Doug Wilson - A Theology of Resistance for Florists

The key is what the individual artist knows or doesn’t know, and how that knowledge is informed by his or her conscience. If the artist had no idea he was participating in a gay wedding, he wouldn’t be violating his conscience. In the rare cases in which a artist would have all the facts to make a determination of a heterosexual wedding in violation of his conscience, then the determining factor of what he should be compelled to do is his conscience.
Again, unlike where someone is selling generic widgets, this is essentially artistic patronage and the artist should have much more participation in the wedding than ordinary commerce and therefore much more latitude to refuse to participate in that commerce.

Great comments, Shaynus. Thanks.

We are going to have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.

What we have to deal with here is where the law draws the line. If someone owns a business - which is considered a public accommodation - and violates the law (such as the Federal Civil Rights Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act), then they will have to deal with the consequences. Businesses are not and should not be free to discriminate based on age, ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, socio-economic status…

Folks are free to act according to their conscience, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be penalized for breaking the law.

What did Paul, Silas, Barnabas, Peter, John … do about being thrown in jail? If you take a stand, then you will be expected to take a stand.

The law does allow for refusing business to customers for certain reasons, such as being unruly or hostile to employees, being improperly dressed (no shoes, no shirt, jeans to a black tie event, wearing gang colors), or arriving moments before closing time. None of these fall under the heading of refusing service to a federally protected class.

So if a photographer doesn’t want to take swimsuit photos, or a sculpture doesn’t want to make an image of a body part, or a printer make doesn’t want to print obscenities on T-shirts, or a baker doesn’t want to make an ‘anatomically correct’ cake, they aren’t refusing business with a protected class.

If I was in business selling cakes, I’d sell cakes to anyone who paid me, because that is the nature of doing business in this country. If you don’t want to sell cakes to homosexuals, then find some other line of work unless you want to fight it out in the courts. And lose.

Homosexuality isn’t the only abominable sin named in the Bible, by the way. I don’t understand why Christians choose it to be the hill they die on. I mean, would any of us want to bake a cake for a Westboro Baptist Church potluck? Would you go to court to fight for your right to refuse them service? How many other groups would you not bake a cake for? It just gets nuts after awhile, and not only can a Christian not be consistent about this, but they are breaking the law in most states. Period.

One interesting thing to me is that, while currently people aren’t forced to take jobs they feel are immoral—say Jay (?) with Planned Parenthood—the Germans did attempt to force jobless people to work in a brothel. (link is safe,) The decision has been overturned as far as I know, but I think it does illustrate how far “public accommodation” laws can go. With the Supreme Court ruling that ruled Obamacare was legal because taxes were involved, how long until our careers are considered as such?

This is why it is key to understand that businesses that want to discriminate—biker bars, restaurants flying the Southern Cross, etc..—are already doing so, and businesses that get beyond a certain size find it impractical to do so—there are only so many motorcycle clubs, members of the League of the South, and so on to do business with. So it is doubtful in my view what public accommodation laws are actually doing for us.

Seems to me that the biggest issue for the baker is literally the icing on the cake—feeling coerced to write speech he/she feels is morally objectionable. To me, the discomfort of the baker is on a lower plane than that of a wedding photographer or a florist. Photographers and florists are expected to be onsite for the wedding, personally attending the participants. The florist is personally pinning on flowers, beautifying the area to facilitate the ceremony, staying on site through the service, etc. The photographer often personally positions couples for shots, telling the couple when to embrace, when to kiss, etc.

It’s not that touching a gay couple brings defilement to the service provider (though somebody might have a religious conviction about such, I suppose). It’s that the providers are felt to be actively, not passively, involved in an event that is categorically sinful. It’s not about a categorical refusal to service homosexuals. It’s about coerced participation in a homosexually oriented event. Perhaps some Christian photographers and florists can compartmentalize their actions as just business. But many cannot. That’s part of the nature of religious liberty.

All the said, I feel more strongly about the photographers’ and florists’ cases than the bakers’. But I don’t want to begrudge the bakers’ right to protest and appeal, particularly because public policy has shifted under their feet while they were already in business.

On another level, I think Christian merchants and service providers will have to think with greater clarity about what constitutes their own involvement in people’s sins versus disapproval and great discomfort with other people’s sins.

…. feeling coerced to write speech he/she feels is morally objectionable

If so I missed that. I’ve never seen a wedding cake with text … but I haven’t been to more than perhaps 100 or so weddings.

About “creative control”:

Were the baker to have full creative control, she could have made a cake that looked like the fires of hell (red and yellow frosting) with the “grooms” in the flames.

I don’t think the issue is creative control at all … nor text on the cake … I think it is commerce plain and simple,

Some asked me about what if the baker were asked to make a cake in the form of a phallus. My response:

• My oldest child when he was between about 3-5 was always asking me “what if” questions. Somewhere in that age I quit answering his “what if” questions. He persisted for a number of years to ask what I perceived to be silly questions. My answer became “I don’t answer ‘what if’ questions”, So much so that my younger two would parrot my reponse and answer him “Dad doesn’t answer ‘what if’ questions
• The facts of the case do not support that she was asked to make an obscene cake

Business owners are not required to provide every service a customer may request. If they don’t advertise that they will make any cake you can dream up, then they don’t have to provide an obscene cake, or decorate it with obscenities.
What they must do is treat every customer the same - same services, same pricing.

We understand the exceptions. Businesses are allowed to offer discounts to certain groups, like senior citizens, children, the military, etc… and these discounts are visibly posted.

But decisions about who to serve cannot be based on their ethnicity, religion, age, gender, or disability.

IMO, a business is not the time and place to work out your disagreements with other people’s religion or lifestyle choices, even when those lifestyle choices are immoral.

My daughter and I had a long discussion about this back when she was thinking about becoming a wedding planner. I told her then that she had to be ready for all that this vocation would entail, because once you hang that shingle and claim you will provide this list of services for that amount of dollars, you are going to have to do business with whomever crosses your threshold. She could, however, refuse someone who was rude or asked her to do something not listed as a regular service.

She saw a few episodes of Say Yes to the Dress and said “Forget that!”

Susan,

Let’s say you’re a Public Relations Freelancer. You write puff pieces and make people look good. Should you be allowed to take on clients you find distasteful? Or should you have to take all clients if you’re going to be in that business?

Shayne

Jim,

“What if” questions are tremendously valuable for getting at the assumptions and mechanics for moral and other reasoning. That’s why they’re asked.

Shayne

[Shaynus]

Jim,

“What if” questions are tremendously valuable for getting at the assumptions and mechanics for moral and other reasoning. That’s why they’re asked.

Shayne

True…. But like any good thing, it can also be abused. “What if” questions used inappropriately can become the basis for the slippery slope fallacy, which often pervades fundamentalism.

Those that have no trouble with the state’s actions are complicit with those in secular society who seek to relegate the outward expression of the Christian faith to only the clergy and only inside the church building. What is the difference between religious leaders who can refuse to officiate at objectionable ceremonies because they would violate their conscience and Christian businesspeople who refuse to take an active part in the same objectionable ceremonies, besides a piece of paper with a politician’s signature on it? What makes the clergy so special that they are allowed not to violate conscience, while the common folk are either forced to or prevented from engaging in their profession? With a simple stroke of the pen, one day (and it could be soon), all of us may be on a level playing field. What then?

Do we need to start building a list showing professions in which believers have been employed for years/decades/centuries and that we can no longer participate? This is just a microcosm of how those who trust Christ during the Tribulation period will be prevented from engaging in commerce.

What did Paul, Silas, Barnabas, Peter, John … do about being thrown in jail?

Paul appealed to his citizenship under the laws he was governed by. Peter and John and Paul all defended themselves under the laws they were governed by. Christians have the right to do the same.

The law does allow for refusing business to customers for certain reasons, such as being unruly or hostile to employees, being improperly dressed (no shoes, no shirt, jeans to a black tie event, wearing gang colors), or arriving moments before closing time. None of these fall under the heading of refusing service to a federally protected class.

But this has the nonsensical end of allowing refusal over comparatively lesser things and denying over more significant things. It is the turn the issue on its head.

As I see it, the problem with Susan’s/Jim’s/et al view is that it allows the government to dictate religion and conscience. And that is exactly why our country was founded. The government should not be in the place of determining which religious views are sincerely held or central to one’s religious identity. They need a compelling interest to overrule. The government has no compelling interest in forcing a baker/florist/photographer to violate their conscience, particularly when there are other avenues available. These were not the only bakers/florists/photographers available. The customers could have their needs/desires met and the conscience of the florist could be honored. In the end, the only one that really loses is the florist who suffers a financial loss from business she voluntarily turned down. The customers didn’t lose; they got what they wanted. The government didn’t lose; they had nothing at stake.

In another country, under another system, things might be different. But as citizens of this country, we have rights and are entitled to defend them. And we are supposed to be able to live in line with our conscience.

It is true that homosexuality isn’t the only abominable sin named in the Bible. But that’s hardly relevant. And the fact that “If [Susan] was in business selling cakes, [she’d] sell cakes to anyone who paid me, because that is the nature of doing business in this country” is also irrelevant. Susan is quite free to sell whatever she wants to whomever she wants. She is not free to compel others to do the same. The point is freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. To tell someone they are free to believe something but not free to live by those beliefs is to deny the very nature of belief itself.

In the end, it is likely that courts will continue to decide this way, and Christians will have to make choices about their livelihoods, many of them giving up a lifetime of work and retirement, or coming to middle-age or later with no other job prospects. But until then, Christians are entitled to live under the laws of this land and are entitled to use those laws and rights as citizens. Their Christianity does not take that away.

My answer became “I don’t answer ‘what if’ questions”

I can understand that with obnoxious questions by kids. But as Shaynus said, these are means of getting at foundational principles of reasoning. To decline to answer a straightforward question that you have already answered seems a bit like dodging, almost as if you recognize the bind you are in and can’t answer without betraying your inconsistency.

In an interesting sidestory today, the Detroit Free Press notes that attorney Geoffrey Fieger (notable for his defense of Dr. Death Jack Kervorkian) was denied membership in the Detroit Athletic Club.

“This is a continuation of a long history of bigotry,” Fieger said of the private social club that once did not admit African Americans or Jews. “Geoffrey Fieger is the new black.”

Of course they are a private club, but it is notable how easily it is to invoke stupid arguments that have no basis in reality.

[Susan R]

If I was in business selling cakes, I’d sell cakes to anyone who paid me, because that is the nature of doing business in this country. If you don’t want to sell cakes to homosexuals, then find some other line of work unless you want to fight it out in the courts. And lose.

Homosexuality isn’t the only abominable sin named in the Bible, by the way. I don’t understand why Christians choose it to be the hill they die on. I mean, would any of us want to bake a cake for a Westboro Baptist Church potluck? Would you go to court to fight for your right to refuse them service? How many other groups would you not bake a cake for? It just gets nuts after awhile, and not only can a Christian not be consistent about this, but they are breaking the law in most states. Period.

Just to be clear, in not one of the cases that has become public has the Christian refused to sell cakes, etc. to homosexuals. The woman losing her florist shop and livelihood had regular homosexual customers. It was participation in the wedding where she drew the line. That shows she was not being discriminatory toward homosexuals as homosexuals, but rejecting an event she believed would violate her conscience to participate in. The law should accommodate her religious convictions. Equating homosexuality with race should be resisted by believers at the policy level.

And, yes, everyone should have the right not to do business with Westboro baptist Church. It’s called freedom.