Less than a month ago, a Colorado court of appeals ruled against Jack Phillips for refusing to make a cake for a gay couple. Like Kim Davis, he cited his strong religious feeling as his reason for his discrimination against gays.
Putting aside for a moment three things:
1. If your religion demands that you sacrifice a child every full moon, you could not do that in America, because your religious beliefs do not allow you to break the law.
2. If you are of a pacifist faith, join the army, and then refuse to fight; you'd be in trouble not for your faith, but because if your job requires you to violate your faith, you should resign.
3. The United States does not give out permission slips from the Christian God and if you don't understand the difference between God and The US Government, you don't understand either very well.Davis and Phillips aren't opposed to gay marriages because of their deeply-held religious beliefs. They oppose gay people existing and their rationalizations for doing so should fall beneath the notice of civilized humans.
Their actions take place along a continuum of hate that stretches from 1940's Europe[1] to those motherfuckers right here. These are not the actions of people who are living their life by their faith and who have been backed into a corner, forced to choose between their livelihoods and their beliefs.
You want to be a professional cake bigot in a state where being a cake bigot is illegal, move to a state where it is not. Or leave an industry that's going to involve you in gay weddings. Or make wedding cakes for free for people you meet through your church and they donate X money to the church in return, and you get your cut. Or have another member of your staff make the cake and just collect that homosexual money. Or do the Jim Crow thing and pretend your cake queue is full and direct them to that nice gay bakery in town.
But no; out of the plentiful choices that these folks could make they have chosen to take roles which involve them in weddings, but allow them to stand in front of same-sex couples for the explicit purpose of getting that little power trip when they say "no."
They are only there to hurt same-sex couples for existing and they fight to stay there because that's all they want to do. They, and millions of people like them, do not want us to exist, much less be visible, much much less to live our lives without being reminded of how much they hate us.
You can say "Love the sinner, hate the sin" until you are blue in the face, but my affections--and yes, the consenting sex I have--are what I am and hating some of the most important parts of me outweighs any hollow utterances of generic love.
Folks who know I'm gay have pretended I am straight. Others have said I'm going through a phase. I've heard a few more imagine fantastic worlds where I am only homosexual because I was sexually assaulted[2], poorly parented, or because--and this is the most fantastic garbage--it's popular. They will believe anything to pretend that there's some startling origin story, justification, or alternative explanation instead of believing that I just like men.
Leah Alcorn's parents thought the same way. They were so convinced that her identity as a female was exterior they pulled her out of school and isolated her from her friends. Leah was cut off from these alleged influences for five months until she committed suicide in December of last year.
They do not want us to exist. They will take every opportunity to deny us, to tell us no, or to exclude us, not because it's part of any ideology or deeply held belief, but because they feel supremely justified for punishing us until we no longer exist. One way or another.
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[1] You expected Godwin's Law, right?
[2] Whether the abuse is by someone of the same sex or a different sex doesn't matter; to these assholes any abuse = broken = gay
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