TPM Reader JC brings us his experience on the battlefield of cake morality and reminds us of a key point. While anti-gay activists have done a decent job coopting the language of ‘religious liberty’ as a synonym for prejudice against gay people, Americans – even in fairly conservative states – overwhelmingly oppose laws which give the sanction of law this kind of bigotry.
Thank you for your recent post on the cake/flowers silliness. My major question here that no one in the media seems to ask these folks is–does giving someone a generic cake or flowers mean you endorse what they use the cake and flowers for? Generally a vendor sends all their cakes out without asking or worrying about the recipients daily morality.
What makes a gay couple’s morality so important to the cake maker’s trade that they now must say No? Why is the supposed “sin” of being gay or getting married as gay citizens suddenly consequential to the the cakes moral mission? Or why does the gay factor even give the cake a moral mission?
If you do not ask a couple if they lie, cheat, are divorced, practice pre marital sex, etc then you are just being a flat out bigot to gays. There is no real religious ground for the rejection. It is just discomfort on the cake makers part. But the main reason for the rejection seems to be a truly creepy (or yes perverse) obsession with inserting oneself into a gay couple’s personal business. I have never asked a baker if they were an adulterer or if they cheated on a math test. That would be weird on my part since the answer does not impact my personal morality. It is their business.
My husband and I had to be very sensitive to all of these issues when we got married last year. We are from Los Angeles but got married in Iowa where I grew up. There was an objective stress attached to each vendor encounter. “well my fiancé is actually a man,” i said quite often over the phone. It only came up because they would say “what is your wife’s name” or “where is your future wife from”?. It was never “is this a gay wedding”? The stress in my end was hoping they would be kind in response and treat me like everyone else.
Every vendor was kind in response. Every single one. In fact, once many found out the request was for a gay wedding they seemed even more excited for our event and could not wait to share our joy.
So shame on these supposedly Christian people. They disrespect all of those business owners who are decent and kind. To hate so deeply that you cannot even comprehend that you are bringing your personal hate into a very happy time for a couple is aggressively non-Christian. The “I won’t bake” folks actually want that hate injected into the event. It is about shaming and rejecting and it is not how Jesus behaved or preached. He wouldn’t have just made the damn cake–Jesus would have wished the couple a life of love, possibly prayed for them to find a different path, and then he would have made them the best cake he had ever baked.
