`Just Go Somewhere Else!': A Cavalier Dismissal Of A Serious Concern
Rob Boston printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Mon Aug 24, 2015 at 11:18:46 AM EST

A few years ago, I took part in a panel discussion on church-state issues at a Seventh-day Adventist church in Takoma Park, Md. During the question-and-answer session, an audience member asked why the Christian owner of a business should be expected to serve LGBT people.

One of my fellow panelists was a burly, bearded Adventist attorney. His answer was spot on. I don't remember the exact words, but he said something like this: "I'm left-handed. If I walked into a store and was told, `I'm sorry. We don't serve left-handed people,' my response to that would be simple: `Well, you do now.'"

I thought about those words recently after I appeared on the Fox News Channel to discuss the case of Jack Phillips, a Lakewood, Colo., baker who refused to provide a wedding cake for a same-sex couple and was fined.

I didn't expect most Fox viewers to agree with me, and sure enough, several of them - when they were done calling me names and suggesting that I do things to myself that I'm not sure are physiologically possible - raised the argument of "Other bakers would have served that couple. Why didn't they just go somewhere else?"

Let's put aside for a moment the question of whether you can always go somewhere else. In small towns and rural areas that may not be possible. But in suburban and urban areas there will be other providers, so why not just be content to move on?

The argument has superficial appeal. It collapses under closer scrutiny.

Some background: Colorado law bars discrimination in "public accommodations." The group One Colorado describes a public accommodation as "an entity that offers sales or services of any kind to the public: businesses, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, clinics and health clubs."

In Colorado, sexual orientation is treated the same as race, gender, religion and national origin when it comes to anti-discrimination policies. Some people simply refuse to recognize this equivalency. No one would tell a black couple turned away from a business because of their race that it was no big deal and advise them to go somewhere else. Yet some have no trouble saying this very thing to a same-sex couple.

Imagine if Phillips had announced that, due to his sincerely held religious beliefs, he would no longer provide cakes for interfaith or interracial couples. Again, what would happen - what should happen? Yes, we could shrug and tell the aggrieved couples, "It's no biggie. There's another bakery four blocks away." Most fair-minded people, I hope, would realize that this isn't an acceptable solution. The real solution is that Phillips must follow the law.

If the law treats LGBT people exactly the same as it does African Americans, Jews, Latinos, etc. - and in Colorado it does - then why shouldn't they demand their rights?

Sometimes people bring these cases precisely because discrimination against individuals based on factors they can't change or should not be expected to change is an evil that must be stamped out.

The African Americans who demanded service at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., in 1960 could have gone somewhere else to eat. I doubt they were sitting there because they had heard about the awesome blue plate special at Woolworth's. They went on purpose because they knew that lunch counter would not serve them, and they wanted to make a point: such denials of service are an affront to human dignity and decency. They relegate a segment of our population to second-class citizenship.

Some people argue that this analogy fails because LGBT people haven't had the same experience historically as blacks. They weren't brought here in chains, forced into slavery and then subjected to decades of repressive, humiliating Jim Crow laws.

That's true, but it misses the point. LGBT people have had plenty of bad experiences in their history, but this isn't a contest. If the rights of individuals are being violated, if people are the victims of unfair treatment, if they are made to accept lesser status in a society that strives for equality, if they are being told, in effect, "Get out, I do not serve your kind here," then decent people have a right - indeed, a duty - to rectify that by all legal means, including litigation.

Yes, the same-sex couple in Colorado could have gone somewhere else for a cake. And the lunch counter protestors in Greensboro could have gotten a sandwich at another restaurant. 

The whole point is that they shouldn't have to.




Display:
Rob Boston, I find your articles insightful and I have read you for years, but on this issue I heartily disagree. Along with you and the other contributors to this site I am staunchly against a union of church and state, knowing that historically that always leads to intolerance and persecution. But you all go the opposite extreme in your willingness to trample on the rights of conscience. You are truly in favor of persecuting Christians every bit as much as the papacy did during the Dark Ages. The personal faith of many such as the Christian bakers, florists and photographers have been punished for declining to lend their talents to same-sex ceremonies. American Christians are being forced to celebrate unnatural sexual activities. Christians are now being persecuted in the United States of America! The Constitution guarantees, in the most explicit terms, the inviolability of conscience: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States." "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." "The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle that man's relation with his God is above human legislation, and his rights of conscience inalienable. Reasoning was not necessary to establish this truth; we are conscious of it in our own bosoms. It is this consciousness which, in defiance of human laws, has sustained so many martyrs in tortures and flames. They felt that their duty to God was superior to human enactments, and that man could exercise no authority over their consciences. It is an inborn principle which nothing can eradicate."--Congressional documents (U.S.A.), serial No. 200, document No. 271. I was in agreement with the Seattle florist lady who had sold flowers to those same guys in the past & always treated them kindly, but at the point of being asked to participate in the gay wedding ceremony, she declined. The difference is we don't discriminate the selling of our product based on the choices being made by others (there's no sin in the selling of flowers to unbelievers), but when someone else wants to force us to participate with them in a sinful act, then we certainly must refuse (just as a clergyman cannot be forced to perform the ceremony).

by johnnyshiloh on Fri Aug 28, 2015 at 10:48:30 PM EST

A business gets subsidies in public funds - sidewalks, water, roadways, tax breaks in many instances - and this has all been covered thousands of times before. If you are in business, you are NOT in church or home or operating out of faith practices. It is the arena for money, commerce, etc. serving Mammon exclusively, not God. Where does the compelling right to discriminate due to faith stop? The JP who refused just a few years ago to perform a wedding for an inter-racial couple? Where? You do NOT have the right to impose different values on people whose taxes contribute to your being in business, whose money is no different from anyone else's. So where does it STOP? You don't get to decide within a civil, secular set of practices. It's commerce, not religion, and all are equal before our laws. There is no alternative in a really free society.

by Churchlady on Sun Aug 30, 2015 at 04:06:41 PM EST


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