The Prince of Lightness strikes again.
To supporters of a Mississippi law allowing business owners to withhold service that violates their conscience, John Kasich said Sunday on CNN,
What I’d like to say is, just relax. If you don’t like what somebody’s doing, pray for them, and if you feel as though somebody is doing something wrong against you, can you just for a second get over it? You know?
Don’t tell us to relax, Kasich.
Though his comment is not belligerent, it utterly misses the point. Kasich’s hugging policy is not just creepy and annoying, it’s apparently detrimental to the First Amendment as well. (He said that as president, he would take steps to prevent states from passing laws like Mississippi’s.) Certainly if a friend or person on the street insults your religion or pressures you to ignore your conscience, you’d be honorable to forgive and move on. But even then, you should be able legally to refuse to violate your conscience. A law requiring a Christian baker to make a gay-wedding cake forces him to violate his conscience.
So we’re not just going to hug it out, Kasich. If the religious ought not to distinguish between political conscience rights and the moral obligation to forgive, the Pilgrims should have forgiven King James and not bothered leaving England.
But you know who else isn’t feeling relaxed about this? The people who are refusing their services based on conscience rights — namely, the individuals and businesses withholding service from North Carolina. After the state passed the bill preventing biological males from using women’s restrooms and vice versa, the Left was not prepared to “get over it.”
Bruce Springsteen isn’t relaxed: He won’t perform in North Carolina, and he’s threatening to boycott Michigan if it passes a similar law it has proposed. XHamster isn’t relaxed: Paragon of virtue that it is, the popular porn site is blocking access to its porn in North Carolina, taking a stand for justice. The NFL, Deutsche Bank, General Electric, Pepsi, Michael Moore, and ten others aren’t relaxed!
There is zero principled difference between these companies’ actions and the refusal of a small-town Christian baker to supply the cake for a gay wedding. No legal harm results in either case from exercising conscience rights; arguably the only concrete harm here is self-induced, with businesses losing money.
Kasich did say we should “balance” religious freedom with the imperative not to discriminate and shouldn’t try to solve complex problems with legislative quick fixes. That sounds fine, but in this case, his exhortation recalls a quote by the late Justice Scalia about constitutional interpretation: “What is a ‘moderate’ interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you’d like it to mean?”
Likewise, what is the “moderate” solution to this problem? Conscience rights only when they don’t hurt others’ feelings? That isn’t very relaxing.