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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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If you aren’t free to to be a bigot if you choose, you’re not really free

By David McElroy · March 3, 2014

Jack Phillips-Colorado cake maker

Jack Phillips is the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in suburban Denver, and he doesn’t want to make wedding cakes for gay couples. In my mind, that makes him a bigot and a lousy businessman. But as a free man, he has the moral right to be a bigot, even if I believe he’s wrong.

It’s easy to support individual freedom when the individual in question is sympathetic and says all the right things. The real test of whether you support freedom or not is whether you support people who want to use their freedom to do things you don’t approve of.

This issue is at the heart of a controversy that’s raging in this country today. The battle lines are generally seen as gay people and their allies on one side vs. social conservatives and some religious people who object to homosexuality on the other side. Those on one side say that business owners must be forced to do business with gay couples against their will. Those on the other side say religious freedom is at stake and that they should be able to decide not to do business with gay and lesbian couples. But framing the issue this way misses the point.

The only real issue is whether human beings have the right to make their own choices about who they want to voluntarily associate with.

If a person has the freedom to decide who he wants to associate with, he’s free to choose to associate only with left-handed green-eyed ex-convicts if he wants. He’s free to choose to associate only with beautiful people. He’s free to choose to associate only with people of his own religious group. He’s free to shun religious people entirely. He’s free to shun gay people or Asians or people who he thinks smell funny.

In other words, a free man has the moral right to make decisions that neither you nor I agree with.

If you have a bakery that refuses to deal with gay people or black people or Muslims or any other group that some people would like to avoid, I have every right to decline to do business with you. Those of us who disapprove of those policies can do business with people whose values match up with our own. Freedom works both ways.

If I owned a bakery — or any other kind of business — I would want to do business with anyone who wanted my product or service. I would want to hire the best employees I could get for my money, and I would want all the customers I could possibly get. I wouldn’t be asking those people whether they agree with my moral or religious views.

Arizona recently considered a bill that would have allowed businesses to turn away gay customers if the owners said serving the gay customers would violate their religious beliefs. It was a huge controversy, but I couldn’t support either side.

I don’t want some law to enshrine one particular form of bigotry and pretend that’s what freedom amounts to. On the other hand, I also don’t want to insist that businesses have a moral responsibility to serve any customer they don’t want to serve. I’d rather just acknowledge the general principle that people have the right to associate with whoever they want to associate with — for whatever reason they choose, whether I agree or not.

When it was still unclear what would happen with the Arizona bill — before Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed it — a Tucson, Ariz., pizza restaurant made headlines when it declared that it reserved the right not to serve legislators. Rocco’s Chicago Pizzeria posted a sign that said, “We reserve the right to refuse service to Arizona legislators.” The move was wildly popular with supporters of gay couples.

In neighboring New Mexico, a hair stylist refused to cut the hair of Gov. Susana Martinez until Martinez changes her opposition to gay marriage. Again, the move was wildly popular with supporters of gay couples.

The irony, of course, is that the owners of the pizza place and the hair stylist were both asserting their rights to do business with the people they choose — for reasons of their own. They’re claiming the right to be free and to choose their own voluntary associations.

They’re absolutely right that they’re asserting this freedom. It’s odd that they’re asserting it in an apparent effort to demand that other people not have the same freedom to make their own choices of association.

Free people don’t always make choices that I consider wise or moral. But as long as they don’t use force to impose their choices on others, they have the moral right to make choices that I disagree with.

In other words, people have the moral right to be bigots — and those of us who disagree with them have the right not to associate with them.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

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Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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