America in C Major

Douglas Wilson: America in C Major

A wedding chapel in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, The Hitching Post, run by a man and wife team, each of them an ordained minister, has been informed that they could face jail time or fines if they refuse - as they intend to refuse - to perform same sex mirages. ...

Now the argument is that they will be forced by the state to perform same sex mirages in their role as businessmen, and not in their role as ministers. Because this is an “open to the public” thing, like a restaurant, they must serve whoever walks through the door. Simple pimple, right? Well, not exactly. In the first place, I see no reason why they should be forced to perform same sex mirages any more than our local La Casa Lopez should be forced to serve up Chinese, however much an urgent patron wants him some almond chicken. Their defense would run along the lines of “we’re a Mexican restaurant. We don’t serve Chinese food. We don’t know how to make Chinese food.”

So this is where appeal will be made to the great advances accomplished by the Civil Rights movement back in the sixties. Back in the day, whites could refuse to serve blacks in their restaurants, and it wasn’t that long ago. It was that way in the town where I grew up, and who wants to return to those days? The claim is made that “you opponents of same sex mirage want to return us to those days.” This particular point is the central slippery trick in this whole mess.

Before proceeding further, I do want to say that we should be far better masters of the distinction between sins and crimes before we go about trying to outlaw sins. Because we tried to eliminate the sin of racial prejudice in public spaces without grasping that essential distinction, we have ended up by mandating the commission of sin in public spaces. Essaying to stamp out one sin we have made another sin, one that is far worse, mandatory. Let me go over that again. We have outlawed one sin, and the cost of doing it is that we have made another sin compulsory. People who do that shouldn’t be in charge of things.

Run this out. Suppose The Hitching Post was owned by a couple that had sincere religious convictions against miscegenation. This would mean that they would want the right to refuse to perform a ceremony between a black man and a white woman. Now I take it as a given that such a refusal on their part would be sinful. But should it be illegal?

And even if it should be illegal, how does it follow that if the state can make someone quit being sinful that this somehow authorizes the state to make people start being sinful?

So this is the point where our pretended moral arbiters try to retreat into moral relativism - they say that we use terms like “sin” and we quote Bible verses and all, but not everyone has the same understanding of morality. Who is to say what sins are? Who is to tell us the difference between right and wrong? This is a pluralistic society, and we should know that we cannot impose our own moral codes on others who do not share them. Don’t you know anything, rube? Well, okay, but if we can’t impose a particular morality on people who don’t share that morality, then why did you impose your morality on the bigoted restaurant owner? This is not a difficult question to understand, and I am willing to wait for an answer. By what standard are you making your moral decisions, and why should they be obligatory for others who do not share your devotion to those standards?

By no standard at all, of course, for leftists are *always* lying hypocrites.

Surely, Gentle Reader recalls, oh, just last week, when we were assured that the judicial over-reach imposition of the same-sex mirage regime would not affect "your marriage" (meaning *real* marriages) and that no one would ever be trying to force Christians to violate their consciences over same-sex mirage.

... The Bible speaks on this subject with such clarity that the only way this current homo-overreach can conclude is by trying to take our Bibles away. As long as we have our Bibles, their contentions will be unable to get the clown face paint off. But we live in an era that has difficulty in understanding when an argument is ad absurdum, and so I apologize for bringing it up. No need to take our Bibles. Really.

In the end, they *must* come after our Bibles -- and ultimately our lives -- for the logic of their irrational-and-sinful position commands it.

John C. Wright: Snap Out of It