St. Patrick’s Day Parade

The LGBT steamroller is aiming at the oldest and largest St. Patrick’s Day Parade this morning. The parade in question is the one in New York City, where the mayor of the city has chosen not to participate. They do so based on the idea that preventing the LGBT community from carrying signs and promoting themselves at the event is discriminatory. Looking at the Parades official website you can see all the groups planning to March this morning.

On the list are lots of pipe bands, lots of city and county governments, and lots of high school bands.  When I scanned the list I did not find any group supporting anything other than the Irish community, Catholicism, or the local government. Nobody on the list is there to promote themselves as in yay for black people or Jewish or Baptist or anything other than Irish Catholic.

Despite this, when the homosexual community is told they can’t do what no one else can do, sponsors pull out, the media gets behind it, and freedom is sent scurrying for cover.

Recently in Arizona a common sense law to try and protect religious freedom was attacked in a similar way. The failure to pass the law seems has many people believing the new state of the law is that right of refusal no longer exists in this country. You must serve whoever walks into your storefront and asks for service. It doesn’t matter if what they are asking you to do offends you or not.

So my suggestion to the organizers of the New York St Patrick’s Day Parade is to bring suit against the mayor. He has no right to turn you down, just because he is offended by your choices. You cannot turn away from serving people whose views differ from yours, that would be discrimination. So get a judge to force him to March.

I am pretty sure this course of action would fail. In our country you can force a Christian to participate in a homosexual event which is offensive to them, but you cannot force someone to participate in an Irish event. The homosexual community are quickly becoming a specially recognized group, with their rights being more protected than the rights of others.

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Right of Refusal

The right of refusal is the legal ability to refuse to do something which has been requested of you. When a child is told by their parents to go to bed at their appointed bed time, they have no right of refusal. When a military man is commanded by a ranking officer to do his duty, he also has no right of refusal.

When a businessman is asked by a customer to do something he finds offensive, does he have a right of refusal? The most common assumption might be that, yes, he can refuse to do something he finds offensive. But this is not very clear in America today. 

Every person on the planet has a sense of right and wrong. I am not saying everyone’s opinions agree, but every person has an opinion. If a customer asks a shop owner to do something that violates their own personal moral code, whatever that may be, do they have the right of refusal?  Should they have the right of refusal?

Phrasing the question this way I assume most of you are saying, yes, they should. But understand this. When a person is refused there is someone on the other side of the counter who may have some question as to whether they are being treated fairly. Perhaps the shop owner is harboring some prejudice against the type of person that customer is. Maybe that customer is being discriminated against. It feels like the word maybe is killing us.

Let’s pick a few examples:

1. A man goes to a kosher Jewish deli, and asks them to put bacon on his sandwich.
2. A woman goes to a gay printer, and demands he prints fliers stating homosexuality is sin.
3. A baker is asked to bake a wedding cake which is all angel food, he thinks the idea is tacky.
4. An Islamic man is asked to make a custom ring which has a Star of David on it.
5. A Christian photographer is asked to shoot a gay wedding, even though he believes it defies the sanctity of marriage.

Do any of these business owners have the right of refusal?  Should they have the right?

Number three is different than the others because it is about personal taste, but the other four are about religious freedom. The question of the day is, when religious freedom encounters the right to be served, which gets the higher priority?

If you answer the same for all four, then congratulations you are consistent. If you said all of them have the right to refusal you chose religious freedom as the higher value. If you said none of them have the right of refusal, then you avoiding all possibility discrimination is more important than religious freedom.

But if you answered 1, 2, 4 and 5 inconsistently, then perhaps you are caught in the trap of discrimination. Namely that some groups deserve rights and privileges others do not have. What you chose reveals either, who you favor, who you disfavor or a combination of both.