marriage (and they have) and small businesses can be fined and harassed until they’re closed for opposing gay marriage (and they have), what’s next? Will we be jailing people for refusing to go to gay weddings? Will Christian churches that oppose gay weddings (which is all of them except for a few slowly dying, corrupted liberal denominations) be run out of business? Christianity has been around since before America was a country and assuming the planet lasts that long, it will be around long after this nation is gone. So, the question isn’t whether Christianity is going anywhere: it’s whether Christianity in America will continue going strong. The answer to that question depends on the courage of America’s Christians and their willingness to stand up for their faith.
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