Religious Freedom in Indiana

I spent a lot of time in Indiana as a young man and I’ve always loved it there — so I laugh with delighted laughter to see leftist homofascists boycott and slander the state over the new Religious Freedom Restoration Act. If the results of past boycotts of this type — against Chick-fil-A and Duck Dynasty, for instance — are any indication, Indiana should soon be the richest and most popular state in the union!

The law, as you probably know by now, imitates the 1993 federal RFRA, voted in nearly unanimously and signed by Bill Clinton. It seeks to prevent the state from violating your right to act on religious principles unless they can show “compelling interest.” Among its purposes is preventing gay activists from bullying, say, Christian bakers or florists into participating in gay weddings that violate their religious consciences. Nineteen other states have such laws without being boycotted. Those states have my sympathy. They must envy Indiana deeply.

I support the right of gay people to forge faithful, lifelong unions recognized by the state and respected by people of good will. Leftists do not support this, make no mistake. They only use the issue as a way to attack Christianity and heterosexual family life. If that’s not true, let’s see one of these homofascist clowns walk into a Muslim restaurant and demand Mohammed make the falafels for his wedding. They don’t do this not only because they are cowardly scum, but also because attacking Islam is no more their purpose than is the true and honorable support of gay rights. Islam is not the philosophical backbone of the American way of individual freedom that leftists so despise. Christianity and Christian thought and family are the pillars of that freedom — and that’s why the left wants to destroy them.

These leftist bullies are not good for gay people any more than feminists bullies are good for women. In both cases, since the media give the thugs so much air time and unquestioning (not to mention mindlessly stupid) support, it becomes easy to believe that these bozos represent a class of people when they only represent their destructive, radical selves. It’s easy to feel angry at women while listening to feminists — unless you actually know some women, in which case you’re likely to find them to be nothing like the awful harridans who pretend to speak for them. Likewise, it’s easy to think the homofascists represent gay people — unless you know some gay people (as anyone who works in the arts is bound to) and find they mostly want to work, love and be left alone like other Americans.

I should hardly need to say this, but just for the record: freedom is a two-way street. If I am free to do something, you are free to refuse to do it or to participate in it. If the homofascists don’t seem to support that principle it’s for one simple reason: it’s that very principle they want to destroy. Gay rights are only the weapon they happen to have at hand.