Discrimination is a funny word. We hear it thrown around a lot today so it’s worth taking a minute and reflecting on what exactly it means. At the most basic level, discrimination is simply the process of choosing one thing over another on the basis of some criteria. I am allergic to lima beans. The last time I ate them my body responded with all the symptoms of a nasty stomach virus. Fun times. A few weeks ago one of our Wednesday night dinner teams made chicken pot pie for everyone. It was delicious, but it had lima beans in it. I ate slowly and relentlessly discriminated against the beans. I carefully sorted through the dish, singled out the lima beans, and plucked them out to be discarded. I rightly discriminated against those beans lest I pay the price. Nothing wrong here.
On the other hand, discrimination can obviously be a very negative thing. For decades in this country millions of people were persecuted because their skin color set them apart from the majority. In a countless stream of incidents these folks faced persecutions of varying sorts because they deviated from what the people in power determined was right and true. This was wrong.
Now for the more relevant and hotly debated question today: Of which kind of discrimination were the various Christian wedding-industry-related business owners who declined to participate in various gay wedding ceremonies — and who Indiana’s recently passed RFRA was designed to protect — guilty? If you have paid attention to the vast majority of the media coverage as well as responses from many major corporation ranging from Apple to Walmart, the NCAA and various professional athletes, and even elected officials like the governor of Connecticut who made the rather ridiculous assertion that he would issue a travel ban of state employees to Indiana in spite of a similar law being on the books in his own state, you could be forgiven for being certain that the second kind of discrimination happened.
But not so fast. The truth is: the answer to that question depends entirely on your worldview. Most critically is the way your worldview answers the question of the morality of homosexual activity. If you say homosexual behavior is morally neutral or even positive then these business owners did exercise the second kind of discrimination and Indiana’s RFRA really was about legitimizing such shameful behavior. If, on the other hand, your worldview leads you to the conclusion that homosexual activity is sinful and that homosexual marriage is an illegitimate contradiction of terms then this was merely an example of the first kind of discrimination. They chose to avoid condoning and celebrating something they believed that if allowed to stand would do harm. So then, which is it and how do we proceed when even in the church we have a split at so basic a place as this?
With humility and an awareness of my own worldview on the matter here are some suggestions.
First, let us recognize that this isn’t a place where there is a middle ground. Either it is a sin or it is not. If it is not then we must fully embrace our gay brothers and sisters without qualms or conditions. If it is then we must treat them like sinners. And how did Jesus treat sinners? He accepted them, embraced them, and loved them, but he also called them to leave their sin behind and provided no context for them to continue in it. We can agree to disagree on the matter, but let us work harder to understand rather than demonize the other side.
For those who consider it sin (including me), pretending a refusal to serve their wedding does not hurt the feelings of a gay couple is foolish. Having someone reject what you feel is part of your core identity is always painful. Let us keep this in mind and go overboard in showing love even as we do something which feels very much unloving. For those who don’t, be happy: you have all the weight of culture behind you and in all likelihood will soon have the weight of law as well.
That being said, refusing to grant legitimacy to the convictions of the other side is both unloving and unhelpful. Stating that your ideological opposites need to simply get out of business rather than act on their deeply held convictions is unserious and a gross misunderstanding of America’s commitment to religious liberty. Furthermore, simply suggesting, as several high profile voices on this site ranging from David Gushee to Brent Walker have done, that in spite of their moral opposition these business owners should participate in the weddings anyway as a way of showing love to neighbor after the pattern of Jesus is essentially to ask them to behave as if they don’t believe it’s sin when in fact they do. To put that another way, it’s asking them to take up your worldview when they are still holding their own — “if you behave like I believe everything will be OK.” From their perspective, such a move would not be consistent with the way of Jesus at all.
Second, because there is no middle ground on the matter, if we are to err it should be on the side of greater freedom and religious liberty, not less. Indiana’s RFRA did this. And I’m not alone in believing this. No less than Douglas Laycock, a same-sex marriage supporter and participant in the drafting of the federal RFRA, expressed basically the same position. [http://religionandpolitics.org/2015/04/01/why-law-professor-douglas-laycock-supports-same-sex-marriage-and-indianas-religious-freedom-law/] The fact is, in spite of hysterical warnings of hypothetical situations, there aren’t any examples of businesses unwilling to serve gays generally. Rest assured, in today’s media culture we would have heard about it. Rather, there are a handful of wedding industry related, Christian-owned businesses who have declined to participate in a gay wedding ceremony and have as a result been demonized by the press and hounded by human rights commissions to the point that they have had to pay thousands of dollars in fines and even lost their businesses entirely. They acted in a manner consistent with their worldview which is supported by 2,000 years of history and culture and, until the last few years, public opinion, and have paid a steep price for it.
I certainly understand disagreeing with these convictions, but the kind of apocalyptic hysteria unleashed by the gay rights crowd after Indiana’s RFRA was signed was a fairly naked example of bullying and the second kind of discrimination. These business owners should have the freedom to operate their businesses according to their worldview convictions without fear of totalitarian attempts to force them to do otherwise.
Third, where there are real examples of the second kind of discrimination today, I would argue they are found almost entirely on the gay rights side of the issue. The wedding industry related businesses are only a handful of examples. They are more numerous than this. Decorated military chaplains are being driven out of their positions because they won’t sign off on the morality of homosexual behavior. Christian professional athletes who dare to suggest disagreement with the new cultural norm are being silenced. Whole churches are being hounded by local officials because they don’t preach homosexuality is normal. A Christian-owned restaurant was forced to close down for a time because the owner received death threats and calls to burn the business down for acknowledging that if hypothetically asked, they wouldn’t cater a gay wedding.
Folks, these are all examples of discrimination of the second variety. These folks and others are facing bullying, threats and other mistreatment because they believe something that deviates from what the people with the power have determined to be right and true. If we are going to continue operating as a truly free society, these cannot be allowed to continue. Ideally we can dispense with these without laws, but there’s no evidence the new cultural majority is going to allow this to happen and so laws like Indiana’s RFRA are necessary.
In the new order of things conservative evangelicals find themselves approximately where homosexuals did not all that long ago. The tables have turned. No one doubts this. Some conservatives may be railing against it, but that won’t change anything. What remains to be seen is whether or not the new cultural majority will grant their ideological opposites the freedom to publicly express their worldview for which they themselves once fought and have now won, or if they’ll settle for allowing the very discrimination against which they rail with such passion to go on unopposed. The evidence in so far isn’t very good.
So who’s discriminating here? It’s all how you look at it.