Recently a friend reposted something by a blogger named Matt Walsh. Walsh is a bigot -- but unlike many bigots, Walsh is good at it.
People recognize bigotry when someone says "it's against my religion for that minority to have the same rights as everyone else!" People reply: "Well, you have a right to your beliefs, but you do not have the right to treat innocent people as second class citizens."
Walsh doesn't do that. He wraps his bigotry in logic to make it sound reasonable. The bigotry is there, though, a sentence or two hiding in the middle of a paragraph of logic. It's like mold on bread. A moldy spot indicates the bread has gone bad, even if the rest of it seems fine.
In this case, Walsh tells gay people to stop whining about businesses that refuse to serve them. Just go somewhere else, he says. And before you bring up the Jim Crow era, he continues, remember that discriminatory state laws required businesses to refuse to serve black people. It wasn't the business owners' choice, he claims -- they were simply following the law.
Walsh writes: "When one florist in a thousand, or one wedding lodge in a hundred, or one photographer in a billion decides to conduct their business based on the tenets of their faith, or the tenets of their own personal principles, the only harm they're causing to anyone is a damaged ego. No physical harm has been caused, no constitutional rights have been violated. Nothing has been stolen, nothing has been destroyed. The only risk… is that somewhere along the line, at some point, a couple of lesbians might get their feelings hurt. That’s it. There is not a single other tangible consequence. What we are saying now, as a society, is that the [business owners] do not have a right to hurt the feelings of homosexuals."
Sounds reasonable, right? After all, it is impossible to go through life without ever seeing anything offensive. Is it true that only consequence to a business owner treating innocent customers like garbage is a few crybabies getting their feelings hurt? After all, lesbians are a tiny percentage of the population, and the great majority of us who are straight can't conceive of ever wanting to marry someone of our own gender. So what if that tiny minority with unusual beliefs gets their feelings hurt?
As recently as 1967, it was illegal in some states for a black person to marry a white person. Fifty years ago, would Walsh have dismissed such couples as easily as he does lesbians? After all, many people in 1967 couldn't conceive of a mixed-race marriage. Why would anyone want such a thing? After all, biracial couples are a tiny minority who aren't important in the grand scheme of things -- right? If someone in the business of providing a location for weddings refused to allow a black person and a white person to get married because it violated their religious beliefs, is the only consequence that some obscure mixed race couple somewhere might get their feelings hurt? After all, if their own state government doesn't treat them equally, they could just travel hundreds of miles to a different state. No big deal, right?
How many people have to be treated unfairly before it matters to the rest of us?
As recently as 1945, it was illegal in Germany for a Jewish person to marry a non-Jew. Was this law wrong? So what if a Jew and a Gentile aren't allowed to get married? That doesn't affect the rest of us, does it?
How large a minority does it have to be before their civil rights matter?
Regarding the Jim Crow era: Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote that African-Americans "have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights." King continued: "Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, 'Wait.' But... when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people... when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro... forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. ... All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority."
Some business owners still believe that African-Americans aren't really people and use their religion to justify their bigotry. Should they be allowed to hang "No Coloreds" signs in their windows because they have the right to decide which customers they will do business with? People who know that racism is wrong will boycott such establishments and eventually they'll go out of business, right?
Should business owners whose religious beliefs tell them that gay people aren't really people be allowed to hang similar signs in their windows? "Warning: if you're married to someone of your own gender, don't bother coming in. We reserve the right to refuse service to innocent people we've never met." Gay people would boycott that business. Their friends and family would boycott it. People who have never met a gay person but disagree with bigotry would boycott it. In time, they'd go out of business, right?
Think for a moment. When the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act in 2013, several states passed laws within hours making it hard for African-Americans and poor people to exercise their right to vote. Should they just move to different states? What about a poor person who can’t afford to move?
If a business owner can claim their religious beliefs give them the right to discriminate against innocent people, it won't stop with the person's skin color or their spouse's gender. Most denominations teach their parishioners that their faith is the only correct one and all other religions are wrong. Logically, religious business owners who discriminate against gay people have even more cause to discriminate against people who follow what they believe to be false religions. Should a Muslim therefore be allowed to refuse to serve Jews? Should a Sunni be able to refuse service to Shiites? Can Baptists refuse to serve Mormons, or Lutherans refuse to serve Catholics? Should Christian Scientists deny service to Calvinists, or Presbyterians refuse to serve Anglicans?
If a business owner can legally say "Anyone can hold a wedding on our property, except gay people," you've opened the door to bigotry. A business owner can then replace "gay" with African, or Asian, or Native American. He can discriminate against Serbs, Croats, Kurds, Yazidis, Russians, Ukrainians, Rwandans... you get the idea.
Someone might argue that Christians would never discriminate against each other. The Albigensian Crusade, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, and the Thirty Years' War all began because the local government decided that one Christian denomination was the right one. Christians of the government-approved denomination had the right to discriminate against other Christians. In time, the government-supported Christians went to war and killed the "heretical" Christians. That's the ultimate consequence when society decides that minorities don't have the same human rights as everyone else. That’s what happens when the government decides there will be no negative consequences for treating minorities unfairly. Discrimination destroys the bully's humanity as well as the victim's.
Sorry, Mr. Walsh. If any government or any business refuses to serve innocent people, that's bigotry. I believe in the free market too, but capitalism by itself couldn't repeal the laws denying women the right to vote. Boycotts alone couldn't end slavery.
Bigots pretend they're intolerant because God wants them to be intolerant -- because if they didn't conceal their bigotry in religious clothing everyone would recognize their bigotry for what it is. But remember: Jesus himself cautioned against straining out gnats (gay weddings) and swallowing camels (discriminating against innocent people.) Jesus also warned against those who would come to us in sheep's clothing, but inwardly were ravening wolves. Jesus told us how to tell the difference: we would know them by their fruits.
Bigotry is beneath us. Walsh has the right to post all the bigotry he wants -- and let's exercise our freedom to ignore it.