Religious Freedom For All Non Christians

Religious freedom is and has been a huge topic lately ever since the Christian bakery owners in Oregon were forced to pay damages of $135,000 for refusing service to a gay couple. Regardless of which side of this argument you stand on, you should agree that that is a ridiculous amount of money to be fined over refusal of service. The bakers meant no insult, they were just following their religious views. This presents a very unhealthy precedent moving forward.

When a gay couple comes into the next Christian bakery asking for a cake, the owners will probably agree out of fear. However, what if they make a mistake and accidentally use salt instead of sugar. This proves they are bad or careless bakers and the gay couple should be entitled to their money back. Now, let's say the gay couple says that it wasn't an accident, that the bakery owners intentionally ruined their cake in protest. Should the bakery owners have to pay $135,000 and shut down their business because they made a mistake in making a cake that they were forced to make in the first place? 

That is the slippery slope in the battle against religious freedom. It is one thing to make compliance with a public service mandatory, but it is totally different when craft and skill are involved. 

What if a Christian contractor is sought out by an abortion clinic to put a new roof on their building. After six months the roof caves in and it turns out the contractor did a lousy job. The abortion clinic should be able to sue for damages, but should they be able to claim discrimination? What would stop them from saying the man that they found, who only took the job out of fear, had purposely done a bad job on their roof? Should they be allowed to bankrupt him and take away his business? Now, let's say he had only ever built one roof for a small shed, but out of strong-arm tactics by the federal government, he was now forced to build a large roof for a business when he wasn't even qualified in the first place.

Let's say that the cake and the roof were fine and both up to standards, but the buyers didn't like them anyway. What happens when the gay couple says they expected their cake to taste sweeter or the abortion clinic says the contractor was making a statement painting their roof red? Is this also discrimination?

These examples are definitely reaching, but that's the point. It isn't all that hard to see how taking the business from two bakers can spiral out of control. The worst part, this is all done under the guise of equality, but nothing about it is equal.

Would the law protect you if you went to an Islamic butcher and demanded they produce five pounds of bacon?. What if you want a cake to celebrate a baptism on a Saturday. Should a Jewish baker have to open and work on Saturday to make you a cake? Absolutely not, every court would find these claims ridiculous. Yet, when Christians refuse service they get slammed with excessive fines that usually leave them in ruin.

You can have freedom or you can have equality, but you can seldom have both. Nothing is more disgusting or perverse than when the government protects one group while persecuting another.

I sincerely hope that we can have a return to sanity and reason and the true American way. After all, America is a marketplace of ideas. It shouldn't be too hard to find a bakery that is happy for your business and at the very worst, Walmart will never turn you away.