Interesting Times Redux

Well, it’s clear that we’ve been afflicted with the old Jewish curse: may you live in interesting times.

Interesting, for example, that little Uruguay—best known I thought for providing a warm, Latin welcome to retiring (in only one sense) Nazis—has now become the second nation in South America to “allow” same sex marriage. OK—I know nothing about Uruguay, except that it’s the only land-locked South American country. But whoever or whatever they are, I cheer them on. Besos from Fortaleza Street!

Things are a little murkier up in the United States Northwest. In Washington, the attorney general is suing Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts, for refusing to provide the flowers for a gay marriage. And in Oregon, Aaron Klein, owner of Sweet Cakes, is facing a complaint lodge with the Oregon Department of Justice for refusing to provide a cake for two women’s wedding.

Both Stutzman and Klein refused to provide goods based on their religious beliefs—Stutzman told her long-time customer, Robert Ingersoll (no, not the Great Agnostic, who died in 1899), that she had a personal relationship with Jesus; the two hugged, Ingersoll left the store, and she thought the whole thing was over. In Klein’s case, he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody, I didn’t mean to make anybody upset, it’s just something I believe in very strongly.”

Confession—my first thought was purely political. ‘Drop it,’ I rebuked Ingersoll and the two ladies, ‘we have enough problems to deal with. Get over it, find another bakery and florist, take your business elsewhere. We don’t need Christians screaming that they’re being persecuted for their religious beliefs.’

Part of coming out, as I wrote a few days ago, is that it never stops. So I played with the thought—if Klein and Stutzman had refused to sell their good to an interracial couple, would that be OK? Or what if I were a florist, and a member of the Westboro Church—the guys holding the “God hates fags” signs outside of veteran’s funerals—came in the door? Would I be entitled to kick them out of my shop, or would I be obliged to smile, fork over the goods, take their dirty money?

Other questions emerged—does a shopkeeper even have the right to inquire in what way or circumstances his products will be used? If I went into a florist and ordered a dozen roses, I might be a bit nonplussed (hmm, and have I ever been plussed?) if the florist asked, “Now who are you going to give them to? And how long have you known her? And you’re not giving her these roses, buster, just ‘cause you want to get into her pants, are you? Because in that case….”

There’s also the size of the store. Somehow, it feels that Stutzman and Klein have more of a right to act on their religious beliefs than an associate of Wal-Mart, for example. But in fact it is law in many states that a pharmacist can refuse to dispense the morning-after pill if doing so violates her or his beliefs.

Hmmmm—I’m a woman in a small town in the American Southwest. It’s five hours to the next small town. I’ve suffered a sexual assault, woken up with my dress around my ankles in a stranger’s house, and been to see the doctor. I have a prescription in my hand, now it’s time to get it filled. And Smith Pharmacy says sorry, they don’t even carry that drug. Problem—by the time I drive five hours to get the drug, it’ll be too late.

In the scenario above, it seems that the pharmacist has less acted on his beliefs than imposed them. And is he or she going to spend two decades paying and caring for that child?

I’m gay, I’m married, and when I worked at Wal-Mart I was political; I told Human Resources as well as the president of the company that (I thought) they were completely off base to refuse to put my husband on the health plan. What didn’t I do?

I never made an issue of being gay. I never discussed it with the students; more, very frequently I would listen as students discussed their beliefs that marriage was an institution specifically created by God for a man and woman only. I treated this as I treated any other view—respectfully, asking questions that would explore the issue, probe it. What I didn’t do was rant.

Why not?

It wasn’t my job. If a student talked for fifty minutes about Jesus, well, that’s what Wal-Mart was paying me to do.

Right—so move down to the state of California, where another controversy is brewing. Here’s Associated Press’s lead:

A bill aimed at pressuring the Boy Scouts of America to lift its ban on gay members by making the organization ineligible for nonprofit tax breaks cleared its first vote on Wednesday in the California Legislature.   

‘Guys,’ I thought, ‘first we’re pissing off the Christians and now we’re going after the Boy Scouts? Are we gonna have any friends in town?’

Well, I went through the whole thing—this time remembering the Madison Club, a very exclusive, very expensive group of wonderful, very nice people, all of whom just happened to be white. They went around in the 60’s saying things like, “well, I just don’t see what all the fuss is about. I mean, I just adore Sadie, my maid, and she’s colored. We could talk for hours, but do I want to see her at the Madison Club!”

Interesting question—does the Catholic Youth have the right to ban atheists from their group, and if so, can it claim tax breaks?

Well, I’m happy to say that I have questions but no answers. And I can live easily in a world of questions—much more easily than I can in a land of answers. Some of the answers might be the right ones, of course, but what if they weren’t? What if I were a German in 1935, and blindly accepted the current right answer—Nazism? You only get out of a wrong answer if you engage in that balancing act so few of us do: hold a belief and hold it to scrutiny.

And I think that way because I went to schools that prized discussion more than answers. There was Miss Kohler, wire thin and in her 60’s, who trotted into the classroom the first day, and started the class off on the right note: “Kids, you can say anything you want about absolutely anything, but you will never get me to believe that Joe McCarthy was anything but a mean-spirited, despicable son of a bitch.”

This was 1972? Could she do it today? 

Ask Jerry Conti, the teacher whose letter of resignation has just gone viral, the guy who decried the administration for taking “creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation” out of the schools.

Hey, Jerry—you wanna weigh in?