The hyperbolic reaction of liberals to Indiana’s new religious freedom law demonstrates conclusively that the American left, their media lackeys and the “gay rights” movement don’t actually care about rights at all, but only about imposing their rigid Orwellian version of “tolerance” on society.
Consider this hypothetical situation without your political filter: Because of a sincerely held religious principle, Mr. Smith does not want to provide a service to Mr. Jones. Plenty of others provide the same service that Smith does but, rather than find another provider, Jones goes to the government to coerce Smith to comply.
It should be clear that Smith’s rights have been egregiously violated. After all, what is more fundamental to protect: the ability of a person to use his time and skills — in short, to live his life — as he sees fit or the preference of another person to buy a particular product or service from a particular vendor when there are other choices available?
The hypothetical need not apply only to gay marriage (which I support) but the conversation has centered there.
If any group in America should stand up for the rights of a sometimes unpopular minority, it is the LGBT crowd. So how is it that gays — ironically justifying their behavior by the language of civil rights — argue that their wishes (because having a particular wedding baker or photographer can hardly be called a “right”) should be fulfilled by government threatening other Americans with fines or jail?
The free exercise of religion and freedom of association — which must, in a free country, include the choice not to associate — were the first and most fundamental rights America’s Founders sought to protect. Trumping those true rights with an assertion of a (false) right to compel commerce with an unwilling business owner redefines what rights are, or at least should be, in the United States.
Ours is uniquely a system of “negative rights,” aimed at ensuring that Americans are not subject to the whims of others. Our Constitution reiterates rights but does not grant them; rather, it limits the power of government to infringe on them. We are, at least theoretically, a nation that values our right to self-determination and to be left free from government coercion. My life, including my time and money, is mine, not yours.
What the left supports instead are “positive rights,” including the ability to demand that someone else provide people with goods or services or the money to procure them, meaning that Smith should sacrifice a fundamental right — and part of her life — if it makes Jones happy.
Positive rights can only be accomplished through the use or threat of government force — which, if you think about it, is really redundant: government is force.
So let’s get back to Indiana. Soon after Gov. Mike Pence signed that state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act — modeled on a federal law passed in a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1993 and which 19 other states, including “blue” states, have also passed — he felt compelled by public pressure and misrepresentation of RFRA to call for “clarification.”
Additional language came from the legislature on Thursday stating that RFRA does not allow someone to refuse to provide goods or services and extending protections for “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”
This only clarifies the tyranny of positive rights that already contaminates our country. As long as there are multiple providers of a product or service, a business owner should be allowed to refuse to do business in a situation that violates her religious principles.
Yes, private citizens should be allowed to “discriminate.” True freedom must be defended, especially from a tyranny of the majority, the desires of whom, as John Adams warned, “are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority.” If anyone should be respectful of this argument, it is gay rights activists and “tolerant” liberals.
Ross Kaminsky is host of “The Ross Kaminsky Show” on Saturday mornings on 850 KOA and writes a monthly column for The Denver Post.
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