Elizabeth Scalia:
So, you know all this brouhaha, all these hysterics about how bakers, and photographers, and other service-providers who routinely work for gay clientele (but draw a line at serving gay weddings because they feel it imperils their souls) are horrible people?
And you know the whole “if you think that way, then you’re a bigot,” thing, because governments and pundits have taken it into their heads that it is their job to define “sin” to another person?
And you know that whole, “refusing to serve someone because they think differently than you is all Jim Crow-y and immoral?”
Yeah, well…so much for that.
A gay stylist in Santa Fe refused to cut New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez’s hair due to her stance on same-sex marriage. KOB-TV’s Stuart Dyson reports.
A Santa Fe hairdresser is waging his own boycott of sorts: He is denying service to the governor of New Mexico because she opposes gay marriage.
Antonio Darden, who has been with his partner for 15 years, said he made his views clear the last time Gov. Susana Martinez’s office called to make an appointment.
“The governor’s aides called not too long ago wanting another appointment to come in,” Darden told KOB.com. “Because of her stances and her views on this, I told her aides, ‘no.’ They called the next day asking if I’d changed my mind about taking the governor in, and I said ‘no’ again.”
Martinez has said marriage should be between a man and a woman. Darden, who said he has cut the governor’s hair three times, said he won’t serve her unless she changes her mind about gay marriage.
Darden apparently feels that it would go against his own personal moral code — his individual conscience — to cut the governor’s hair. He does not see this decision as an act of “intolerance.” In his mind, he believes that to cut her hair would be to co-operate with evil — a kind of sin, if not against God, then against his own reason and beliefs. He may fear that serving to the governor could be misconstrued as an affirmation of her views.
And no one in the press is arguing differently on the governor’s behalf. No one is suggesting that, by refusing to cut the hair of a person whose position is in alignment with the law, Mr. Darden is denying her a basic civil-right. Quite the opposite; many on social media are saying he is within his rights to refuse her.
I concur. If he is, though, then so are the Christians refusing to serve gay weddings. You can’t have it both ways.
This made me think of way back when we first heard the term ”litmus test,” as regards a Senate confirmation of a justice.
It has been a slow slog but it does seem that there are developing litmus tests for staying in business.
I recall a Jehovah’s witness I lived by.
His daughter was ”disfellowshipped,” or kicked out of their faith.
Other JW’s were not allowed to talk with her ….. at all.
BUT….JW’s who were in business were allowed to serve her!
They saw a distinction between religious and secular.
Today there is confusion.
This is partly because the government keeps butting in and trying to define religious things for religious people.
Obama once tried to force religious schools to hire secular teachers!
Later he tried to force religious people to pay for birth control and abortions.
Now he wants to force religious people to redefine their own consciences in more aspects of their day-to-day living to align with his MOST RECENT iteration. (Lest we forget, Obama wouldn’t make a stand for gay marriage until he needed more gay votes in 2012.)
Cognitive dissonance is the ability to hold two opposing viewpoints in one’s head without a great big headache.
Being stupid, unthinking or syncophantic must help.
Wait… male hair stylists are gay?