I have been waiting a while to comment on the case of the Colorado Christian baker who was sued for not baking a gay couple’s wedding cake. The baker had offered to make a cake and decorated; it just was not a wedding cake. Why? Because it violated his conscience and beliefs that marriage is a heterosexual union between one man and one woman forever. The couple was offended and sued. If it wasn’t bad enough, the baker and his family received death threats and of course the name calling – bigot, hateful, blah, blah, blah blah.
The case went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and in a narrow holding, the Justices voted in favor of the baker. I think the court got it right: that the government cannot compel people to violate their beliefs.
At the risk of sounding like a law professor, think about this. What if I were to change one fact? What if the baker was not a Christian but a Muslim? Remember Islam and the Sharia laws are also against homosexuality. Would a Muslim baker also be compelled to violate his or her faith to serve this couple? What happens to next religious group to be persecuted? What would be your answer?
I don’t see any difference in these two scenarios, the real one or the hypothetical. If a person argues for tolerance in a post-modernistic, pluralistic society, then it stands to reason that all view points have the right to be expressed. You cannot logically claim to be tolerant and argue that all but one view point is neutral. Then you open yourself logically to another exception, then another, and then another. For example, you can’t be claim to be tolerant but exclude neo-Nazis, libertarians, or Flat Earthers. If you want to be intellectually honest, you fight ideas with ideas, never by calling people names or with death threats.
Second, I wonder whether people truly understand love. Those who call Christians bigoted for not supporting same-sex – I suspect they use a cheap, lesser version of love.
In fact, I don’t even consider their version of “love” truly love, not matter how much they protest otherwise. The love in the Christian Bible comes from the Greek word agape. As C.S. Lewis defines it in his book The Four Loves, it is a gift-love, a self-less love. Jesus Christ died for us; Jesus who is fully God actually had no reason to die for the human race after humans violated God’s law. God could have washed His hands of us and destroyed us. But God came back for us. It has nothing to do with who you can or cannot marry; it has nothing to do with spending your lives together. To reduce the highest form of love ever to a mere “if you love me, you must accept my bad choices or else it’s betrayal” is to miss the point all together.
All the other lesser loves, eros, storge, and phileo, and even “tolerance”, are selfish loves. All lesser forms are based on: I love you as long you love me back/ offer something in return. Left to ourselves, humans are highly unlikely to rise to agape. In fact, I don’t think it is possible at all. We can approximate it, we can imitate it, but love that is completely selfless in origin? Unlikely.
So, freedom of speech and freedom of religion are sacrosanct in this country, even if the opinions and beliefs are unpopular or run contrary to what the rest of culture says. The SCOTUS has articulated that the Westboro case. Even if I am opposed to what Westboro Baptists stand for, I still respect and defend their right to speak their mind.
And it was awesome when Jim Daly and Focus on the Family went to support them.
amicusveritae 