A stock picture of pizza! USA Today/Getty.
More then $800,000 has been raised for the owners of Memories Pizza, a Christian pizza place with owners that would refuse to cater to a gay wedding. USA Today/Indianapolis Star. The owners of the pizza shop were interviewed in a news piece by a local television station. One of the co-owners said on camera that they would be fine serving gay people but would not be able to cater a gay wedding due to their religious beliefs. Outrage soon followed as the report went viral. The co-owners received serious harassment, including an arson threat and sexually explicit pictures posted on their Yelp review page. In an effort to show support for the owners of Memories Pizza, conservative pundits like Glen Beck helped the fundraiser go viral.
My Comment:
Ugh, here I go again, wading knee deep into the culture wars. The fact that all of this happened to a person that answered a hypothetical question about gay marriage means it probably is safer to talk about ISIS then it is to blog about social justice issues. Hell, I know it is safer to blog about ISIS. I have posted Muhammad cartoons on this blog multiple times and so far my head has stayed attached to my body. Oh well, this blog is called Politics, War and Culture for a reason.
Before I go any further I should state my own beliefs on gay marriage. I'm probably the only person in this country that does not care at all. It could be banned entirely or made 100% legal and it would not effect me in any way. Sure I have gay friends and religious friends who are outspoken on the issue but even then it would only effect me tangentially. Since I lean libertarian, I get the argument that people should be allowed to do what they want. Being somewhat socially conservative, I agree that marriage is (or should be) primarily a religious ceremony. My perfect solution to the debate would be to legalize civil unions for everyone but also pass legislation that prevents that have a problem with homosexuality from having to violate their religious beliefs.
Now that I have made both sides incredibly mad by presenting a reasonable compromise in a debate where compromise is considered heresy by both sides, let's get into the article itself. I was extremely uncomfortable about what happened to the owners and employees of this pizza place. They made the mistake of answering a question about a highly charged political controversy in a way that it was sure to go viral. You can not tell me that the only reason the news team went to Memories Pizza is to ambush these people. My guess is that they went to every Christian business in the state of Indiana to find one that was foolish enough to answer on camera that they don't like gay marriage.
For the unspeakable crime of having an opinion about a hypothetical question, they received death threats, arson threats and had to close down their business. Meanwhile, in the real world, millions of people have done much worse things in the couple of seconds it took for you to read this sentence. There is a term for this kind of thing and it is called disproportionate response. It's possible that the owners stating that they won't cater a gay wedding might have hurt someones feelings. Maybe. After all sticking to your religious convictions often does hurt peoples feelings. But hurt feelings do not deserve death threats and being kicked out of polite society. I'd go as far to say that nobody, not even the lowest of the low, "let's steal candy from babies and drown puppies", degenerate "no redemption is possible" criminals deserve this kind of treatment.
I don't like mob justice even when there was an actual crime committed. When I see it being used because someone expressed an opinion on a hypothetical situation that would almost never come up in the real world, I get disgusted and terrified. Because if the outrage super-weapon can be pointed at someone who says "gay marriage is against my beliefs" then sooner or later it will be pointed at people like me that say "I don't care about gay marriage either way". My empathy isn't with the people that might possibly have to make different arrangements for a wedding because even if I was getting married soon, that would be a trivial concern. But having the media expose you to the whole world and having thousands of people threaten you and demand you be removed from police society? That's the kind of thing that keeps me up at night... And yes, the situation does mirror the situation for gay people that face discrimination. No I am not surprised that nobody has pointed that out...
I think giving these people a huge pile of cash is a pretty good way of solving the issue. It doesn't make up for death threats or losing their business/jobs. If you were to offer me $800,000 to face the kind of threats and harassment these people got and are still getting I would refuse in a heartbeat. But if I was in their situation it would certainly help. I think these fundraising drives help soften the blow, even if the main motivation for the donors was political signalling. And I bet that the is the case for most of the people that gave money.
As for the law itself, it was a solution to a problem that didn't really exist. I doubt all that many gay people are going to go to a Christian bakery or pizzeria to cater their wedding anyways. I'm going to stereotype here, but since almost all gays are liberal and since most liberals tend to live in areas where gay marriage is accepted, the vast majority of gay weddings will go on without a hitch, with or without this law. If for some reason a gay couple was refused they could just go somewhere else and if there was nowhere else to go they could just lie. Indeed, if Christian bakers wanted to get out of this situation they could just lie as well. In fact this may be one of this situations where everyone lying about what they were doing would be vastly preferable to what is going on now. It's not worth going to war over.
Of course the is the argument that these laws really would protect people from being sued in some pretty obviously terrible situations. The most obvious one I can think of is a gay couple ordering a cake from a Muslim bakery with the Charlie Hebdo cartoons on it. That would be doubly offensive to the Muslims and without a law I don't know what their recourse would be. Of course if you replace "Muslim" with "Christian" and "Charlie Hebdo cartoon" with "offensive picture of Jesus Christ" and then everything changes. Somehow. Because it is politically correct to offend Christians but it is politically incorrect to make fun of Muslims. Unless you are conservative and the whole thing is backwards. Nobody would do this in either case unless they were trolling, which leads me to believe that certian elements of the left just want to troll Christians, just like certain elements of the right would enjoy trolling Muslims. Here's a radical idea: How about just leaving people alone?
It's a grey area I guess and I can kinda see the argument from both sides. But really, before any of this happened were people really getting kicked out of catering stores just because they were gay? I have heard of a couple of cases involving photographers, but are they actually common? This is a serious question that I'd like a scientific answer for. If we are making policy decisions and turning the whole issue into a media frenzy might it not be prudent to figure out if there actually is a problem? Unfortunately, I doubt a survey asking people of their opinion on this issue would revel nothing because both sides would be very motivated to lie...
Finally, I'd just like to repeat that internet harassment is stupid and wrong no matter who does it. The victims in this case happened to be conservative but that doesn't mean it is ok when conservatives do it to liberals or what have you. Like I said before, I don't think these kinds of revenge campaigns are ok when they target actual convicted criminals (not that they do that very often), but when it happens to random people that happen to talk about an issue, then it is even worse. Regardless of where you stand on this issue if your position on these harassment campaigns is "it's ok when our side does it" then you are not a good person. Death threats and worse are never the right thing to do...
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