I think this is more than a tidbit, so I’m giving it its own moment in the sun.
Todd and Mark Wathen, a same-sex couple in central Illinois, wanted a civil union ceremony somewhere quaint. They contacted a couple of Bed & Breakfasts, and were rebuffed. One rebuff in particular was pretty explicit:
The owner of the Timber Creek Bed and Breakfast in Paxton wrote in an email to the couple: “We will never host same-sex civil unions. We will never host same-sex weddings even if they become legal in Illinois. We believe homosexuality is wrong and unnatural based on what the Bible says about it. If that is discrimination, I guess we unfortunately discriminate.”
“After all this happened, I just didn’t even want to talk about the wedding,” said Todd Wathen. “It took an event we had looked forward to for years and ruined it.”
This being America, and the 21st Century (when the transvaluation of values is almost total), the Wathens filed a complaint with the state Department of Human Rights, of course. And Illinois law being full of grand platitudes, the Department found probable cause, so the matter is headed to court soon. (So’s a second case against a B&B that was less explicit.)
I’m going into GetReligion.org mode for a minute. I don’t know whether the Tribune reporter was uncurious about Timber Creek’s owners or whether their Movement Conservative lawyers told the owners to “shut up and let us do the talking,” but I’d have liked to have heard not just their e-mail, but how they’d feel about choosing between (1) involuntary servitude to the cause of gay political correctness and (2) going out of business.
And I wonder whether the reporter probed the implausible naïveté implied by Todd Wathen’s “After all this happened, I just didn’t even want to talk about the wedding.”
For the record, I’m skeptical that Todd Wathen was so naïve as to find it shattering that not everyone was cool with civil unions in Illinois. I wouldn’t rule out that he and Mark were going for a “threefer” – a ceremony, publicity, and a test case – by targeting Bed & Breakfasts, fer cryin’ out loud, where the venue is tiny and the owners personally are the staff. (That’s why my wife and I have stopped trying B&Bs; it’s too much like invading someone’s home.)
Also for the record, the owners of the Timber Creek Bed and Breakfast in Paxton sure led with their chins. They might want to add “a soft answer turneth away wrath” to their Bible memory verses. But they wouldn’t have been able to tap-dance around this issue forever. The day is coming when there will be “testers” out there to trap gay-unfriendly public accommodations who engage in pretextual denials of service.
I’m nevertheless rooting for Timber Creek. Whether Todd & Mark were provocateurs as well as lovers, and whether Timber Creek’s owners were tactless, are irrelevant to that support.
I’m now going into lawyer mode for a few paragraphs.
If the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act is like the federal version, the Wathens will have to prove that Illinois has a “compelling state interest” sufficient to overcome the Timber Creek owners’ apparently sincere religious scruples (and probably that Illinois’ methods are narrowly tailored to serve that compelling interest).
So I predict that this case will be fought fiercely over whether the state’s asserted compelling interest shall be defined at a low or a high “level of generality.”
If the question is framed as “whether the state of Illinois has a compelling interest in eradicating discrimination” (a high level of generality), Timber Creek likely will lose. I’m just reporting, not advocating. That’s the way the wind is blowing, and it’s blowing pretty strongly.
But if the question is “whether the state of Illinois has a compelling interest in forcing even mom & pop shops to serve all comers despite deep religious scruples” (low level of generality), Timber Creek likely will win. As hinted by my sympathy for the owner-operators, this is how I hope the state interest is defined.
The Chicago Tribune story linked above (HT Mike Bennett on FaceBook, by the way) quotes some legal mucky-mucks about the “slippery slope” of religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws. But that’s not the only slippery slope implicated here.
If the case plays out as I predict, the “high level of generality” compelling interest in eradicating discrimination could result in upholding “hate speech” laws (should this be the Illinois legislature’s next effort to divert attention from their shipwrecked economy) against anyone who speaks an unkind word about sodomy. A “compelling interest,” after all, can trump even real constitutional rights, not just <sarcasm>absurd artifacts of a long-ago, superstitious age, like religious freedom.</sarcasm>
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 