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Wednesday 26 February 2014

Private Businesses, Public Policy

Should it be illegal for a baker whose religion teaches that same sex activity, (including the "activity" of marriage) is sinful to refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay wedding?

Should it be illegal for a tee-shirt maker be allowed to refuse to manufacture shirts promoting a white supremacist group's ideaology?

Should a hindu convention hall owner be forced to allow devil worshippers to rent his facility?

Can a vegan B & B proprietor tell meat eaters who rent a room that they cannot eat McNuggets on the premises?

Are any of these hypotheticals analogous to any others?

2 comments:

bill bannon said...

I think based on reading long ago, moral theology tomes on cooperation in sin as to employment, Christ in our day would and would not have baked for a gay wedding. He would have baked if He were formally a baker with a store because I think that would be remote material cooperation like an oil truck driver delivering oil to an abortion clinic or an electrician fixing a wire in an abortion clinic. But Christ would not have baked a cake for a gay wedding were He a private individual because that is proximate formal cooperation in that it signals a lack of just anger at a sin per se ( not the sinner) in such a context as to signal acceptance of that sin.
Christ did not help prostitutes shop for clothes while they were considering repentance.

Anonymous said...

I think you are right.

I think He would have baked a cake for a gay couple, but not for their wedding.