At CNSNews, Fr. Marcel Guarnizo offers a wide-ranging essay on the issues in play concerning businesses being strong-armed into participating in “gay wedding” ceremonies. Some salient excerpts:
The “homosexual cake,” is not just a cake, it is an ideological statement, and here the vendor must decide if he wants to engage or participate in an ideological statement. If the “gay couple,” wants a generic cake, by all means, it should be sold. But the wedding cake they seek is involving a free citizen and a business in making a political or ideological statement, and here the vendor must weigh questions of conscience and opportunity cost. Does the entrepreneur want to be involved in these questions?
Political statements and questions of conscience are clearly within his right to decide. He may want to protect his brand and his corporate ethos, and these considerations will come into play in his decision. He is not obliged to make a “Republican cake,” or a “Democrat cake,” either.
What should prevail here is the freedom of conscience (cultural freedom) and the protection of economic freedom to transact business with a costumer or not. All participants in a free market, both client and vendor, have the freedom of carrying out business or refusing a transaction. The opportunity cost of lost profits, is the freedom of choice necessary in the case of non-necessary services.
The issue here is that the specific kind of intellectual and ideological participation in cakes and weddings is quite different than the services a hospital, restaurant or airline performs. In these, there is no ideological participation, mostly because they are dealing with matters of the body (material transactions which do not involve values or beliefs, non-intellectual); the restaurant feeds you the same food everyone else gets, and the body is quite non-ideological. The plane moves you from one spot to the other. The hospital helps to heal you, and disease is quite non-ideological. There is no sufficient reason in these cases to refuse the service, but the provider is in no way being coerced to participate in your ideology or objectionable activities (from their point of view). A fire is a fire to a fireman. There are no gay fires or heterosexual fires, just flames. Clearly, providing electricity and water supply to a citizen is necessary and does not involve anything but a material transaction.
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Since December of 2014, California, the District of Columbia and New Jersey have banned psychological therapy to transgender youth and others. Whatever happened to patient rights? Whatever happened to affording people the ability to avail themselves of services if they so choose?
In these states, and the homosexual lobby clearly wants this to be a national ban, psychologists and counselors are forbidden by law to intervene in sexual orientation matters with transgender minors. In a nation where even dogs and cats can have specialists assist them in their behavior and difficulties, young people today are denied services, in utter disregard for patients’ rights and the desire of parents for a consultation. Who then is denying services to whom?
Fr. Guarnizo knows a little something about the coercive agenda of radical homosexuals. If you didn’t recognize his name, he is the priest who made headlines in 2012 after refusing to give communion to the daughter of the deceased at a Washington, DC funeral – after that woman revealed to him that she was in an active homosexual relationship. (Other, similar cases in the DC-area followed.)
For his fidelity to his vocation and the preservation of the Most Holy Eucharist from sacrilege, the Archdiocese of Washington summarily removed his faculties to act as a priest in the Archdiocese. This is a preview, I’m afraid, of what we may expect to happen to faithful priests in a post-synodal world where the divorced and remarried will feel entitled to present themselves for communion.
Society is clearly moving us in this direction so quickly that the Church’s position, if not stated forcefully and universally, will be little more than a forgotten footnote of history. The US Supreme Court is hearing arguments today on the question of whether same-sex “marriage” is a Constitutional right, and whether states that have forbidden it have to honor same-sex “marriages” contracted in one of the 36 — yes, thirty six — states that have now allowed them. Associated Press SCOTUS reporter Mark Sherman offers this summary of what’s on the table:
If you didn’t catch my podcast yesterday, entitled “Sodom’s Revenge,” you may want to give it a listen. This is an issue that is moving with breathtaking speed and aggression, and the moral law and right reason are being trampled underfoot on the way.
“yes, thirty six – states that have now allowed them. ” lets be a bit more accurate. the majority of those 36 states had SSM forced onto them by the judiciary not through legislation or referendum. saying that 36 states “allow” SSM is disingenuous and leads people to believe that the majorities in many of those states approved of SSM when in truth they did not.
Does it matter? The whole point is that this is about coercion.
yes it is about coercion and judicial fiat. 20 some-odd states had their laws over turned by judges not the people.
As someone who has worked dozens of weddings I can tell you that the florist, the baker, and the photographer are NOT participants. They are staff.
Have you ever seen the photographer IN the family photos? Ever heard the best man get up and talk about the florist? Do people ask “who baked the cake?” when they RSVP? Of course not. That is just foolish.
What does it end? Can Monsanto claim they are “participating” in the wedding because they sold the wheat to the farmer? How about the trucker who drove the wheat to the mill? How about the mill owner who ground the wheat to sell to the baker? How about the dairy that produced the milk or the chicken farmer who produced the eggs? Jamaica is violently anti-gay. Should they have a say in gay marriage in case Jamaican sugar or rum is used?
You aren’t being forced to do anything. You have choices. No one forced you to open a bakery. No one forced you to cater weddings for anyone. And no one is forcing you to make a cake for a SS couple. But if you are opening a business that offers goods and services to the entire public then you need to serve the entire public–not just the ones you agree with.
This doesn’t even begin to approach a logical argument, let alone an ethical one. Fr. Guarnizo lays out the distinctions between morally-neutral services and ideological participation VERY clearly. It appears that either you haven’t read them, can’t understand them, or refuse to.
What you are demanding is compulsion. Every owner of every business should retain the right to refuse service based on ideological opposition. You are not entitled to a specific service from any given business at any given time.
But please. Go ahead and make the case that the black baker should have to make a cake celebrating the KKK. Go. For. It.
Since the KKK is a political organization, and political affiliation is not a protected population, your argument is as meaningless as your OP.
The KKK is an ideological organization, just like the radical homosexual movement is. And Federal Law does not consider sexual orientation a protected class in all areas. For example, Fair Housing law does not cover orientation.
Nor should it. Every American has the right to marry. They simply don’t have the right to marry whatever they want. Marriage is, and always has been, an inherently procreative (by nature) institution that is made up of a man and a woman, husband and wife. The state only has an impetus to recognize marriage as an institution insofar as it retains its character as the stable, natural environment for procreating and educating new citizens.
Rights do not come from laws, they come from our Creator. The law of the land once gave men the right to own slaves. It didn’t make it a right. It simply made it a law.
God’s law is now and has always been that homosexual relationships are disordered and unnatural. We can see this in the impossible fulfillment of the natural (and, one could argue, evolutionary) biological end of the sexual act – propagation of the species.
I may like eating plastic, but it doesn’t nourish me. It’s a disorder. A person may like copulating with inanimate objects; that doesn’t make it procreative, natural, or something that could be defined as marriage.
In almost every case I am aware of, these businesses would have had no problem fulfilling normal, non-ideological requests. If a gay man came in and ordered a pizza or a cake, he was getting food, and he was served.
What is being asked – no, forcibly demanded – is that these businesses make food specifically to be used in celebration of a wedding that is a mockery of what true weddings and true marriage are.
They have a right to refuse to do so. The law, just like with slavery, may try to tell them otherwise, but the divine law will always be on their side.
We know you want to persecute us for our beliefs. You might as well be open about it.
“Rights do not come from laws, they come from our Creator. ”
Hogwash.
Just like the rest of your argument.
In this country rights are outlined in the Constitution (and please don’t bring up the sole line in the DoI. That document carries absolutely no legal weight.)
That line in the declaration establishes the entire raison d’être for the Constitution that came after it.
But if you want to approach it simply from the standpoint of logic, feel free: are rights man-made, and thus mutable, or do they have some fundamental, unchangeable origin that is always and everywhere the same throughout time?
If your answer is the first option, then rights are merely an artifact of power, not an intrinsic aspect of human nature – and thus, not really rights at all. If they do not come from the laws of the universe, from the governing force of nature – from the Creator – they’re mere constructs.
Barring objective morality (which can only come from a higher power), for example, you can’t argue that slavery was wrong. The government had the power, and they gave the rights to the slave owners. Any argument to the contrary is “hogwash”.
You see, you can’t have it both ways. Either rights have an objective, immutable origin, or they’re as worthless as the paper they’re printed on.
So which is it?
“Barring objective morality (which can only come from a higher power)”
Again with the hogwash.
Are you telling me that I need a higher power to know that hurting someone is wrong?
The correlation to that is that, without their religion and the threat of hell Catholics would be running around raping, pillaging, and murdering. Do you believe that?
I’m not going to respond to your silly statements when the basis for your arguments is garbage.
“The correlation to that is that, without their religion and the threat of hell Catholics would be running around raping, pillaging, and murdering. Do you believe that?”
Of course they would. What would be the basis for not doing so? There is no such thing as “wrong” unless there is a higher power.
If there is no higher power, then what one person considers “wrong” is merely that person’s prejudiced opinion that binds no one else. If there is no higher power, who cares whether you think something is “wrong”? If I don’t, I’ll do it if I want to. My opinion is as good as yours.
You don’t seem to comprehend that, in the end, what you advocate is “Might makes right.” If you get enough people to say something is “wrong,” whatever that means, you can coerce nonconformists.
DJR
DJR
Babies exhibit “morality” well before they can speak–
“The earliest signs are the glimmerings of empathy and compassion—pain at the pain of others, which you can see pretty soon after birth. Once they’re capable of coordinated movement, babies will often try to soothe others who are suffering, by patting and stroking.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-moral-life-of-babies/
Game, set, match.
Babies exhibit “morality”? What’s “morality”? Without an objective standard, it’s nothing more than an opinion.
No higher being = no such thing as “morality.”
Please state one reason why anyone should follow your view of “morality,” whatever that’s supposed to mean, if they don’t want to.
It isn’t MY OPINION moron.
Read the article.
Goodbye, cminca.
I did read the article. It uses such words as “good” and “bad” and “moral” without explaining what those terms mean or whose standard is used for defining them.
What you don’t seem to comprehend is that, without a higher being, aka, God, those terms have no meaning. Actions would neither be good nor bad; they would just be actions.
There is no God, right? Thus, if I want to kill my neighbor, how is that “bad”? Just because the neighbor doesn’t like it? Well, tough. That’s his problem.
Muslims are killing people in the Middle East because the people they kill will not submit to Islamic principles. The Muslims believe their actions are “good.”
Are their actions “good”? Why not? And by whose standard are they not “good”? Yours? Who are you to dictate standards to anyone else?
Muslims don’t adhere to your views of “good” and “bad,” so your views, which are nothing but mere opinions, whether you admit that fact or not, don’t hold any water with them.
No God = no such thing as “good” or “bad.”
Which is why, so frequently, one of their first clearly articulated words is “Mine!”.
For a Schutszstaffel couple?…
“As someone who has worked dozens of weddings I can tell you that the florist, the baker, and the photographer are NOT participants. They are staff”~ The “SS” of yesterday used the same defense German soldiers offered for committing the WWII atrocities? ‘Well, I had an order to do it.’ The magnitude may be different but the principle is the same.
I’m not sure how you can honestly say no one is forcing the issue when the request is respectfully declined and subsequent penalties, fines, and civil litigation bankrupts family businesses.
There was a recent case where the KKK requested a cake, the service was declined, and the same adjudicators upheld the decision not to serve. I guess it’s not “the entire public then you need to serve the entire public–not just the ones you agree with.”
Your argument applies equally to the would-be customers. They have a choice to go elsewhere.
Fr. Guarnizo together with Fr. Michael Rodriguez are mentioned by name in my daily prayer for priests. May the mantle blue of the Blessed Virgin protect them from the attacks of wickedness.
Good article. Why use the word homosexual, since it is a word that gives the “same sex attracted” bunch, a separate identity. They are just otherwise normal people with a sexual perversion of being attracted to the same sex. They are SSA and nothing more.