The state of Arizona was the latest front in the battle between secular left-wing political movements and religious freedom advocates this week, and the secular left won a temporary victory. Governor Jan Brewer vetoed a bill that was perceived to allow businesses the freedom to refuse service to whomever they wanted—and in this context, that pertained to homosexuals.
I’ve italicized the phrase above, because that was how I perceived the debate and I suspect how about 99 percent of the public perceived the debate. Then I read this article in The Christian Post. According to CP, and they appear to have done their homework, current law already provides Arizona business owners ample freedom to choose who they want to serve. CP, which appears sympathetic to conservative backers of the bill, implies that it might be easier for gays to sue a business for non-service under current law than under the vetoed legislation.
All of which leaves me to wonder what all the fuss was about. If current law makes it harder for a gay couple to sue a photographer who didn’t want to service their wedding, why was the gay rights movement so opposed to the new law? And why are Catholics, and other Protestant brethren, seeing the veto as an impending sign of the loss of religious liberty? I wish I could tell you.
So why don’t we take a step back and look at what we all perceived the debate to be about—which is religious freedom in the public square—since that’s the topic that’s working up all the emotional hot buttons.
Before going further, I almost feel guilty about devoting yet another post to the question of gay rights vis-à-vis the Catholic Church, and other believing Protestant communities. I really didn’t start this blog with the intention of it turning into a gay rights-all-the-time commentary, but this is a topic that has been on mind more.
One of the reasons the topic is on my mind is obvious, and it’s the gay rights movement can’t stop shoving it in my face. If I visit ESPN I’m constantly hearing how Michael Sam was treated at the NFL draft combine or that Jason Collins signed a 10-day contract to play for the Brooklyn Nets. If I go to my Yahoo account to check my e-mail, the Yahoo home page appears to be Gay Rights Central, with some piece of news as the top story every day. For a movement that says that want to be left alone, they certainly make shove their values down everyone’s throat.
But there’s other reasons this topic is on my mind, and it’s that I feel genuinely whipsawed by the current political and cultural climate. I’ve made my stance on homosexual acts and marriage very clear—by the standards of America today, I am a homophobe. Which simply means I think marriage is between a man and a woman and the biology of the human body makes it clear that men and women were made to fit together in a way same-sex relationships were not. Personally, I find that a fairly unremarkable statement, but it doesn’t take much to draw the homophobe label.
However…I am disturbed by what I see as a tendency among socially traditional Catholics (I won’t comment on Protestants since I’m not familiar with the nuances of debate within these communities, nor the teaching of each denomination) to single out homosexuality for harsher standards than the array of other sexual activity we believe to be gravely sinful (unmarried sex, cohabitation, contraception).
As an example, last spring I wrote on a conservative Catholic website that I disagreed with a comment made by a speaker at Johns Hopkins that homosexuality led to the logical next step of bestiality. The editor of the site rebuked me for it.
Now I believe that sin is a tricky devil (literally) and that once you step into one sin it can lead into a lot of others you might not intend. But that’s as true about alcohol abuse, watching porn, gambling addiction, and any other sexual sins straight people commit as it is about homosexuality. Start down that garden path and who knows where it ends up—but that’s not a reason to single out homosexuality in particular.
If you’re a practicing Catholic and believe in all the Church teaches, singling out gays for a higher standard can be easy because in all likelihood there aren’t any in our immediate social circle (at least that we know of), while most of us do regularly interact with, and consider friends, people who may live with their significant other or believe in artificial birth control.
But singling those who commit the sin of homosexual acts out for a higher standard violates Catholic teaching on this very topic, which specifically says that “unjust discrimination” against gays should be rooted out. Unmarried sex is grave sin, as sure as homosexuality is.
And in that’s aspect of Catholic moral teaching that leaves me often troubled on the topic today. What is “unjust discrimination?” To secular liberals, the answer is easy—gay couples should have the same rights as straight ones. But for a Catholic, we’re going to understand that teaching in the context of all that comes before it, which include the inherent unnaturalness of homosexual acts and of same-sex marriage.
If a Catholic leader has really come out with a complete explanation of how the prohibition against “unjust discrimination” might be applied, I have missed it. Perhaps that’s going to be a part of the Church’s future. Or perhaps, given its political overtones, it’s going to be left for the laity to apply using our own private judgment. I don’t know.
What I would like to point out to those who also believe in the Catholic Church, is that this facet of moral teaching—the need to eliminate “unjust discrimination” is not some optional part of Catholicism. We can’t ignore it because it might create some uncomfortable moments of intersection with the gay rights movement and against the Protestant Right. Let’s take some hypothetical examples of how this might play out in the public square….
*If a man owns a gas station just off the freeway (a freeway quite obviously paid for by public tax dollars), should he have the right to refuse service to a gay couple based on religious beliefs? I say no. The entire public paid for the freeway that made the man’s business successful and the entire public should be able to be served by it.
Furthermore, what if it’s a 10-degree night, the tank is on empty, and the next gas station isn’t for another fifty miles (hardly an unusual circumstance)? To refuse service would be akin to telling the gay couple to risk hypothermia or worse. There’s nothing in Catholic doctrine that justifies this, and it’s fully appropriate for it to be not just a matter of private charity, but public law that compels the gas station to serve all who come.
*Let’s move to the next rung down, and say someone opens a pizza joint. A gay couple comes in on a Friday night. Should the owner be able to refuse service? The situation is certainly not as grave as the example above, but I’m inclined again to say that if you open to serve the public, then serve the public. If you’re serving couples that contracept, if you’re serving people that live together, don’t say it’s a violation of your religious freedom because you served a homosexual couple.
Because here again, your pizza business can succeed because of roads and sidewalks that will built and paid for by everyone. There’s no movement suggesting that gays get a break on the taxes that pay for this, so it’s fair that they benefit from the services the business provides.
But now let’s move to some questions where I believe the benefit of the doubt should move to the religious freedom of the business owner. The most prominent examples in the news are cases of gay couples wanting a photographer or baker to be a vendor for their wedding. In this case, I think the owner should have the right to say no.
I realize these businesses still benefit from sidewalks and roads in the same way the pizza restaurant does, but I think there’s also a couple big differences. The first is in the gravity of what the owner is being asked to be a party to. In the example above he was only asked to serve people food. In this new case, he’s being asked to assent to a wedding, something that he (and I) believe to be fundamentally immoral.
Furthermore, there is the question of just how much inconvenience the customer is suffering. Refusing a gay couple at a restaurant subjects them to having a find a new place to eat on immediate notice. It might not be the most serious problem in the world, but it’s a hassle. A photographer or baker refusing service just means the couple goes to the next phone number down in the Yellow Pages.
The court system in the United States has consistently weighed these sorts of competing factors when different rights start clashing. I would argue that in the case of the baker and photographer, the inconvenience suffered by the customer does not outweigh the violation of religious freedom incurred by the business owner.
*Finally, let’s say the photographer or baker work out of their house. As far as I’m concerned, they can serve exclusively who they want and for whatever reason. The only rationale for mandating that any business serve anyone and everyone is when they enter the public square. If the only way you have entered the public square is through a website and a phone listing, that’s so minimal that you can’t possibly justify any reduction in religious freedom.
I would submit these four cases as test examples for everyone to think their way through. On polar opposites, you have the case of the gas station owner and the photographer working out of the house. In the middle, you have the pizza shop owner and the photographer/baker working in a public place. You have two examples falling on each side of the line.
Wherever you think, let me use this tiny space on the web though, to appeal to the leaders of our Church to take on the tough challenge of asking what “unjust discrimination” against gays is, in the Catholic sense of the term, and how we might root it out. Because right now, we’re just swimming on our own trying to figure it out.
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