Four things are shaping my perception conspicuously this week: Continue reading “Demented Hoosier Holy Week 2015”
Category: Legalia
Bake for them two?
It turns out that I wasn’t the only one to note the problems with Bake for them two, which had a number of my friends purring approval and, as I admitted, getting an initial approval from me. Some of the other caveats are pretty harsh:
“If asked to pinch incense to the emperor, offer a blood sacrifice to the gods as well! Matt. 5:41!” – Too clever by half exegetes
— Nathan Duffy (@TheIllegit) April 8, 2015
But this one, from an organization formally committed to opposing SSM to the bitter end (via a Declaration I subscribed), had worthy moments, starting with acknowledging (mansplaining?) a good impulse behind the bad exegesis:
Kantrowitz, a free-lance editor and part-time nanny, penned a blog that went viral, competing with the reach of those of us who do religious liberty for a living. That’s noteworthy for two reasons:
First, and foremost, it tells me Christians are desperate to communicate love to LGBT people. Indeed, many Christians are willing to ignore biblical principles they know to be true to avoid the appearance of judgment or rejection. This reality stands in stark contrast to the popular misconception of Christians as ignorant bigots. As influential activists in the LGBT movement further this misconception, Christians grow more fearful of embodying the caricature. The result is a spiral of silence among Christians, and historic gains for LGBT activists.
The spiral of silence is evidence of the second lesson: the widespread failure of pastors and other church leaders to properly equip everyday Christians to respond to the culture wars.
In the first half of the next sentence, though, I personally think he goes off the rails:
Christians don’t know what the Bible says, and lack heroes who model both grace and truth.
Maybe I’m reading too much into “don’t know what the Bible says.” In my experience, Bible proof-texts are ever on their lips, be it “go the second mile” or some clobber verse. The first has cultural purchase because it sounds nice when applied to wedding cakes; the latter is almost always worse than a failure in public discourse.
The Declaration I subscribed cited more than the Bible:
We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person.
Then comes the real surprise. “Go the second mile” wasn’t even “nice” when uttered. Kantrowitz’s proof-text is at least as out-of-context as any clobber verse:
Now, finally, we come to Matthew 5: 41. Does this section apply to the current clash over religious freedom and LGBT rights, and, if so, how?
Here is the section in full:
You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:38-48)
… At the time of Jesus, Roman citizens held immense power over Jews, who had few rights. Jesus is instructing believers how to respond to coercive acts in an systemically unjust system. He is not affirming that system. This is similar to the instruction Paul offers slaves to obey their earthly masters (Ephesians 6). Such an admonition is not an endorsement of the slavery system, but a guide to faithful living in the midst of a broken cultural reality.
…
Furthermore, Jesus’ instruction is a means to preserve one’s dignity in a situation where humanity is being denied. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, to turn to him the other also is a display of power. If someone sues you for your tunic, to willingly offer your cloak also relocates the false pretense of power embodied in an unjust system to the shoulders of the one whose dignity is grounded in something else entirely.
Matthew 5 is a subversive text ….
I assume Bake for them two will become the squishy Christian clobber verse against troglodytes like me. But for my money, more in the original spirit of “go the second mile” is this Note from Creator Cakes:
Though we’ve never been asked to service a same-sex wedding, and though it looks increasingly that we someday will, we want to notify our customers of a policy that Creator Cakes will pursue. We’ve decided that if asked, we will provide a cake at a same-sex wedding ceremony. But we will take every dollar from that sale and donate it to an organization fighting to protect and advance religious liberty—organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom, Manhattan Declaration, or the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
No organization, company or person should be compelled to participate in events or speech that conflict with their convictions. This is a basic freedom we thought was afforded under our constitution. But our culture is beginning to turn its back on its rich legacy of protecting dissenting viewpoints. If Caesar insists that bakers must be made to bake cakes or else close up shop, we’re going to see to it that Caesar’s edicts get undermined by channeling resources designed to fight Caesar.
So, we will serve same-sex wedding services. We will do so unhappily and with a bothered conscience. But if we must do so with a bothered conscience, we reserve the right as a condition of the marketplace to bother others’ consciences as well. If we are coerced into baking for events we disagree with, we will return the favor and use the funds of those we disagree with to fund the organizations they disagree with. If you are unhappy with this new policy or it conflicts with your own convictions about marriage, we invite you to take your business elsewhere.
If you need proof-texts for that, let’s look further into Romans than 1:27, to 12:18 and 13:1.
Care to fault my exegesis on that?
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“In learning as in traveling and, of course, in lovemaking, all the charm lies in not coming too quickly to the point, but in meandering around for a while.” (Eva Brann)
RFRA revisited – an irenic set of hypotheticals
As the scorching heat has begun to reduce, the energy over Indiana RFRA has begun to manifest as light.
Today’s newspaper, and Twitter and Facebook, have continued my RFRA thinking. Someone I’ve known for 50+ years pushed back a bit on something I wrote, and for some reason his very brief comment “clicked” with me.
So I’m relenting from RFRA Wind-Down and offering one more, that’s likely to lead to others. I don’t intend to have this posted on social media until after my Holy Week, though, since that’s where most people seem to read and react. This is more of a Journal entry until then.
I’ve come to understand (if not to agree with) the reaction against the law because of the personalities and interest groups behind it, and how poorly politicians articulated the need for it. That makes left conspiracy theorists salivate, as it would those on the right were the roles reversed. (Nota bene: I’ve never seen the press demand a list of concrete problems necessitating any left-leaning Bill. Just sayin’.)
And I’ve come to appreciate that those shouting past each other (“Bigot!” and “God-hater!”, roughly) may have different cases in mind.
With that, I offer seven hypothetical or paradigmatic cases that I consider more or less arranged by increasing justification for the recalcitrant baker:
- Customer walks into bakery. Customer says, pointing, “I’d like to buy a dozen of those cookies.” Baker hands him a questionnaire, including “sexual orientation” and refuses to sell because the answer is “Gay.” “We don’t serve your kind. Get out of here!”
- Customer walks into bakery. Customer says “I’d like to order a wedding cake. May I see your portfolio?” After seeing the portfolio, customer says “I’d like #3, exactly as pictured. I’ll pick it up before noon, May 27.” Baker hands him a questionnaire, including “who’s getting married?”, and refuses to sell because the answer is “Adam and Fred.”
- Customer walks into bakery. Customer says “I’d like to order a wedding cake. May I see your portfolio?” After seeing the portfolio, customer says “I’d like #3, exactly as pictured. Deliver it to Metropolitan Community Church by noon, May 27.” Baker says: “Whoa! Not so fast! Metropolitan Community Church? Who is getting married? This isn’t a gay wedding is it? I won’t do the cake if it is.”
- Customer walks into bakery. Customer says “I’d like to order a wedding cake. May I see your portfolio?” After seeing the portfolio, customer says “I’d like #3, but with two men on top. Deliver it to Metropolitan Community Church by noon, May 27.” Baker says: “Whoa! Not so fast! I won’t put two men on two women on a wedding cake because that’s not what marriage is.”
- Two guys walk into bakery. They say “We’d like to order a wedding cake for our upcoming wedding. We’d like to see your portfolio.” Baker says “No need to bother. I won’t do that kind of wedding, even if you just want something straight out of the portfolio.”
- Two guys walk into bakery. They say “We’d like to order a wedding cake for our upcoming wedding. We’d like to see your portfolio.” After looking at the portfolio, guys say “We’d like #3, but with two men on top.” Baker says “I’ll do #3 without any figures on top, but not with two men or two women. That’s not what I believe marriage is.”
- Two guys walk into bakery. They say “We’d like to order a wedding cake for our upcoming wedding. We’ve seen your work and like it. But we don’t need to see your portfolio. SSM is new and exciting, and your designs are pretty traditional. Make us something new, exciting, one-of-a-kind, and celebrative of our union.” Baker says: “I’m sorry. I don’t have the artistic vocabulary for celebrating SSM. You’d be better off going to someone who’s excited by this new thing.” Customer says “You’re just saying that because you’re a Christianist bigot. We want you to do a custom cake and we’ll see you in court if you refuse.”
With enough time, I could probably come up with extra gradations.
If the people yelling “Bigot!” have case 1 in mind, I’m with them. Case 1 is outrageous, but many, many comment boxes were filled with suggestions that such a thing was exactly what would come from RFRA. They’re wrong about what RFRA would produce, but they’re right that in Case 1, the baker’s wrong. (Got that?)
If they have case 7 in mind, I’m inclined to yell back <hyperbole>”God-hater!”</hyperbole>
One writer has proposed a scriptural proof-text for what to do: “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.” (Matthew 5:41) She writes a winsome “Bake for them two.” Some of my friends are quite smitten with that article, but after an initial flush of good will, I’m not smitten with it at all. I’m not sure what kind of case she and they have in mind, but it appears to be in the 6-7 range from how she set it up.
If she has numbers 6 or 7 in mind, I’d suggest that the apt Bible principle, for those who want chapter and verse, is I Corinthians 10:18-28, but especially 25-26, 28:
Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” … But if anyone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, both for the sake of the man who told you and for conscience’ sake.
Or, being translated, “bake anything without looking for trouble, but if trouble comes looking for you, don’t dodge it.”
I’m not really interested in debate over which proof-text fits better. I left battling proof-texts behind when I saw the 40,000 denominations (and counting) it has spawned. I’m just saying “bake for them two” is an arbitrary choice, and probably not the best. It’s certainly not the only relevant one.
Translated to other trades, like photography, it seems to me that there are no portfolios a photographer could replicate exactly, and that every commission is unique. They’re all “number 7s.” It’s not “looking for trouble” to ask details about the time, place, spouses, etc. in preparation for taking the job, and if it is a same-sex wedding, that will invariably come out in the course of that preliminary work.
I hope case 7 sheds light on why I’ve been adamant about the need for exceptions to non-discrimination laws. Case number 7 has been, roughly, the case I’ve had in mind. Number 7 clearly calls for the baker to draw on creativity and imagination to celebrate a same-sex wedding that, for whatever reason, she’s not prepared to celebrate. That’s got both “free speech” and “free exercise” violation written all over it if government compels such expression.
A RFRA is about as narrow an exception as I can imagine: you get your day in court, trying to prove that your religious/conscience/free speech exemption claim outweighs the need for 100% enforcement of an anti-discrimination law or ordinance and the other guy gets to say “no, anti-discrimination is a compelling government interest and anything less than 100% guts that whole interest.” (Again, RFRA is about far more than discrimination claims between merchant and customer, but that’s the hot button issue.)
Thoughts? This is meant to prompt dialog.
I hope soon to attempt an analysis of whether it’s advisable for a Christian to acquiesce in cases like 6 and 7, or whether perhaps it’s very wrong to do so, analyzing via some tools from moral theology, such as formal participation, material participation and their variants.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
RFRA wind-down
With that hopeful title, and with Orthodox Holy Week coming, I offer what I intend as my last word on Indiana’s RFRA battles of the last two weeks. I may even go on a “media fast” to avoid sullying Holy Week with agitation and ill-feelings like those of this week in particular. If you’re wondering whether you should sully your Holy Week by reading further, be assured that I’ve tried to be objective and irenic.
With that intention, I offer as my closing thoughts an edited version of something that someone put up on Facebook Saturday morning, in response to his brother-in-law. It remarkably reproduces my sentiments exactly, at least as those sentiments have been honed by the occasionally enlightening (rather than inflaming) discussions of late.
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I’m so out of politics, I had no idea a RFRA was being forwarded in Indiana until the furor hit; then I had to take a crash course on what the Indiana iteration said, and how it supposedly differed from those in other states.
What I missed in focusing on what the law said and thus what it did (silly me, thinking like a lawyer instead of a PR guy or a powerbroker) – and what I still think the press gave too much sinister significance to – is who were the “interest groups” that pushed for it: notably, 3 Religious Right groups/figures in the state, with the most odious of the three leading the charge, perhaps misrepresenting the law to his own followers. (I can’t bear sliming myself by going to his website/blog/etc to see how he may have been selling it.)
Mark Movesian at First Things warned the, oh, three or four people in the cosmos who want to deny bubble gum and baseball cards to gays and lesbians, that Indiana RFRA did not give them a right to do so, even before Thursday’s “fix.” It might have given them a defense to raise, but the defense was no slam dunk when it came to simple “I don’t want to deal with These People” bigotry. (I’m prescinding the question of whether we’ve labeled too many entities “public accommodations” that mustn’t “discriminate.”)
But no significant constituency in Indiana planned mass boycotts of gay dollars or “straight only” signs on their doors. This is news only to those who distrust their fellow Americans even more than I do.
A distinct case is posed by the artisan bakers, photographers, florists (and counting) who for reasons of conscience won’t create a custom product or do custom services in celebration of same-sex weddings. I was going to call it a “tougher case,” but for me it’s not: if sincere (and why would they turn down business and risk bad PR if they aren’t?), they shouldn’t be compelled to express what they don’t believe. Your mileage may vary from that, but I think my opinion is better rooted in fundamental American law – assuming the law still has something to do with court outcomes, and it’s not all power plays and irrational “distortion factors.”
So far, the courts have been unable to distinguish the two, and my position has lost. But the Saint Patrick’s Day paraders in Boston (who rejected an Irish GLBTetcetera group) lost repeatedly, too, enduring even mockery from Judges, until they won unanimously in the Supreme Court, not on religious grounds, but on free speech grounds. “One important manifestation of the principle of free speech is that one who chooses to speak may also decide what not to say.” That was the notoriously right-wing fundamentalist David Souter writing, by the way.
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Sorry. One more comment. I don’t think I had yet commended Rod Dreher’s extended quote from his reader “Raskolnik.” I do so now.
Raskolnik offers the sociologist (or was she “anthropologist”?) Mary Douglas’ idea of a “condensed symbol” – certain practices or ideas that become a kind of shorthand for a whole worldview. Same-sex marriage may have become a condensed symbol, in the WEIRD world, of Christian resistance to secularism writ large, participation as equivalent to worshipping a false God with the proverbial “pinch of incense.”
Advocacy of same-sex marriage, of course, is a condensed symbol of the hagiographical version of Selma, with recusants in the role of Bull Conner.
So I’m likely to be back after Holy Week, but RFRA per se may have faded by then, and Indiana’s alignment with the zeitgeist may have been completed. Sigh.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Common thread: Statism
Warning: Mostly RFRA
Not all about RFRA. Really.
Vacation: too brief, too close to home
RFRA offends the right people
It looks as if passage of a Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana is almost assured now.
A fairly sleek federal prototype has been turned into a convoluted multi-page state version. That’s just what happens, I guess, when a pretty simple concept (the free exercise of religion is important, it’s threatened, and it’s not identical to the right of free speech) gets sullied by collateral attacks (notably, the national news stories, involving same-sex “marriage,” that occasioned Indiana RFRA’s introduction). Those collateral attacks have been effective enough in our polarized political culture that opponents now just call the bill things like the “religious discrimination act.”
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Like a dog returning to its vomit, our local newspaper amplifies that idiocy. Humility has never been among its editorial virtues. It savagely defended a sexual predator because – well, he’d been the poster boy for our gay rights ordinance, so he couldn’t possible be a predator, could he? It’s wrong to “discriminate,” so what could possibly go wrong if we take a guy who’s attracted to guys and put him in an an unsupervised power position over troubled adolescent (not pre-pubescent) guys? The people who thought something was fishy about that were Not Our Kind of People, either.
But Wisconsin officials found our poster boy in flagrante delicto, and a search turned up secret selfie videos proving conclusively that the Indiana charges had been true all along.
So the newspaper had to come clean and admit that it had been horribly, tragically, arrogantly wrong and that 28 cheese-heads paid the price.
Ha ha ha! Had you going, didn’t I? No, of course it didn’t come clean! The newspaper took a subdued, passive-voice approach. “Mistakes were made,” you know. “We all were taken in.” That sort of thing.
No, we weren’t all taken in. The Wrong Kind Of People thought the troubled adolescent boys who accused this criminal of sodomizing them were telling a plausible story that merited investigation. Only ideological blindness kept the newspaper from seen that they were right: the charges might be true or might be false but they weren’t off-the-wall.
You can buy your ink by the barrel, but it’s hard to spill enough of it to cover up that kind of error in judgment.
Just so now. RFRA supporters are Not Their Kind of People. End of subject. Bring out the ridicule and the accusations. Pour on the ink!
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Now might be a good time to recall why we needed, , and still need, RFRA. The answer is not “so fundamentalist creeps can discriminate against our dear GL brothers and sisters.” Read the two preceding links. And remember that Federal RFRA does not apply to Indiana. That inapplicability is a federalism principle, applied by the Supreme Court after Federal RFRA was adopted (and rightly so, I must admit).
I’ve spent some time on this issue, and I’m not talking about blogging time, which without some background is just mouthing off – like writing newspaper editorials. I’ve come to realize that Antonin Scalia’s rationale in Employment Division v. Smith wasn’t quite so sweeping as I (and just about everyone else) first thought. At the Federal level especially, few laws impinging on religious freedom are passed without some exception lobbied for by the Chamber of Commerce (e.g., does not apply to employers with fewer than 15 employees) or the AFL-CIO or someone powerful. When Congress builds in such exceptions, they make the law no longer “neutral” and “of general application,” so religious conscience exceptions will ride in on the coattails of the other exceptions.
That suits me just fine. But it requires lawsuits and courts, just as some lawsuits and courts will probably be needed to adjudicate Indiana RFRA claims:
- Is the religious claim sincere?
- Is the burden on free exercise material?
- Is the government interest for the burden compelling? (Here’s where I think courts are suspiciously deferential.)
- It the burden as narrowly tailored as possible to serving the compelling interest? (This is where other exceptions to the law prove that a little lenity for religion, too, would be in order.)
The only reason that’s a problem, in the eyes of the press, is that the press values religious freedom outside the Church building so very, very little. Oh: and we don’t have any notorious cases yet in Indiana of religious freedom being materially burdened for trifling, trendy causes.
That “not a problem in Indiana” argument sure was a winner on imposition of same-sex marriage, wasn’t it?
It also remains true that, in many cases, the concerns of religious people can be protected as freedom of expression or freedom from compelled expression, as when a photographer declined to photograph the Alan Sears family for an ADF Christmas Card because the photographer disapproved of ADF:
I oppose the goals and objectives of your organization and have no interest in working on its behalf.
How did religious freedom warrior Sears respond?
“We’re talking about human dignity. It violates someone’s dignity to require them to create images that violate their core beliefs,” Mr. Sears said. “I think I’m a pretty nice guy, and my family are kind folks, but to require this woman to portray me in a loving, family-centered way that is contrary to her views and her conscience, I think it would be an act of violence against her dignity.”
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I’m frankly hard-pressed to come up with an example of a situation in which I – if I was a baker, photographer, florist or bandleader (wonder why nobody has dragged a band before a Human Relations Commission for declining to play at a same-sex “wedding” reception?) – would decline to serve a gay or lesbian individual at all (I’ve served many in my real profession). It appears that I’m not alone on that, as most of the craftsmen in the cases now working through the courts regularly served gays and lesbians, but drew the line and doing custom flowers, photos or cakes for a ceremonial union (as I’d be a poor choice to lead a charge for same-sex marriage in the courts).
I’m even hard-pressed to come up with an example of a situation in which I would decline to help celebrate a same-sex “wedding” for religious reasons that weren’t equally (or even more) refusals to express a sentiment I could not express with integrity.
But same-sex unions isn’t the whole point of RFRA, as witnessed by the historic Supreme Court case that led to its adoption. So I’m happy that we’re going to get an Indiana RFRA, and to be a sore winner instead of a sore loser for a change.
The victory may be brief, though, as those who hate religious freedom already are doubtless at work on strategies to get a federal judge to strike down Indiana RFRA because we’re mean. “Just look at the newspaper coverage at the time: the motivation for Indiana RFRA was to let fundamentalist creeps discriminate against our dear GL brothers and sisters,” right?
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“In learning as in traveling and, of course, in lovemaking, all the charm lies in not coming too quickly to the point, but in meandering around for a while.” (Eva Brann)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 