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)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

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)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Common thread: Statism

Tipsy repents of his crypto-statism
Rube Moore hands Chris Cuomo his head
Losing the Christian language
Who’s rational?
Protecting the cake police
The Law’s new religion
Answering Professor Kingsfield

Continue reading “Common thread: Statism” →

Vacation: too brief, too close to home

One simple RFRA question
Christian Conservatives: Have you figured it out yet?
A Real Theocrat
The last time local media were in such high dudgeon
A Proverb that influenced this blog

Continue reading “Vacation: too brief, too close to home” →

Kristin Lavransdatter and the real Deal

I just finished Nobel Laureate Sigrid Undset‘s Kristin Lavransdatter recently. So I decided to go back and listen to a couple of old Mars Hill Audio Journal interviews that piqued my interest to read it some day.

So, first, I should clarify that I finished the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, because I hadn’t appreciated that it really was a trilogy, bundled in one Kindle edition. That’s one thing I learned.

A second was that that the prior translation from Norwegian to English was really bad, and I got lucky to get the translation of Tina Nunnaly, who was one of the interview subjects. I might have missed a really good story had I been forced to deal with the earlier version, as did many who gave up after a few chapters.

Third, this wonderful (if massive) trilogy is out of favor, perhaps because Kristin (apart from insisting on marrying her choice rather than her beloved father’s, which arguably was a mistake and certainly was life-changing) is nobody’s idea of a modern feminist.

But then the interest got piqued in a different direction. One interview subject was Deal W. Hudson, far better known as a “conservative” political activist than as a scholar (which he was, and in which capacity he was interviewed). And I recalled that he was involved in some scandal that drove him into obscurity, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

So I Googled “Deal Hudson scandal” and found that, of course, the scandal was sexual (I should have known) and that the top Google hits tended to attack him from the right, not the left. See here and here.

And although he may be toxic to the GOP now, “He remains influential among conservative Catholic voters, an important demographic electoral bloc” (Wikipedia) – despite the scandal being ~~pretty darned ugly~~ predatory exploitation of a co-ed more than young enough to be his daughter, after he got her drunk, and coming 5-10 years after his conversion from Southern Baptist to Roman Catholic. (Suddenly, people also noted his two prior marriages and divorces while a Baptist minister.)

So although the stage may be smaller, he’s not driven into obscurity after all.

What? You’re expecting a moral from that story!?

Okay, here’s a moral of sorts: You can’t indict Democrats for hypocrisy because they profess no standards; and although you can indict a Republican, you can’t convict and get a long sentence, because Republican sexual “standards” really only apply to Democrats.

There. Happy?

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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)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.