Get off the cross

Sanity prevailed in Kansas recently as the government rejected a bill that would give businesses the right to discriminate against gay customers because our sexual orientation goes against their religious beliefs. Now craziness has taken hold in Arizona because the state Senate actually passed a bill that would do just that.

Hmmm … the law is codifying the idea that businesses can refuse to serve people with certain characteristics. I vaguely remember America trying something like this before. Around mid-20^th century, maybe? Does anyone remember how that worked out?

Give me a minute. I’m sure I’ll think of it.

Bills like these codify discrimination and are unconstitutional and I hope to God a court strikes them down. Bills like these are dangerous to everyone and the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers who support them don’t seem to understand that. Laws like these could easily target anyone, not just the people you conveniently don’t like. What happens if a business owner decides that his religious beliefs exempt him from serving customers of a certain race or ethnicity or another religion? Can you imagine if a Muslim business owner used his religion to justify not Christians in Arizona? Can’t you just hear the screaming and crying that would result (these would be the same people who viciously oppose sharia law without realizing that what they want to impose on the country is a Christian version of that)?

What happens when these laws target you? Then it won’t be some grand expression of religious freedom, will it?

Well, I’m as Christian as any of these business owners and I interpret my religion as an obligation to serve all people regardless of race or sexual orientation or what have you. I see my faith as a reason not to treat people like shit just because they’re different from me. Not that the belief is just a part of any religion: It’s actually one of the tenets of good ol’ secular America. Like, we have laws against this sort of thing.

What do these people think will happen if they make a wedding cake for a gay couple? Is Jesus going to revoke their fucking halo? Are they going to end up in the circle of hell reserved for caterers of abominable relationships, toiling away for eternity, making brimstone pound cake with blood-red fondant for Satan?

We were really lucky when we got married because none of the vendors we dealt with batted an eye against a gay couple. Hey, our money is the same as everyone’s so they all took it. Gay people around the country have sued when bakers refused to make their wedding cakes. I would just take my business elsewhere. I’m glad these people sued because somebody had to establish a legal precedent against this sort of thing but I shudder to think what the reluctant bakers put in that cake.

To the people who moan that they’re being persecuted because the law won’t protect their right to discrimination, I believe a well-worn phrase applies: Get off the cross. We need the wood.