Un-queering the Cake

     It has become a truism that when the Left talk about “discrimination”, why they are really referring to is a lack of legal privilege, and similarly when they talk about “rights”, they refer not to fundamental (AKA “negative”), rights, but of “positive” rights which are state mandate compulsion pushed on others. Thence

     That, then, explains why proponents of so-called “LGBTQ&c. rights” are in hysterics over the proposed Federal “First Amendment Defense Act”, which it is claimed “would effectively legalize anti-LGBTQ discrimination across the board, including among employers, businesses, landlords and healthcare providers”.

     And proving that intersectionalism is still the current hotness amongst the so-called intelligentsia of the Left, this is also totes literally “the worst thing to happen to women and LGBT people in a generation.”

     And just what is the text that authorizes what, from the rhetoric, seemingly involves a jihad against homosexuals and women?

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Federal Government shall not take any discriminatory action against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

Marriage as defined by a 1985 Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia

     From the text itself, it is clear that this bill does not authorize discrimination against homosexuals or women because they are homosexuals or women. All it does is that a business will not be punished by the Federal government because they refuse to condone or in any way participate in anything that forces them to act or speak contrary to their morals on this point.

     Yet again, the Left conflates the individual with actions and arrangements they choose to participate in.

          This is actually a rather limited bill, since this does not per se affect state or local laws that still require people to bake the cake less they be “corrected”, or otherwise require that states to deal with those icky thought criminals.

“‘Specifically, the federal government would be unable to deny or make unavailable any federal grant, contract, license, certification, accreditation, or tax exemption from individuals or groups based on their belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman’…

“[T]he bill would not protect Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of the bakery Sweet Cakes by Melissa. They gladly served a lesbian couple in general, but would not bake a special cake for their wedding. The Kleins were fined $170,000 and their shop went out of business because an Oregon civil rights board decided they had ‘discriminated’ against the lesbian couple. While the Kleins were arguably in the right, this bill would not address their case, as it had nothing to do with the federal government.…

“FADA would not help the case of Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who refused to sign marriage licenses for homosexual couples, and briefly spent time in jail for her conscience.”

     Yet the claims to the contrary are still made:

“But those stories are a red herring.  The more important cases are ones like hospitals refusing to treat LGBT people (or their children), pharmacies refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, businesses refusing to offer health benefits to a same-sex partner, and state-funded adoption agencies refusing to place kids with gay families. “

     First of all, treating someone who happens to be Gay, or related so a person who is, has nothing to do with a conviction held regarding same-sex marriage or extra-marital sex; since the governments’ ability to mandate offering of health benefits to non-employees is not limited to sex partners or spouses, or that paying for health benefits does not per se involve a moral impingement on anyone vis-à-vis same-sex marriage or sexual activity in and of itself, the impact of this law is restricted. It only protects Federal retaliation against those who hold views on what one may consider morally unacceptable actions or marital unions; it does not affect ancillary matters or consequences of those actions and choices. As to birth control pills, this would not be a concern if they were made legally available over the counter, nor does it have much of an impact since medications can be obtained via other pharmacies or through the mail. And in all these cases, nothing prevents the states from requiring any of this.

     The fourth point, involving adoption, would have an effect, but not by banning adoptions by same-sex couples or single individuals, but by allowing religious organizations and individuals to place children with couples that would provide both a mommy and a daddy, as well as protect non-religious individuals and organizations to place children in those familial situations because they believe that having both a mommy and a daddy is best for the child.

     This act does not discriminate or allow discriminate against someone just because they are gay or a woman, it merely won’t punish companies for refusing to condone and assist therewith.

     It does not diminish freedom, but ensures it by lack of constraint.

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