Indiana and Arkansas have been in the spotlight recently, having passed laws stating a private business owner can deny service to anyone they choose to. This is, in the simplest terms, saying they have a right to TURN AWAY MONEY. Nowhere is sexual orientation, race, gender or religion mentioned. What it does is protect a baker who, due to religious conviction, decides he won’t bake a cake for a gay wedding, or a restaurant owner who refuses service to vegetarians because he uses all kinds of meat in his cooking, or a lawn care professional when they tell someone who happens to be gay, or a different race, or a different religion, they can’t mow their yard because their booked.
We used to be a society where, if you were denied service and felt it was wrong, you told your friends, they told theirs, and so on. If enough people believed your version, the business just began to lose money, and either changed their practices, or went out of business. You affected them simply by convincing others, without whining on TV or suing, to avoid that business. It’s the same as a restaurant that serves bad food, people find out and just don’t go there. Today, however, we live in a society where, despite the First Amendment, and now two states passing additional laws, people who feel “discriminated against” sue to “punish the bigot.” I’m sorry, if I went to a bakery owned by a gay or lesbian couple, and asked for a cake honoring traditional marriage, and they said they won’t do it, I WOULDN’T WANT THEM TO at that point, for fear they’d not do as good a job as they do on other items. Second, I wouldn’t sue them for turning away customers, I’d simply let it be known that they turned me away due to my faith and my request, and let people decide if they want to do business there, leaving it to the market who succeeded and who didn’t.
To show how this is not the case any more, and how one group has decided to force another to not only tolerate, but to accept them, I give you two cases. First, a court ruled that a baker had “illegally discriminated” against a gay couple. Keep in mind that this is a private citizen who decided to turn away a paying customer. Rather than simply letting their friends and family know, and instead of simply encouraging anyone they could to do business elsewhere (free market economics) they sued, and a judge ruled that a private citizen could not act on their beliefs. This case however, is the opposite, and not about only one baker. No, in this case, thirteen bakeries turned away a request to make a cake with a message that stated gay marriage is wrong. Nothing was vulgar or profane about the message, it was simply a message that a majority of people, based on their religious affiliation, agree with. None of these bakeries were sued, some of them were very insulting, one even saying they’d made the large cookie, but they would “put a phallus on it.” How is it that the first instance of a private business turning away a customer is “illegal” or “wrong,” but not the other thirteen cases?
Simply put, the media and too many in government have decided that only one group is protected. This isn’t the only situation either. We have seen instances where people state only whites can be racist, only men can be sexist, and believe it. This is the problem today. If you claim to want equality, then you cannot do anything the other guy can’t, and then expect him not to react as you would. If you can call someone evil, ignorant, a bigot, or worse, then they can call your “lifestyle choice” wrong, or immoral. If you can turn away a customer wanting a cake supporting traditional marriage, then he can turn your request for a cake for a gay wedding away. Simply put, no one can have a “right” that others do not have. That is called privilege, rights are for everyone, and too many today have either forgotten that, or chosen to remain ignorant in their demand for “rights” that only they enjoy.