David McElroy

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.

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When the Maryland state Senate was considering a proposal to legalize medical marijuana, Annapolis Police Chief Michael Pristoop had the perfect rebuttal to this “outrageous” idea.

Pristoop testified to a Senate committee that marijuana is so harmful that 37 people died in Colorado on the first day of legalization there.

Many of us were immediately laughing at Pristoop, because we recognized the story of the 37 dead people as satire making fun of the crazy claims and fears of the drug warriors. Only an idiot could be blind enough to fall for that, right?

Although I laughed at Pristoop, too, I quickly started thinking about something else. What happened to Pristoop happens to all of us at times. We might not embarrass ourselves as publicly as Pristoop did. We might not fall for such obvious satire as he did. We might even be a lot smarter than he is.

But I’ve noticed that we all have our own blind spots. We all have assumptions we’ve made that we can’t even consciously identify. We all have beliefs that are so deeply held that we don’t question them. And as a result, we can all be fooled by anecdotes that support what we’re already inclined to believe.

Pristoop has spent his career as a cop in the context of the “war on drugs,” so he’s inclined to believe that recreational drugs are evil and dangerous. So every story of someone abusing drugs and paying a price resonates with him. He believes those stories — whether they’re true or not — because they reinforce something he’s already certain about.

He’s completely sure that Colorado made a horrible mistake legalizing drugs. Since much of the focus of police work ever since he’s been a cop has been arresting people who use and sell those drugs, he has to maintain his belief or else admit that he’s spent much of his career doing something pretty evil. No normal person wants to believe that. It’s easier to simply stick to what he’s been taught.

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I’ve always hated Valentine’s Day. It’s artificial, manipulative and commercial. It’s a “holiday” that’s manufactured by the makers of cards and candy and other gifts. It’s meaningless. Really.

Except when it’s not meaningless. Maybe when you wish you had a chance to say — in a sincere way — what the mushy cards and saccharine sentiment of the day says. Do I actually hate it? Or do I miss the chance to say these things to someone who feels the same in return?

In many ways, love is a conflict between the head and the heart, especially when it’s not clear what the right direction is. I’ve faced this conflict many times. If I didn’t know that other people experience it, too, I would feel crazy because of the ways in which these conflicts pull me in different directions.

One thing can seem to make so much logical, pragmatic sense, but leave me feeling cold. That’s the head talking. Another thing can seem to be as necessary as air and water just to continue living. That’s the heart talking.

For me, fear has been the thing that’s spoiled everything — fear that I might marry the wrong person, fear that something I see inside of someone might be dangerous long term, fear that I might disappoint someone. And on and on. So many fears. So much regret.

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