Christian Refuses To Work With Same Sex Partnerships: Applied Philosophy

I'm not sure what it is about private opinions in todays intellectual economy that makes everyone an ethics professor, but here we have it again.

A colorado baker who is reserved about starting a wedding cake company because Colorado law forbids "discrimination" has apparently gone all the way to the US Supreme Court. She wants to start the company, but is worried that refusing same-sex customers might get her in trouble with the law. This is paradigmatic about today's legal conversations and, in particular, ideas about personal opinion and private decisions in the workplace.

The colorado law states that business that sell to the public cannot deny service. BUT the Supreme Court said, apparently, that the issue regarding free speech and the woman's rights, to have her business and her faith, trumps the state law.

If you are an atheist or a liberal or a same-sex advocate ask yourself not if you are right or wrong on the issue (or if the courts are wrong) but ask yourself how you want to respond. As you philosophical leader I will tell you that this is more important. Despite your mood and emotion about the woman's stance (and even her silly religious belief, cuz it is silly) ask yourself how you feel about someone expressing their private opinion, even if it is in the course of a public marketplace.

Do you really want to just lambast her for being close-minded, which certainly she is. Or do you want to understand what freedom looks like? Do you want to really understand what even a conservative court believes about the issue to the extent that they would defend her?

I cannot read the court documents, but I can assure you that they believe, as I believe, that negative speech, and negative expressions of those beliefs, even in business and politics and media, are the key to maintaining a free system. The people who don't understand this or refuse to be open to the reality of it are doing as much or more damage to the intellectual and political climate as harmless religious people.

With that said, you know I believe religion as an intellectual institution (which it is culturally and morally) causes untold damage. I do not believe individual's with racist, religious, small-minded ideas do more damage than a blanket curtailment of free expression that, in this case, some smart and respectable people don't like.

Think how you want to respond and how that response helps or hurts. I have tried, in this article, especially for people who know me, to show moderation and pure reason in a way that sets this example. Use the example. Stop policing. And maybe ... what I would say and get in trouble for saying is, grow up.