I'm a piano teacher who teaches lessons at my students' homes, and while driving around from student to student I often to listen to WTVN, the Columbus, Ohio Fox News affiliate radio station. On weekday afternoons, around the time I'm usually driving, there's a call-in show called Woody and Company during which the host, Woody Johnson, presents topics to his listeners, who then call in and comment with their opinions or personal stories on the topic. Yesterday afternoon the topic of conversation on Woody and Company was the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple because to do so would violate his Christian beliefs. As WTVN is a conservative radio station with a mostly conservative listening audience - or at least the people who phone in to Woody and Company are - it wasn't surprising that most of the callers that I heard were in agreement with the Supreme Court decision, though some seemed not to understand that this decision was a narrow one based on a technicality - a member of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission apparently made a disparaging remark about the baker's intolerance and so a previous ruling against the baker had to be overturned, go figure - and not a green light for Christian businesses that wished in the future to discriminate against gay customers.
But then there was one caller, and older-sounding guy who spoke with the Southern Ohio twang commonly heard in these parts. He said that he was a Christian, a conservative, and gay. He said that he was raised in the church and that it's hard. His voice filled with emotion, he said that none of us is perfect, and he wondered why the Colorado baker chose to refuse service only to gays. He asked, what about people who over-eat and are guilty of the sin of gluttony? If a gluttonous person walked into the baker's shop and wanted to buy a cupcake wouldn't selling the cupcake be a sin because it would be feeding that person's gluttony? Divorce is a sin, he pointed out, so what about baking cakes for divorced people? Why single out gays? The talk show host, while he thought it a great question, didn't offer the man an answer. So I will. Master baker Jack Phillips is a bigot who, like so many bigots, drapes himself in a cloak of self-righteousness that he calls his religion and he invokes the name of God to defend his intolerance of people he's been carefully taught to shun. And in the end, when such a person has been imbued his whole life with the belief that his exclusivity, contemptuousness of and hurtfulness to others are virtues ordained by God, don't expect any rhyme, reason or logic from him, and certainly no empathy. And in this case no justice, either.
6 Comments
Terry Magyar
6/5/2018 10:05:05 pm
To be clear, this baker does not refuse service to gays. The gay Christian which stated, "he wondered why the Colorado baker chose to refuse service only to gays." is NOT speaking the whole truth.
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Patti
6/6/2018 05:42:18 am
A person can call their bigotry against another group religion, God's law, or any self-righteous thing they want, but it's still bigotry, and they can call their practice of discrimination religious freedom but it's still discrimination, even if the Supreme Court rules that they have the right to discriminate. No court will ever legislate away what's in a person's heart. In his heart the baker can't stand two men falling in love and getting married and he expresses this feeling by refusing to bake them a wedding cake and calling it his religion and that's what this is really all about.
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Frank H
6/6/2018 07:32:53 am
Not surprisingly, Patti, you’re flat out wrong. Not every instance of one person viewing another’s actions as wrong constitutes “bigotry”. If your husband has a fling with some floozy and I call him out on it as wrong, I’m not bigoted toward adulterers. There is such a thing as objective truth, and two men cannot “marry” despite what the Supreme Court or any legislature says.
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Patti
6/8/2018 07:53:56 am
A person's religious beliefs are not objective truth, Frank, they are something a person has been taught their whole life to believe or adopts because such beliefs synchronize with that person's internal concept of existence. If religious beliefs were objective truth there would be no need for faith.
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Frank H
6/9/2018 07:12:59 am
Who mentioned religion? Ok, for argument’s sake let’s grant your point. I think this addresses your claim of bigotry. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/its-not-bigotry-to-believe-homosexuality-is-a-sin/
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