By National Review Online
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
What is it with the pissant totalitarians in Colorado?
Jack Phillips is a baker. He is also a Christian. He
declined to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual couple, who, instead of going
to the bakery down the street, brought in the state government to try to force
him to.
The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately held that Colorado’s
so-called Civil Rights Commission had, in targeting Phillips, acted on a
foundation of “religious hostility on the part of the State itself.” A second
action against Phillips was dropped when the outlaw baker countersued.
Autumn Scardina, who was the complainant in the second
action against Phillips, is now pursuing a third, having asked for a birthday
cake to celebrate a gender transition.
That is three legal attacks on a man for the purported
offense of conducting his bakery business in accordance with his own views and
values. We are reminded of William F. Buckley Jr.’s observation: “Liberals
claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and
offended to discover that there are other views.” American liberals have almost
entirely abandoned liberalism, with its tenets of generosity and tolerance, and
now insist on conformity and homogeneity — to be enforced at the point of a
government bayonet, if necessary, or through financial ruination, or whatever
other means of coercion is near at hand.
The legal doctrine of “public accommodations” first came
to prominence as a civil-rights matter in the case of racial segregation at a
time when African Americans could hardly travel in much of the country as a
practical matter. The exclusion of black Americans from public life, when piled
on the legacy of slavery, severely circumscribed the lives and opportunities of
African Americans. While there is still rank bigotry directed at homosexuals,
the situation of gay Americans in the 21st century is not very much like that
of African Americans in the 1940s. To accommodate the religious principles of
those with traditional views of marriage in this matter requires only a trivial
and largely symbolic concession: It is a lot easier to find a gay-friendly
caterer in Colorado in the 21st century than it was to find a hotel open to
African Americans in Alabama in 1937. These are not of equal moral weight.
But the point of this exercise — unlike the point of the
civil-rights reforms of an earlier era — is not to provide for the integration
of gay Americans into civil life or to enable them to organize their own
affairs on their own terms and to engage in the pursuit of happiness in the way
that seems best to them. Instead, the point of this harassment — and it is only
harassment — is to bully and coerce dissidents into obedience and conformity.
That “dissident baker” is a genuine political category speaks eloquently to the
insanity of our times.
This is persecution, and it is unjust. It should be
addressed with whatever legal and political means are necessary to bring it to
a stop.
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