The Anchoress elaborates over at First Things:
Same-sex marriage has become a judicial juggernaut; seventeen states now recognize same-sex unions, with couples in Idaho and Kentucky currently petitioning the courts to extend that number. This has prompted legislatures in Kansas, Arizona, and other states to advance unwieldy bills that seek to balance a newly-acquired right to marriage against the rights of others to follow their religious or moral consciences.
The question is no longer whether couples may marry, but whether a baker may refuse to sell them a wedding cake on the strength of his religious or moral conscience, without risking a lawsuit.
Anyone can walk into a kosher or halal butcher’s shop and buy a chicken, but if asked to cater a party
with bacon burgers, the butcher will refuse. Should that invite a lawsuit? People understand that you don’t bother religious butchers with requests they cannot honor. Should we be permitted to demand services of a cameraman, or a florist or baker that tread upon their religious sensibilities? It’s too bad that laws and courts must become involved with what used to be the simplest of lessons: Not everyone thinks the same way, but everyone is entitled to their opinions; if that kid won’t play with you—or that baker will not make your cake—someone else will, so just kiss them up to God, and move on. Or, as Jesus told his apostles when he sent them off to preach the good news, “Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet, in testimony against them.”
The right to honor one’s individual conscience is no small thing to be shrugged off, or misconstrued as an excuse for ignorant behavior in the face of prevailing law. Who among us would blame a launderer (of any creed or background) for refusing to clean the sheets of a KKK member? Would anyone suggest that Rosa Parks had no business thinking for herself when a bus driver told her to get up from her seat?
People need to weigh their passionate feelings with careful thought before they chip away at the inviolability of individual conscience, and those who believe it can be legislated against should beware of hypocrisy; they are often the same people who argue that when it comes to abortion, a woman’s own mind—her individual conscience and reason—outweighs what used to be called “conventional morality.”
Imagine Fred Phelps, minister of the Westboro Baptist Church, and his flock of wacked out loonies descending upon a print shop owned by a gay couple and demanding that they produce 50 "God hates fags" placards and that gay couple being forced by the rule of law to comply.
Where in blue blazes does this stupidity stop? Is this where we really want to be heading?
I think the answer is not just no, but hell no and thankfully, there are voices not usually aligned with my own who would agree:
I would never want to coerce any fundamentalist to provide services for my wedding – or anything else for that matter – if it made them in any way uncomfortable. The idea of suing these businesses to force them to provide services they are clearly uncomfortable providing is anathema to me. I think it should be repellent to the gay rights movement as well.
That from erstwhile "conservative", and openly gay, Andrew Sullivan. May more see what he sees. But don't hold your breath.
Common sense in this country must prevail.
Will it?
It's looking damned doubtful and that's not good for freedom.
Wake the hell up out there people.