For the vast majority of U.S. history, people and companies used religion as an excuse to refuse to serve and even employ others based on race. When you argue religious bigots should be able to use religion as an excuse to deny serving or employing someone based on sexual orientation, you’re essentially saying they should be able to use religion as an excuse to discriminate on any basis, including because they are black, a woman, or a different religion. Or, if you believe the Bible says being gay is wrong but being black is not the mark of Cain or whatever s**t it is people make up to rationalize abusing others, you are telling people what their own religion does and doesn’t say. And just as I don’t get to tell you what your religion says, you don’t get to tell Bob Jones and Ollie’s BBQ that their religion doesn’t allow them to be their particular brand of a**hole, just yours.
People should not be allowed to use religion as an excuse to discriminate against others and, thankfully, the law is very clear that they cannot. The free exercise clause lets you be to be as awful and s**tty as you want in church, your home, or even praying at work during a break. But pretending you are “exercising” religion by mistreating others operating a business that has nothing to do with religion is b.s. If you want to operate a business in the United States, the cost of entry is that you don’t get to discriminate against people. Religion does not give you some favored status that allows you to mistreat others. Just as religion cannot be used as an excuse to hang someone from a tree or drag them behind your pick-up truck because they are black or gay, you also can’t mistreat and abuse them in a different manner that is less than murder but which you consider to be acceptable.
It isn’t good enough to go to a different baker because if you let someone to be a bigot, a lot more will follow suit. If it suddenly becomes ok to refuse to sell a product to someone because they are gay, people will do it. It will become impossible to buy a wedding cake in the more bigoted parts of the U.S. And then other a**holes will decide they can use religion to do the same to people who are black, or women, or have a different understanding of what communion means.
I fully recognize it is not possible to convince religious bigots that they are wrong. They believe crazy irrational non-sense, which makes it impossible to have a rational conversation. They claim they’re forgiving of others to make themselves feel better that they actually aren’t. They think an all-powerful being created the world in less than a week and instructed people to stone gay people and many others to death right up until he changed his mind and sent his son (who is also himself) to tell everyone that they didn’t need to murder people anymore.
Every argument religious bigots make is just rationalizing bigotry. You claim an arbitrary line has been drawn when there is nothing arbitrary about it. You use the word arbitrary because you don’t want to concede that the line was actually carefully drawn by legislatures and courts over the course of more than 100 years and was put where it is for a reason, but you just happen to be on the immoral side of it. When you claim it is “beyond the institutional capacity of the courts” you are wrong, as Scotus quite easily showed earlier this week. You just don’t like how easily the courts are dealing with this because you don’t like the results. The only “institutional problem” is the fact that bigots don’t like the results.
Also, Phillips’ argument that he should be allowed to mistreat others because maybe someone else might not is neither sympathetic nor rational. You can cherry pick out of context any statement or headline you want, but it doesn’t change what everyone already knows and the law clearly provides. If you won’t sell a wedding cake to someone because of their sexual orientation, you can’t sell a wedding cake to anyone. If you won’t employ someone based because of their sexual orientation, you don’t get to employ anyone. Can’t hang someone from a tree based on their protected class, and can’t refuse to sell them a cake either. This is just about the most simple and obvious concept that a court could possibly handle.
