Vox may still be keeping up its risible just-the-facts posturing, but it is tendentious to the point of dishonesty: “Colorado baker who refused to serve gay couple now wants to refuse to serve transgender person,” it says.
That is not true, of course.
(But everybody knows that.)
Phillips serves customers of all sorts, including homosexual customers. What he declines to do is to make cakes for certain events, participation in which, even as a vendor, would violate his conscience. As he put it: “I serve everybody. It’s just that I don’t create cakes for every occasion.”
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But it would be foolish to analogize the situation of gay or transgender Americans in Colorado in 2018 to the situation of black Americans in Mississippi in 1930 or Arkansas in 1964. There is widespread tolerance and accommodation, and America’s sexual minorities have social, economic, and political power far beyond what African Americans had in the 1960s. (It is arguably the case that, in spite of their smaller numbers, gay Americans have more social, economic, and political power than black Americans have today, too.) In 1964, the case for intervening in the business of any particular motel operator or restaurateur was identical to the case for intervening in all of them: The problem was systemic, and effectively universal.
The same cannot be said of Jack Phillips and his little bakery. No gay couple seeking a wedding cake is going to have to travel three states away to find one if Phillips declines their custom. No transgender person celebrating a coming out is going to want for baked goods if Phillips refuses service.
Everybody knows this. The activists targeting Phillips do not care. The point is not to see to it that gay and transgender people can live their lives as they wish to — the point is to coerce Jack Phillips into conformity.
This is partly a matter of religious bigotry: Jack Phillips is a Christian, prone to citing the Bible as the basis for his business decisions, and gay activists wish to see such people publicly humiliated. They wish to seem them forced by the machinery of the state to submit and to violate their own beliefs. There isn’t any other juice in going after a previously obscure baker in this way.
The same is true of the Left’s demands for public funding of abortion and for using government power to compel elderly Catholic nuns to add contraception to their health-insurance plans. None of those controversies is about any material benefit. (Planned Parenthood claims that abortion constitutes only 3 percent of its business; surely they could absorb that minuscule cost, perhaps with a little help from Tom Steyer.) The message is clear: “Not only will you tolerate what we want, you will participate in it.” It’s more convenient to make the case for abortion if the blood is on every taxpayer’s hands.
The Compulsory Society
That is not true, of course.
(But everybody knows that.)
Phillips serves customers of all sorts, including homosexual customers. What he declines to do is to make cakes for certain events, participation in which, even as a vendor, would violate his conscience. As he put it: “I serve everybody. It’s just that I don’t create cakes for every occasion.”
[clip]
But it would be foolish to analogize the situation of gay or transgender Americans in Colorado in 2018 to the situation of black Americans in Mississippi in 1930 or Arkansas in 1964. There is widespread tolerance and accommodation, and America’s sexual minorities have social, economic, and political power far beyond what African Americans had in the 1960s. (It is arguably the case that, in spite of their smaller numbers, gay Americans have more social, economic, and political power than black Americans have today, too.) In 1964, the case for intervening in the business of any particular motel operator or restaurateur was identical to the case for intervening in all of them: The problem was systemic, and effectively universal.
The same cannot be said of Jack Phillips and his little bakery. No gay couple seeking a wedding cake is going to have to travel three states away to find one if Phillips declines their custom. No transgender person celebrating a coming out is going to want for baked goods if Phillips refuses service.
Everybody knows this. The activists targeting Phillips do not care. The point is not to see to it that gay and transgender people can live their lives as they wish to — the point is to coerce Jack Phillips into conformity.
This is partly a matter of religious bigotry: Jack Phillips is a Christian, prone to citing the Bible as the basis for his business decisions, and gay activists wish to see such people publicly humiliated. They wish to seem them forced by the machinery of the state to submit and to violate their own beliefs. There isn’t any other juice in going after a previously obscure baker in this way.
The same is true of the Left’s demands for public funding of abortion and for using government power to compel elderly Catholic nuns to add contraception to their health-insurance plans. None of those controversies is about any material benefit. (Planned Parenthood claims that abortion constitutes only 3 percent of its business; surely they could absorb that minuscule cost, perhaps with a little help from Tom Steyer.) The message is clear: “Not only will you tolerate what we want, you will participate in it.” It’s more convenient to make the case for abortion if the blood is on every taxpayer’s hands.
The Compulsory Society
