Faith in Statism

Below is an excerpt from my piece in Organization Trends: 

The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn pointed out, “Back when gay marriage was first proposed, advocates pitched it this way: What can it possibly matter to you if two men or two women wed?”  He continued: “Since then Americans have learned: It can mean an end to your small business, it can mean your church institutions—from schools to adoption agencies—can no longer run themselves according to their principles, and, if you are a Silicon Valley CEO, it can mean you lose your job.”

McGurn was referring to Mozilla co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich, who was forced from his job in 2014 for having donated to the 2008 campaign in California to recognize marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman.

Hillary Clinton (Credit: State.gov)

Gay journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote of the pizza controversy, “The whole episode disgusts me—as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. If this is the gay rights movement today—hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else—then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us”

Government hysteria about the Indiana religious freedom law began from the top down, as the White House sounded off in April. “I do think in the mind of the president, the thought that we would have state legislatures in the 21st century in the United States of America passing laws that would use religion to try to justify discriminating against people for who they love is unthinkable,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in waiting, Hillary Clinton, also weighed in on Twitter: “Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn’t discriminate against [people because] of who they love #LGBT.”

Pointing out that Hillary opposed gay marriage until 2013, the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf wrote, “she declares Indiana out of step with the times for making gay weddings legal, because refusing to bake cakes for them may be legal, too.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy (D) both announced they would ban publicly funded travel to the state of Indiana. San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee (D) and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray (D) also banned city employees from traveling to Indiana for work-related trips.

In higher education, San Francisco State University banned work-related travel to Indiana. And even in Indiana, the presidents of the three major universities—Indiana, Depaw, and Butler—issued statements denouncing the law as discriminatory and harmful to the state’s reputation.
Friedersdorf expressed concern about the mob, prefacing his April 1 post with his view that bans on gay marriage in 13 states are “callous.” Nevertheless, he added, “When 13 states prohibit gay-marriage outright, what sense does it make for gay-rights supporters to boycott a different state where gay marriage is legal?”

“Being barred from marriage puts a significant burden on gay couples—a burden many orders of magnitude greater than the relatively small possibility of being refused by an atypically religious photographer or baker in the course of planning a same-sex wedding (the outcome the law’s opponents assert to be its true purpose).”

“Now that those who would discriminate against gays are a powerless cultural minority that focuses its objectionable behavior in a tiny niche of the economy, elites have suddenly decided that using state power to punish them is a moral imperative,” Friedersdorf continued.

“The timing suggests that this has as much to do with opportunism, tribalism, humanity’s love of bandwagons, and political positioning as it does with advancing gay rights, which have advanced thanks to persuasion, not coercion.”