{"id":595,"date":"2014-03-02T18:43:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-02T18:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/03\/why-religious-freedom-restoration-is-not-jim-crow.html"},"modified":"2014-03-02T18:43:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-02T18:43:00","slug":"why-religious-freedom-restoration-is-not-jim-crow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/03\/why-religious-freedom-restoration-is-not-jim-crow.html","title":{"rendered":"Why “religious freedom restoration” is not Jim Crow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019d been meaning to write about this for a while \u2014 and, once again, I\u2019m late to the party, killing my ability to write clever comments on other, more popular,\u00a0bloggers\u2019 posts with a link to try to drive traffic here.\u00a0 Which, I\u2019m not ashamed to admit, is the primary mechanism a new blogger has to try to build a readership.<\/p>\n

Anyway, there are a large contingent of commenters, bloggers, pundits, legislators, and judges for whom the issue is simple:\u00a0 providing a service such as wedding photography, cake-baking, catering, reception deejaying, or even providing a wedding or reception venue itself, is a public accommodation, and thus refusing services to a gay or lesbian couple is every bit as wrong, and illegal, as denying such services to an interracial couple, and just as wrong as it was for lunch counters to serve blacks in the pre-Civil Rights South.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

First of all, the services surrounding weddings are all very personal services, requiring the service provider to convey a fair degree of enthusiasm towards the wedding itself, whether it\u2019s coaxing a smile out of a nervous couple before taking the photograph, or enthusiastically greeting them as they enter the reception (\u201cPlease welcome the new Mr. and Mrs. Actuary\u201d), a successful service provider is obliged to celebrate the wedding rather than fairly impersonally provide a service.\u00a0 True, a wedding cake or flowers\u00a0are more impersonal, but I would still imagine that at a mom & pop store, the requirement to share the celebration is still there, where in a corporate environment where a cake is selected over the internet, it\u2019s not.\u00a0 Hence, it is undeniable that to require someone to provide these services requires them to endorse the pending nuptials.\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/p>\n

(Could a service provider simply grit their teeth, provide the service, and do a crappy job at it?\u00a0 Not likely.\u00a0 A grumpy photographer simply isn\u2019t doing the job the couple is engaging them for \u2014 they\u2019re being paid to be enthusiastic.)<\/p>\n

Second, the belief that a marriage, and parenting, should be reserved for opposite couples, is not an opinion borne solely out of animus towards gays and lesbians.\u00a0\u00a0There is a\u00a0legitimate reason.\u00a0 It comes from a belief that children deserve to have a mother and a father, and is part and parcel of a moral structure in which sex and children are linked together, and a part of marriage.\u00a0 This simply can\u2019t be equated to racism, which has no connection to a wider moral code.\u00a0 Gay marriage supporters may reject this moral code, just as \u201copen marriage\u201d supporters reject the requirement of sexual exclusivity, but they shouldn\u2019t deny the right of others to hold to these beliefs.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Third, in the case of Jim Crow, blacks suffered acutely from the segregation they experienced.\u00a0 Families travelled with the \u201cGreen Book<\/a>,\u201d a guidebook which provided them with listings of the small number of hotels and restaurants which would open their doors to them.\u00a0 And wasn\u2019t there a scene in the Ray Charles biopic in which he and his band couldn\u2019t find places to stay, or places to perform, as they travelled the South?<\/p>\n

This is not remotely the\u00a0case for\u00a0marriage-service providers.\u00a0 Instead, in the New Mexico case<\/a> which has been featured in blogs, the lesbian couple acted as a \u201ctester,\u201d with the two women contacting the photographer separately, in the one case explicitly mentioning it was a gay ceremony, and in the other not, to determine that the photographer denied them due to the fact that it was a gay marriage, and not for other reasons.\u00a0 (Note that the link doesn\u2019t describe this; it was the first hit in a quick search, but I had previously read about this more extensively.)\u00a0 In no other case that\u2019s surfaced have I read that the gay or lesbian couple could not find a service provider, or had any difficulties at all, since there are plenty of photographers, caterers, bakers, etc., and only a small minority who would be imagined to decline gay marriages under any scenario.\u00a0 True, they were rejected by their first choice \u2014 but what engaged couple gets a price quote from only one service provider, rather than pricing out multiple photographers, and the like, anyway?<\/p>\n

The \u201cno discrimination in public accommodations\u201d advocates insist that, even though no real harm is caused, the principle of the thing requires that all such service providers be open to all.\u00a0 This is the key:\u00a0 this is a case of balancing<\/em> rights, not of exercising a right absolutely (as with employment, for instance), so whether there is demonstrated\u00a0harm does matter.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019d been meaning to write about this for a while \u2014 and, once again, I\u2019m late to the party, killing my ability to write clever comments on other, more popular,\u00a0bloggers\u2019 posts with a link to try to drive traffic here.\u00a0 Which, I\u2019m not ashamed to admit, is the primary mechanism a new blogger has to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy "religious freedom restoration" is not Jim Crow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'd been meaning to write about this for a while -- and, once again, I'm late to the party, killing my ability to write clever comments on other, more\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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