CNN went to Georgia, which is considering a bill similar to Indiana’s bill protecting discrimination, and interviewed some florists.
All of the five florists they spoke with were unanimous: No flowers for gays — and so much for the libertarian argument that gays will just go somewhere else and the party practicing discrimination will deservedly suffer. No. When hostility to this or that group shapes cultural identity, and serves as a shibboleth, you suffer for failing to exhibit hostility. In that town, the florist with the courage to treat gays decently would be the one who suffers.
There is a nice dose of Pious logic in that news clip, too.
At 2:15, the shop owner says she would provide services to adulterers, and insolent children, but not gays; those, she explains, are “just a different kind of sin to me.” Well … yes; yes they are. After all, according to Christian teaching, adultery and sassing your parents are sins so grievous that the Invisible Wizard saw fit to chisel them into stone, so that humanity would never forget where He stands on those troublesome behaviors. The proscription against gay sex, on the other hand, was apparently issued in an undocumented remark to Moses.
And how can a thinking, decent-minded adult not weep when that idiot girl tries to explain that refusing to serve gays is not discrimination?
But, of course, this is Southern Baptist country and, whether overtly or underhandedly, Southern Baptists make war on character and intelligence because those things undermine priestcraft. This embarrassing clip is its fruit.