Hate group leader Tony Perkins is wrong most of the time, but he gets away with it because he’s a cynical man who knows that his followers are not well-informed about the ways of the world in which they live. In this clip, Tony claims that forcing his wingnut cake-baking followers to bake cakes for gays is just like said wingnuts going into a gay bar and forcing the owner to go to church. Let us count the ways he is wrong/lying:
1. We have freedom of religion, and lack thereof in this country, and religion is a decidedly private, protected entity. No one can force anyone to worship in any way, no matter how much Tony’s organization fights to make that very thing happen.
2. Doing business in this country, however, happens in the public square, and we have laws that protect against business owners discriminating against people for myriad reasons.
3. Doing business in this country, no matter how much Tony would like to claim it does, has nothing to do with a person’s private religious practice. Moreover, businesses are not people, and thus have no religious beliefs and are not religious entities.
4. Um, lots of gay people go to church already. Despite the fact that Tony’s followers are, again, very poorly informed about the world, the majority of gay people identify as Christian and many, many of them go to church. The fact that Tony doesn’t believe their Christianity is valid is of no import. Millions of Christians, moreover, don’t subscribe to Tony’s insipid version of Christianity, and they’re appalled to be consistently conflated with people like him. Check out the NALT Christians Project for examples of these Christians.
The fact of the matter is that, as is usual with social conservatives, their cries of their “religious freedom!” being taken away from them are much ado about nothing. Their worldview is so filled with fear that they are unable to confront real problems and must instead be fed imaginary problems by people like Tony Perkins. It’s sad.
Here’s the clip:
[h/t Joe]
