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EDITORIAL Doing business with public should mean all the public

3 min read
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Being wary or at least very curious about someone who is different from us is perhaps human nature. Maybe they have a different religion, or national origin, or race, or sexual orientation. But when someone goes out of his or her way to discriminate against someone who is different, that’s a conscious decision that skews toward hatred.

A number of cases currently awaiting decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court will determine whether people with an animus toward LGBT folks can legally act on those prejudices, which in some cases are couched as being directed by a “higher power.”

The most high-profile of these cases is that of a Colorado baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop apparently has a history of declining to bake cakes for events that conflict with his religious beliefs, such as Halloween celebrations and bachelor parties. He refused to bake a cake for gay couple David Mullins and Charlie Craig in 2012, prompting the lawsuit that has worked its way up to the nation’s highest court.

Refusing to bake a Halloween cake, however odd some of us might think that to be, is significantly different from refusing to do business with people because of their sexual orientation. Phillips contends that being forced to bake a cake for a gay marriage celebration violates his First Amendment right to freedom of religion, but the anti-discrimination law in Colorado is clear that LGBT people cannot be refused service because of their sexual orientation. The high court is going to have to decide what prevails here.

Our hope would be that the court comes down on the side of the gay couple, because if it doesn’t, what’s to stop another businessman or woman from deciding that their religion compels them to refuse service to a black person or a Muslim or a Jew or a Pakistani? Don’t believe that would happen? It wasn’t that many years ago in this country that some of the people who fought against equal rights for black Americans argued that their Bibles told them that the races should be kept separate.

“What the religious right is asking for is a new rule specific to same-sex couples that would not only affect same-sex couples but also carve a hole in nondiscrimination laws that could affect all communities,” Camilla Taylor, director of constitutional litigation at Lambda Legal, which advocates for civil rights for LGBT people, told the Associated Press.

In the Masterpiece Bakeshop case, we question how stringently Phillips applies his religious beliefs to his cake-making decisions. We highly doubt that he is doing in-depth background checks to determine whether would-be cake purchasers have a history of premarital sex, adultery or divorce, for instance, or how many of the Ten Commandments they follow. But the gay folks who want to buy cakes are probably easier for him to identify, and they’re a regular target of the Christian right.

Religion has significant power to bring people together for the greater good, but it also has proven to be extremely divisive when embraced as a tool to target those who “don’t belong.”

We would hope that the Biblical directives that promote kindness and love for one’s fellow man – as well as leaving the judging to a higher power – would be embraced. In simpler terms, we could just follow the suggestion of Bill S. Preston from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” who said, “Be excellent to each other.” That should cover pretty much everything.

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