Andrew Sullivan is hoping the baker wins his SCOTUS fight – on artistic freedom grounds.
Which is why I think it was a prudential mistake to sue the baker. Live and let live would have been a far better response. The baker’s religious convictions are not trivial or obviously in bad faith, which means to say he is not just suddenly citing them solely when it comes to catering to gays. His fundamentalism makes him refuse to make even Halloween cakes, for Pete’s sake. More to the point, he has said he would provide any form of custom-designed cakes for gay couples — a birthday cake, for example — except for one designed for a specific celebration that he has religious objections to. And those religious convictions cannot be dismissed as arbitrary (even if you find them absurd). Opposition to same-sex marriage has been an uncontested pillar of every major world religion for aeons.
I think it’s a mistake to conflate religious marriage with civil marriage, as obviously the baker is doing, and I think Andrew may be doing. Much like the Kim Davis affair (a post I really enjoyed writing), we’re getting all stirred up over settled legal controversies.
That said, I can appreciate the problems of an artist trying to work in the private sector. Suppose you’re a painter who works on commission. Should you be forced to accept every offer that comes your way? Intuitively, that’s nonsense. Nor should the painter be forced to disclose their reasons for refusing a commission. Is a baker an artist? Many would argue yes. So why should he be forced to supply a cake to anyone who wants one?
And yet, I wonder. I suppose one could argue that the difference between the painter and the baker is that the baker’s prices are advertised (although negotiable, as most anything can be), while the painter negotiates each price. Hmmmm. I think it might be a fragile approach.
Then, in classic independent style (and why Andrew remains on my intellectual and attitudinal menu), he takes the baker down on religious grounds:
One final thought as a Christian. Sealing yourself off from those you consider sinners is, in my reading of the Gospels, the reverse of what Jesus taught. It was precisely this tendency of the religious to place themselves above others, to create clear boundaries to avoid “contamination” from “evildoers” that Jesus uniquely violated and profoundly opposed. If Jesus is your guide, why is this kind of boundary observance such an important part of your faith? Are you afraid your own faith will be weakened by decorating a cake? Would you have ever had dinner with prostitutes or imperial tax collectors as Jesus famously did? What is this Christianity you are so dedicated to? Somewhere, the fundamental Christian imperative to love others and be humble before them has been lost.
In other words, if the liberals were more liberal, and the Christians more Christian, this case would never have existed. It tells you a great deal about the decadence of our culture that it does.
Being agnostic, I’ll just take Andrew’s word concerning the Gospels, but his description sounds very good and important to me. As a heterogenuous country, it’s always important to be reaching out to those in other other cultural segments, whether the segmentation is economic, religious, or ethnic; otherwise, we see provincialism and, soon, intra-country xenophobia sets in. One example of the latter is the continuing nattering about being in “fly-over country,” which is shorthand for those in that part of the country (say, Iowa) feeling their opinions are ignored by the “liberal elites” on the West and East Coasts of the United States, and this leads to a certain disdain.
Then they limit their conversations to each other, and they become increasingly sterile, drifting back to the Golden Age (in their minds), never remembering the bad aspects of those times. Their representatives become increasingly extremist, and because they’ve lost contact with the “other”, they don’t really understand that. Thus, we’re stuck with folks like Rep. King of Iowa.
I suppose, since I’m not too far off from Iowa, I should print up a big sign that says “George Washington Liberal,” plant myself in an Iowa diner, and talk to all comers. Darn near everyone wants to think President Washington would have liked them, so it’d be a conversation starter.
