Homophobia -- In Real Life (Part 2)

A few days ago, my friend  posted an article on Facebook, written by "one who is labeled the most hated woman in Indiana," a " a right-wing, Bible thump’n, gun tote’n conservative," who took a trip to meet a "flaming gay British journalist" who was on his way to a pizza parlor in a small town in Indiana.  The owners of Memories Pizza of Walkerton had stated on a local new broadcast that they would not cater a gay wedding if asked, and because of the resulting controversy, the journalist was going there to “apologize on behalf of the normal gays.”  When he met with the author of the article, he told her,“Monica… Christians and conservatives are too timid. You need to get louder. You need to say what you want and why you want it. You need to be unafraid of your message. You all are too quiet! You need to be bold.”   (Obviously, he has not been reading my Facebook newsfeed.)

In an unusual move,   asked me what I thought.  Two other people had already commented on the article, both expressing praise for Milo, the journalist, by the time I got a chance to answer.  I started by saying there were too many rabbits to chase.  But I made an effort to stay focused, and began with the basics.

Okay, to begin with, Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited "public accommodations" (hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, etc.) from refusing service to someone based on their race, color, religion or national origin. It did not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Though the fight for gay rights had begun quietly a decade or so earlier, homosexuality was still considered a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association until 1974, and the Stonewall riot didn't bring gay rights into the forefront until 1969.

Since then, however, several municipalities and some states have added the LBGT community to their non-discrimination laws. Oklahoma is not one of those states. Here, "the most privileged group in western society" can still be fired or denied accomodations or housing. Even in places where the law supposedly protects us, we still worry about being assaulted or killed. Even in those places, there are still people who believe that being gay is a "lifestyle," a "choice," and/or that it in some way makes us inferior and deserving of abuse, and certainly undeserving of basic civil and human rights.

After the passage the Civil Rights Act, a young woman by the name of Anne Newman, who I suppose would be the "bully" in Ms Boyer's version of this story, was refused service in a restaurant because she was black. The restaurant was part of a company called Piggy Park Enterprises, which was run by a man name Maurice Bessinger. Mr Bessinger was the Baptist head of the National Association for the Preservation of White People. She brought suit against him and the company, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court (albeit for a different reason than one might think.) The defense that Mr Bessinger gave was that the Civil Rights Act violated his freedom of religion as "his religious beliefs compel him to oppose any integration of the races whatever." The SCOTUS stated that this defence was "patently frivolous."

The problem, of course, was that Mr Bessinger was assuming he had rights that, in fact, he did not. He did have the right to believe what he did. He had the right to be very vocal in his beliefs. He and his church had the right to teach whatever beliefs suited them (as does Westboro Baptist.) He did not, however have the right to use his religious beliefs as an excuse to refuse service to someone in his sandwich shop.

In Oregon, it has been against the law since 2007 to discriminate against someone based on their sexual orientation. That's exactly what Sweet Cakes by Melissa did a couple of years ago, and they would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for what they did next. After they refused to serve the "bullies" (as Ms Boyer would describe them) in their bakery, the two women decided to take their business elsewhere. However, Aaron Klein (as in Mr Melissa, one of the victims of the bullies) published the contact information (home address, phone and email) of the two women on his personal Facebook page. When the two women started to receive death threats, and the State told them that the publicity could cause them to lose their kids, that's when they decided to pursue legal action. The Kleins used the same defense as Mr Bessinger, with the same result. They did not, the courts determined, have the right to use their religious beliefs as an excuse to refuse service to someone in their bakery.  [I should note here that my chronology of the case is wrong.]

(  had never heard about the Facebook posting part of the bakery story, which didn't surprise me because I had never seen it mentioned in any of Conservative/ Christian Supremacist versions of this story that I'd seen.  He said he'd look for confirmation, and, later on in the thread, he posted the first article that pops up on Google, which says the bakery owners were not being punished for posting the lesbian couple's contact info on Facebook, which we already knew.  I'd publish the link, but I can't find it.)

  asked me, "So, in your view, I have no religious right to refuse to provide pre-marital counseling or, as a licensed Southern Baptist minister, to refuse to marry a gay couple? And you're basing that on the firm, incontrovertible scientific evidence that homosexuality is as genetic as race and handedness."
    I responded "A Southern Baptist minister can refuse to marry anyone he chooses. In the State of Oklahoma, you can choose not to provide counseling to same sex couples and you can use your religion as reason to do so. Elsewhere, you'd just have to check. And I'm basing this on the law as it stands today."
        thinks the genetics question is terribly, terribly important.  I think it's entirely irrelevant.  But because this was a science question, my brother got involved, and they chased that rabbit for a while.  I mostly stayed out of it.  Other rabbits were chased in the thread, and I mostly tuned out, but there was one question that came up more than a couple of times, and I feel now that I failed to answer it effectively when I could have.  The question was framed best by .

imo, there is a difference between refusing service and participation. if a gay couple goes into a bakery and buys a cake as is, the owner must sell to them, and the florists and bakers who have been sued have no problem with that. they are not refusing service. However, making a cake for a wedding or doing the floral most often requires the baker/florist from going and setting up the cake or setting up floral arrangements at the venue and being part of the preparations. i can understand how someone would consider that crossing over into participating in the event of a ceremony they do not agree with. it is a fine line. but i do see a difference between service and participation.

The answer to that, as it will always be, is to go back to Newman v PPE:  If Mr Bessinger had owned a grocery store instead of a restaurant chain, and Ms Newman had simply gone to the store to buy her food, Mr Bessinger would have had to sell it to her.  He would not have been refusing service.  However, making someone's dinner most often requires seating the customer, taking an order, preparing and serving the meal, and cleaning up afterwards.  This could be considered crossing over into "participating" in the integration of the races, which he did not agree with.  A fine line, perhaps, but..
    But I didn't say that.  What I said instead was

As far as the law goes, if you operate a business that deals with the public, you must obey the non-discrimination laws that exist in your community, State, and Country. That includes services as well as products.

Of course, she kept insisting that there should be some sort of exception when it comes to "participation," explaining it to me as if I didn't understand what she was saying.  "Participation" is a major theme, right along with "I'm being persecuted if I'm not being allowed to persecute someone else."  Wonkette posted an article about Colorado Representative and Christian Supremacist Gordon Klingenschmidt, describing him as having the belief that "gays who insist on getting wedding invitations printed at businesses that are open to the public, just as if they were human beings, are precisely like ISIS extremists who murder gays."  (I posted the article on my brother's Facebook.  His reaction was, "How do these people not hear themselves when things like that come out of their own mouths?  Fun project: take the audio and switch the subjects so that it says the exact same thing the other way around and then release the video back into the wild.")  But, of course, few of them have ever really had to deal with discrimination in their own lives.  As Benjamin Corey said in his blog,

The idea that America is hostile to Christians and that the liberty to practice Christianity is under attack is misguided at best, and a complete fabrication designed to control the fearful and ignorant at worst.

Like all distorted thinking, this idea that America is growing hostile towards Christians is rooted in a degree of truth– most broken thinking is.

However, here’s the part that’s true: America isn’t growing hostile towards Christians– it is growing hostile towards religious bullies, and there’s a big difference between those two things.

 Some time ago, in a previous Facebook conversation, a friend asked me "Why are you so against religion?"  I didn't answer her, and I don't remember the context of the question, but I do remember thinking that it was a wrong question.  Around that same time, I found an blog post from John Pavlovitz  that would have been a good answer.

I’m tired of hearing you telling gay people that they can’t simultaneously be both gay and Christian.
...

I’m tired of arrogant pulpit bullies who believe they’re entitled to tell people where they can pee and who they can marry and whether they really love Jesus or not.
I’m tired of you regularly dispensing damnation on the queer community, and then offering empty “thoughts and prayers” in the face of tragedy before resuming your normal schedule. 
...
I’m tired of having to explain to people that although I am a Christian, that I’m not that type of Christian; the kind that is generous with damnation and stingy with Grace.
...
I’m tired of waiting for you to show up in this world and actually show the freakin’ love of Jesus to people the way he did and told you to, without excuses or caveats or theological tap dancing to avoid it.
...
I’m tired of so many people believing that “Christian” and “bigot” are synonymous—and not disagreeing with them.
I’m tired of a Church which seems to be so ambivalent toward the teachings and example of Jesus.
I’m tired of a Christianity that is making me more and more embarrassed to be associated with it.

    In a previous blog post, I had mentioned that I dislike the term "homophobia" because I think it's application is contrary to its meaning.  An appropriate use of the word would be for someone who fears unwanted advances by a gay person, or someone who believes that he might become a target of the gay mafia.  Heterocentric, I think, is a much better word in most situations.  But words sometimes mean different things to different people. I see on Facebook that I have friends who believe the word 'racist' means having a dislike for someone because of their skin color, where for others it means supporting policies that disproportionately affect people of color in negative ways.  And if someone in the former group is called racist by someone in the latter group, it does not produce useful dialogue.  Similarly, you can't call someone a bigot if they think it's just a disagreement on an issue.  Perhaps it would be better not to use those terms at all.

While the main conversation was going on,  and I were having a side conversation, mostly about my brother. 

Well, let me tell you what he told me a while back, to give you a perspective on where he's coming from. Once upon a time, atheists in general looked upon religion as a benign delusion. But after 9/11, that point of view changed. Suddenly, religion was a dangerous delusion that had the potential to harm a great many people. That's why he became evangelistic in his beliefs: he wants to deliver us from evil. In the current conversation, he sees this dangerous delusion as having the power to harm his brother.

Do you see it that way?

 I see Facebook as a microcosm of society in general, and on Facebook I see an astonishing number of people who want to use their religion as a weapon against people they disapprove of. Furthermore, if the reaction they get when they yield this weapon is negative, they see that as persecution. The same people who point out that homosexuals are on the list of people that the Bible says are worthy of condemnation seem to have no problem at all with slander, which is on the same list. Yet, any criticism they might receive is viewed as a sort of martyrdom. I personally have not been (knowingly) on the receiving end of any persecution for who I am, but I have watched several of my Fb friends justify such persecution, even if only in theory.

Well here's the other side. After the SCOTUS decision, I sat on a committee that looked at every word of our church Constitution and bylaws. We were tasked with preventing lawsuits if possible from the gay mafia. This was going on in churches across the country. We were expecting and preparing for further crackdowns on our churches with a Clinton win. Besides having an abysmal candidate, Democrats lost because of the firm belief by Christians that we were about to lose our freedom to practice our faith without interference. I've seen nothing that makes me think that belief was in error. It's sad. I have attended gay commitment ceremonies. Participated in a wonderful Jewish friend's baptism in to the Episcopal Church, along with his partner and their adopted daughter. But I wouldn't perform the ceremony. I can't. My conscience would not allow it. The problem is that for many on your side, that's not enough. It appears that anything short of full throated approval and acceptance of homosexuality in all its forms is discrimination. And then the name calling starts. I'm not a "homophobe." Or a racist. Or any of the other names that get pulled out. I'm just want to be left alone, free to believe and practice as I choose. As do you and Gabe.

I didn't respond, but I did wonder why the his church didn't examine the Supreme Court's decision and existing Federal and State laws instead of just the church Constitution and bylaws.  It might have mitigated some of their paranoia.  The church is not, or shouldn't be, considered commerce, and is not governed by the laws of commerce.  And the Obergefell decision merely states that there can be no laws prohibiting gay marriage, it doesn't require any particular person or any church to perform such a ceremony, unless of course that person happens to work for the government in such a capacity.  None of this is going to change without a change to the Constitution.
    Ordinarily, this would be the end of the story.  But with the results of the 2016 election, the Christian Supremacists in Congress are emboldened to push through a bill that, if passed, might actually be signed into law by the new President.  And though normally the law would not pass judicial review, there is a vacancy on the court that will be filled by the new President, and his list of choices doesn't look promising.   As NBC reported,

Earlier this month, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Mike Lee of Utah, through his spokesperson, told Buzzfeed they plan to reintroduce an embattled bill that barely gained a House hearing in 2015. But this time around, they said, the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) was likely to succeed due to a Republican-controlled House and the backing of President-elect Donald Trump.

FADA would prohibit the federal government from taking “discriminatory action” against any business or person that discriminates against LGBTQ people. The act distinctly aims to protect the right of all entities to refuse service to LGBTQ people based on two sets of beliefs: “(1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or (2) sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

Ironically, the language of the bill positions the right to discriminate against one class of Americans as a “first amendment” right, and bans the government from taking any form of action to curb such discrimination—including withholding federal funds from institutions that discriminate. FADA allows individuals and businesses to sue the federal government for interfering in their right to discriminate against LGBTQ people and would mandate the Attorney General defend the businesses.

On December 9, Sen. Lee’s spokesperson, Conn Carroll, told Buzzfeed the election of Trump had cleared a path for the passage of FADA.

“Hopefully November’s results will give us the momentum we need to get this done next year,” Carroll said. “We do plan to reintroduce FADA next Congress and we welcome Trump’s positive words about the bill.”

Things may all even out in the end.  It's been the normal course of this country to move towards civil and human rights for all in spite of all resistance.  But in the short term, the next few years are going to be unsettling.