Baronelle Stutzman is in the news for the crime of not making a flower arrangement for a wedding.
In American’s push for diversity recognition, various states have made it illegal to not provide a variety of services for same-sex weddings. Bakers, florists, photographers and landlords have been prosecuted–and their businesses destroyed–for not using their creative talents–or renting their property–in support of a same-sex wedding or party.
Long ago, Quakers were persecuted in Boston. They and others believe that God cursed the city of Boston and the man leading the persecution of the Quakers. Over time, the people in what would become America gradually came to tolerate the Quakers and other pacifists. Some of the founding fathers even recognized that there were those who scrupled to bear arms and such would not be expected to serve in the militias.
The road to full American toleration of pacifism was rocky. Even as late as World War I, people in America were prosecuted and imprisoned for advocating or practicing pacifism or abstention from the war.
Today, you or I might agree with the Westminster Catechism that killing in self-defense is justified, but all of us are also willing to tolerate the pacifism of the pacifists. Right or wrong, their pacifism can be an honorable choice and one that both God, as best we know Him from his actions, and the Supreme court have recognized.
America at times must go to war, but America can do so without prosecuting or persecuting the pacifists.
Today, the evolution of sexual ethics in society has created a different wave of persecution on a different type of conscientious objector. Today’s objectors have scruples about promoting same-sex marriages, about counseling or publishing researching on certain topics and certain methods of contraception. Pharmacists, florists, bakers and landlords have been forced out of business.
One doctor, Paul Church, was forced out his position at a medical center for discouraging some homosexual behavior on the basis of health.
The recent wave of persecution of these Christians has led to a sharp increase in the belief that Christians are being persecuted in America and reaction to the persecution perhaps contributed to the victory of Trump. Whether we think same-sex marriage being recognized is good or bad, its general recognition has coincided with a sharp increase in Americans believing that Christians are being persecuted, often on the basis of baking and similar matters.
Today, anyone can walk into any grocery or bakery and ask for a cake decorated with the words, “Blue lives matter” or “Trump victory.” Many groceries, bakeries and chains have had bakers who have refused to bake such a cake. They do so, without legal threat.
If the bakers at the local bakery or at our local grocery store can legally abstain from baking a blue lives matter cake, we can also tolerate some of the same bakers abstain from baking a cake for the wedding of Adam and Steve. The hurt feelings of a dead cop’s family or of a Trump backer are the same hurt feelings, if any, as those of a same-sex couple. The inconvenience of driving to another bakery by the family of a dead cop, while mourning his death, is the same inconvenience as that of the same-sex couple who must find another bakery or florist.
Yet society permits and condones, legally speaking, the refusal to bake “blue lives matter” while destroying the lives and businesses of a person who declines a cake for a wedding on religious principle! Instead, America must recognize that the First Amendment protects caused-based “discrimination.”
America already tolerates the principle of individuals choosing which causes one will support, in general; it is inconsistent and hypocritical to legally condemn the conscientious objectors to same-sex weddings. Unless and until the Democrats learn some more toleration on this issue, they will have lost the Supreme Court.