With the Final Four set to begin in Indianapolis this evening, maybe we can shift our attention from the anti-discrimination protests there that have consumed our attention all week to the games. But maybe not, since protests are expected even at the games. The left just doesn’t know when to stop. That’s the subject of the lead editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal, “Liberal Intolerance, Round II: To stamp out cultural dissent, the left is willing to stomp on religious liberty.” Here’s a sense of what the week’s been like for ordinary Hoosiers:
Take the family-owned pizza parlor in Walkerton, Indiana—population 2,144. A local TV reporter went door-to-door asking restaurants how they would respond if they were asked to cater a gay wedding. The innocents at Memories Pizza, who had never faced the question in daily business, said that they would prefer not to participate in a hypothetical same-sex pizza party ceremony. Cue the national deluge.
They were suddenly converted into the public face of antigay bigotry across cable news and the Internet, and became the target of a social-media mob, as if they somehow screened for sexual orientation at the register. The small business closed amid the torrent, although a crowd-funding counter-reaction supplied tens of thousands of dollars in recompense.
Tens of thousands? The South Bend Tribune reports that the fund stood at $842,000 as of this morning.
Faithful readers of Cato@Liberty know our views on the underlying issue. Indeed, Cato’s amicus brief supporting those now pressing the Supreme Court to prohibit states from discriminating against same-sex marriages has just generated a brief from conservative scholars who direct their arguments entirely against ours: A most unusual move, they must be concerned.
But while we support same-sex marriage, we support religious liberty every bit as much. This week I addressed that issue here and here. And The National Interest has just put up a longer piece of mine that puts the whole freedom of association issue in perspective.
