How the intolerant have adopted the language of the victim. They think bakers are"forced" to engage in commerce and bake a cake. They see marriage equality as an "attack" on Christianity.
Let's look at these "attacks". Homosexual couples come into a bakery expecting the same high level of service they have seen and heard of that brought them into the store in the first place. These homosexual attackers come with cash and credit cards in hand as paying customers. All they want is what every other customer gets. Quality goods and service.
What manner of attack is this?
A baker bakes cakes. How is a paying customer forcing her to do anything she would not regularly do in the daily course of business?
And these bakers stand up and tell us that their Christian faith...let me repeat that...their Christian Faith dictates that engaging in commerce, the normal commerce of their occupation, dictates that engaging in commerce with homosexuals will endanger their mortal souls.
In my church (Presbyterian) we have never heard an admonishment to avoid commerce with homosexuals. Instead, we are taught to love our neighbor, to judge not lest we be judged and to not cast the first stone as we all bear sins. These are the basic tenets of my faith.
Some are convinced that dogmatic thinking that tells the faithful to ignore those tenets and feel free to continue to perpetuate fear, suspicion and hurtful stereotypes. How quickly they abandon the loving, forgiving and beautiful faith for the cover this dogma provides.
No one who is a paying customer expects any merchant to fit into the narrow template of intolerance. Yet merchants seek to impose their narrow morality upon certain customers, but not all customers. These merchants will gladly accept payment for services from sinners. Green counts more than faith.
And these merchants want to hide behind the 1st amendment claiming that this amendment protects them while they humiliate and discriminate against their fellow American citizens.
"Attacks" on faith? No. There is no attack on faith. No customer is prohibiting merchants from attending services. No paying customer wants to tear down any faith. They just want what every other customer receives. Quality products and great service.
And I do not see it as an attack on Christianity or any other point of view. I see it as a power play that would force somebody to participate in or contribute to an event against that somebody's will. It would be the same regardless of whether the business owner was straight, gay, black, white, or whatever. No business owner or, with very few exceptions, anybody else, should be forced to participate or contribute to an event that he or she disapproves of or just doesn't want to participate in for any reason. And I dare say nobody can give a clear, coherent rationale for how that violates anybody's rights.
if you reguarly served the community as a business, licensed and regulated, and denied someone your services due to your own personal predidices concerning not an individual, but a group, you are denying customers rights. If you ran a theater and refused to sell tickets to any Asian or Latino because of the fact they were Asian or Latino, you would be violating not only their rights, but the law.
Here's a public water fountain, but you cannot drink from it because you are a member of a group I disapprove of. Can you see rights being violated there? Here's a bakery that is open to the public, but you cannot deal there because you are a member of a group I, the baker do not approve of. Can you see the parallel?
If you ran the best, most acclaimed bakery in town and you say I cannot be your customer because I am a member of a group you do not approve of, I have to settle for less.
And merchants are not participants in a wedding unless they are invited guests or members of the wedding party. The notion of mercantile participation is a hollow one. The goods and services merchants provide should not be exclusive to the folks those merchants approve of. Should a criminal, someone acting a fool, someone with unreasonable requests try a merchant, then the merchant can and probably should refuse service. But a same sex couple should be regarded as another customer, not someone to deny simply because they happen to be Gay.