In the aftermath of this whole Arizona bill that would allow refusal of service to homosexuals based on religious grounds, I’m saddened to have seen several people cast this as an issue of “business owner” rights over the course of the past few days. Carrying this logic to its conclusion is very dangerous. Hospitals are private businesses. Should a doctor be allowed to deny life saving care to a gay patient on the basis of “freedom of religion” or “business owner’s rights?”
Truthfully, we shouldn’t even be having this conversation in 2014. Discrimination is discrimination is discrimination and all of it is wrong. Period. And unless you own a business and are also planning to discriminate against anyone who has ever engaged in premarital sex, had an affair, told a lie, stolen something that didn’t belong to them, or hell, done as little as envy another human being or coveted something that didn’t belong to them, then you are just discriminating against people who engage in one particular “sin.” And according to quite a bit of Christian theology, all human beings have sinned, and therefore all are equal with no right to judge one another.
So rather than laying this at God’s feet, let’s just drop the bullshit and call it what it is: bigotry. And no amount of waxing patriotic about the rights of business owners or going on about how you simply cannot condone the lifestyle of someone who is “living in sin” will change that.
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