In my lifetime I have watched society move from “get government out of my vagina” to “put government in my vagina”. For those who don't understand this means going from legalizing abortion under the argument that the body is a person's property and they have privacy rights as to what they do with it (out of my vagina) to make a law that makes other people pay for my birth control so I don't have to pay for it (government in my vagina- and your wallet).
I have watched society move from “leave us alone and stop criminalizing our private behavior” to “compel other people to participate in our private behavior (weddings) and advocate for us (like us or else...)”.
I have watched society move from “don't push your beliefs on me” to “I will have the government force my beliefs on you.” The latest being the so called “religious freedom” laws that have been passed, modified and sometimes repealed by various states. The very fact that there needs to be “religious freedom laws” in a country where the sovereign law of the land explicitly protects religious freedom to exercise (live your faith) from any action by government with very slim exceptions is a sign of just how bad US society has gotten. What is
worse is that one has to even retreat into a “religious argument” for things that should be “common sense” or what for generations was understood by all. However when you no longer have a common national culture, you cannot have "common sense". So lets get into the latest nonsense.
Declining to serve a person is
not the same as declining to perform a specific service.
One would think that the above statement is self explanatory but it isn't for a lot of people. I'll give two examples of the former that is and should be illegal (with a few exceptions) I'm going to use race here since a lot of people try to do the "what happened to black people is the same" argument:
1) Black persons enter an eatery. Owner or employees of the eatery announce that they do not serve their kind at all and to get out. This is and should be illegal. You are declining to perform any service whatsoever to the persons simply based on who they are. There is no “black” way to cook eggs and make coffee. There is no endorsement of behavior by serving eggs and coffee to a person who is black.
2) Homosexual person comes into an eatery. Owner or employee announces that they do not serve their kind at all and to get out. This should be illegal. Except in very rare cases, usually in reaction to a new outrage, this is not happening. Again, there is no different "homo coffee" or "homo eggs".
What Is Happening
A homosexual couple enters a store asking them to provide a service for their wedding. They tell the owner of the business that it is a same sex couple (something that couldn't even happen prior to 2000AD). Owner declines to perform that service. Couple gets upset because the owner is not approving of their
behavior. You'll note that the owner did not decline to
serve the homosexual couple. They declined to perform a specifics service. Why isn't this discrimination against a person? Easy. Lets change nothing except for WHO asks for the service.
A heterosexual person enters the store and asks for service for a wedding for a same sex couple who has contracted or otherwise agreed to have the heterosexual person plan for them. The owner declines to perform that service. Who has been discriminated against? It cannot be the heterosexual person who inquired about the service. He (or she) received the same response. The homosexual couple who the heterosexual person was inquiring for hasn't been discriminated against, they aren't the contracting party. They aren't even present.
Now lets twist this some more. Say a homosexual person goes to a store for service for a heterosexual couple's wedding. The store owner agrees to service the wedding. There is no discrimination. Again we note that this is about the
service being requested and
not the person requesting the service.
It should be clear then that what these activists are demanding is that the government force businesses to conduct business it doesn't want to engage in. As far as I know that is unprecedented in US history. Yes, the government has forced businesses to do business with
persons which they did not want to do business with. But never before has there been an attempt to force businesses to engage in business they do not provide. Not only does this violate religious freedom it violates the rights of people to associate with or not associate.
The Hole Goes Deeper
On top of the nonsense described above, we have a new push to normalize
gender disphoria. What is most pernicious about this is that not only do the proponents want to force people to associate with behaviors they do not agree with, they are telling people to actually believe in a non-truth. And they are willing to use the state monopoly on legalized violence to do so.
NY City passed a law that punishes any business where the owners or employees refer to an actual male or actual female as something other than what this actual male or female believes itself to be. Per
Snopes:
According to the new guidelines, the commission can impose civil penalties of up to $125,000 for violations of the law and (in extreme circumstances) of up to $250,000 for violations that are the result of "willful, wanton, or malicious" conduct.
And what is “willful, wanton, or malicious conduct”?
Examples of Violations a. Intentional or repeated refusal to use an individual's preferred name, pronoun or title. For example, repeatedly calling a transgender woman "him" or "Mr." after she has made clear which pronouns and title she uses.
So though Snopes is out to discredit reports that NYC will fine you for correctly identifying a male as a male, it establishes that NYC will in fact do so. Basically it's saying “We're going to give you till the count of ten to say there are 5 lights and then we'll drop this hammer on you.”
Speaking the truth and telling facts is now “willful, wanton or malicious conduct”. The rabbit hole has gotten a mile deeper.
Lest you think that I'm overstating things in regards to state violence, I will remind the reader that Eric Garner was killed due to laws against selling loose cigarettes. Whether you agree that it was a choke hold that killed him or not, the fact is that ultimately the state may use violence to enforce any law it wishes. If they will kill Eric Garner for selling loose cigarettes* then what will stop the NYPD from killing a citizen who declines to lie about someone's gender OR pay the fine or appear in court over it?
Look, I could care less what a man or woman thinks they are. I don't care what they do in their home. I don't care, mostly, what they do in the street. I don't care what they do with their friends. I do care when the state tries to coerce me into playing the game. Again, at no time prior to now did the state ever even consider that it could tell citizens to actively participate in a lie under penalty of law.
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*It can be argued that Garner was killed for resisting arrest. This is a valid argument insofar as you remove the reason for the initial contact. However it must be understood that Garner would be alive today or at least had died under different circumstances if the law against selling "untaxed loosies" did not exist.
