I'm an older millennial (xennial), a few years older than Arielle, and I can attest to that shift between irreverence to policing each other. I knew someone who used to pride herself on being difficult to offend. She pulled an abrupt 180 and became the biggest policer and wielded a lot of power that way, especially noticeable to me because I was active in feminism before it was popular basically, but I was also devoted to the idea of free speech and I may not agree with you but I value your right to disagree.
I was raised atheist in the American Bible Belt during the height of the Born Again movement. My ideas about a lot of things are in flux, but with bakers baking cakes for gay weddings my thinking was about American's history of racial discrimination. NINA laws and blacks not being able to eat at certain restaurants and not being able to travel because of lack of service. For some groups if a business refused service there was not another business they could go to. As an atheist who read a lot about battles for freedom of speech and religion the thinking was secular business did not have the right to discriminate based on protected characteristics, but religious ones could because religions have freedom from government interference. So if a Baptist minister did not want to marry a mixed race couple that's his right (I am in a mixed race marriage), but if a Justice of the Peace refused then it would be wrong because the Justice of the Peace is a secular agent.
And while I believe that people shouldn't be able to refuse service based on protected characteristics, I also agree that bakers should have the right not to bake things with messages they don't agree with.
What shocked me was reading an article recently about a restaurant staffed with LGBT servers, who refused service to a group of Christians whose policies they detested. It shocked me because it feels like the Born Again Christians I went to high school with grew up, renounced Christianity, and found a new way to be dictatorial. If it's wrong for a Christian to deny you service because you're gay then it's wrong for you to deny a Christian service because they're Christian. And I will say again and again, the modern atheist movement looks so different from the atheism I grew up with that valued Rationalism and Empiricism and the right to disagree that if feels like the dream of my high school youth, to have more atheists around, has turned into some dystopian nightmare.
Basically on the wedding cakes thing, I think the LGBT movement needs to be consistent. Either Christians have the right to refuse to bake you a cake and you have the right to refuse to serve Christians, or Christians have to bake a cake for your wedding and you have to serve Christians with the same courtesy you do any other guest in your restaurant. And as an atheist who is self employed in the Bible Belt and worry both about being outed as an atheist among conservative clients and worry about being outed as a biological realist among liberal ones, I marvel at these businesses who are looking for people not to serve. Who wins if we get to pick and choose who our clientele is? Are we going to start checking every customer to make sure they have beliefs and values we agree with? Do we want to live in such a world?
There is a final point I would like to leave on. I faced a lot of bullying for being an atheist and all it did was harden me against Christianity. I decided if I ever decided to embrace a religion it won't be Christianity because Christians have been such jerks to me mentality. Meanwhile, there is a show I love, Call the Midwife, and as I'm watching it I find myself drawn to and in deep respect of one of the characters, Sister Julienne, even though she is a deeply religious nun. And I started thinking that if more Christians were like her I probably would still be an atheist but I'd have more respect for Christianity. And then, despite being woke at the time, I started to realize why the woke and LGBT movement are turning away so many people. And I started condemning the woke movement and tried to be more like Sister Julienne. An atheist Sister Julienne.
Basically I agree 100% that a lot of these modern movements, that have such good intentions, are shooting themselves in the foot. And looking back, I see so much of the Born Again movement in the modern woke movement even though on the surface they could not look more different.
I'm an older millennial (xennial), a few years older than Arielle, and I can attest to that shift between irreverence to policing each other. I knew someone who used to pride herself on being difficult to offend. She pulled an abrupt 180 and became the biggest policer and wielded a lot of power that way, especially noticeable to me because I was active in feminism before it was popular basically, but I was also devoted to the idea of free speech and I may not agree with you but I value your right to disagree.
I was raised atheist in the American Bible Belt during the height of the Born Again movement. My ideas about a lot of things are in flux, but with bakers baking cakes for gay weddings my thinking was about American's history of racial discrimination. NINA laws and blacks not being able to eat at certain restaurants and not being able to travel because of lack of service. For some groups if a business refused service there was not another business they could go to. As an atheist who read a lot about battles for freedom of speech and religion the thinking was secular business did not have the right to discriminate based on protected characteristics, but religious ones could because religions have freedom from government interference. So if a Baptist minister did not want to marry a mixed race couple that's his right (I am in a mixed race marriage), but if a Justice of the Peace refused then it would be wrong because the Justice of the Peace is a secular agent.
And while I believe that people shouldn't be able to refuse service based on protected characteristics, I also agree that bakers should have the right not to bake things with messages they don't agree with.
What shocked me was reading an article recently about a restaurant staffed with LGBT servers, who refused service to a group of Christians whose policies they detested. It shocked me because it feels like the Born Again Christians I went to high school with grew up, renounced Christianity, and found a new way to be dictatorial. If it's wrong for a Christian to deny you service because you're gay then it's wrong for you to deny a Christian service because they're Christian. And I will say again and again, the modern atheist movement looks so different from the atheism I grew up with that valued Rationalism and Empiricism and the right to disagree that if feels like the dream of my high school youth, to have more atheists around, has turned into some dystopian nightmare.
Basically on the wedding cakes thing, I think the LGBT movement needs to be consistent. Either Christians have the right to refuse to bake you a cake and you have the right to refuse to serve Christians, or Christians have to bake a cake for your wedding and you have to serve Christians with the same courtesy you do any other guest in your restaurant. And as an atheist who is self employed in the Bible Belt and worry both about being outed as an atheist among conservative clients and worry about being outed as a biological realist among liberal ones, I marvel at these businesses who are looking for people not to serve. Who wins if we get to pick and choose who our clientele is? Are we going to start checking every customer to make sure they have beliefs and values we agree with? Do we want to live in such a world?
There is a final point I would like to leave on. I faced a lot of bullying for being an atheist and all it did was harden me against Christianity. I decided if I ever decided to embrace a religion it won't be Christianity because Christians have been such jerks to me mentality. Meanwhile, there is a show I love, Call the Midwife, and as I'm watching it I find myself drawn to and in deep respect of one of the characters, Sister Julienne, even though she is a deeply religious nun. And I started thinking that if more Christians were like her I probably would still be an atheist but I'd have more respect for Christianity. And then, despite being woke at the time, I started to realize why the woke and LGBT movement are turning away so many people. And I started condemning the woke movement and tried to be more like Sister Julienne. An atheist Sister Julienne.
Basically I agree 100% that a lot of these modern movements, that have such good intentions, are shooting themselves in the foot. And looking back, I see so much of the Born Again movement in the modern woke movement even though on the surface they could not look more different.