Discriminating Between People and Events

13 Apr 2015

There’s a lot of screaming about anti-gay discrimination from Christian shop owners, but are they really discriminating against gays?

You hear a common theme from the shop owners: they will provide services for gay people, but they won’t provide services for a same-sex “marriage.” The outraged response shows that people clearly don’t understand the difference between the two. To not provide services for gay people, such as someone’s birthday cake, would be to discriminate against a person—an individual. That would be a legitimate complaint; that would not be loving your neighbor. But a wedding ceremony is not a human being, it is an event. And for a Christian owner to not want to provide services for an event that he does not believe in, is not just acceptable, it should be expected.

Many people miss the fact that we are talking about two different cases here, but respond the same for both. In one case we’re talking about individual human beings, and in the other we are talking about an event. They want the same protection for each, but in order to be fair to everyone, we must violate the beliefs of many, not just a few that we are angry with at the moment. The whims of the law can’t change with the whims of the people.

If we’re going to force people to support, or appear to support, ideas and events that violate their conscience, than in the name of equality, the government must:

• force Christian cake shop owners to create cakes that support same-sex “marriage”

• force gay bake shop owners to create cakes that support “God Hates Fags” messages

• force black cake shop owners to create cakes that support KKK events (if there is such a thing)

• force Christian cake shop owners to create cakes with “God Hates Fags” messages

• force any cake shop owner to create cakes with pornographic images

Of course, I can’t see a KKK member soliciting a cake shop owned by black people for a cake. In which—I can’t believe I’m thinking this—in this case, I suppose the KKK member actually has a better sense of reality than the LGBT Nazis. Why wouldn’t you just take your business elsewhere? Why create a stink?

Sometimes discrimination is good. For example, if you Google “definition discrimination” you are presented with two definitions. The second one reads: recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another. The usage in a sentence example is: “discrimination between right and wrong.”

Another example of discrimination is this article. I’m discriminating between a gay individual and a gay event. See how that works? We are talking about the difference between and individual and an event. And this is good. The two are not the same, should not be treated the same, and should not have the same protection under law.

So, to answer the question, are Christian shop owners discriminating against gays? No. They are discriminating against an event.

Note: the vast majority of Christians do no believe “God Hates Fags.” Those that do are a vocal minority, and not representative of the greater majority. Hmm. Sound familiar?

Tagged: discrimination homosexuality same-sex "marriage"