This decision should have been easy; it should not have has to go to an appeals court.
Carl and Angel Larsen (above) operate the Telescope Media Group, a Minnesota videography company. In 2016, they claimed Minnesota’s anti-discrimination laws required them to make videos of same-sex marriages, which they say their religious beliefs oppose. They challenged the Minnesota Human Rights Act as unconstitutional. The relevant provisions state,
“…It is an unfair discriminatory practice . . . to deny any person the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of a place of public accommodation because of . . . sexual orientation.
…It is an unfair discriminatory practice for a person engaged in a trade or business or in the provision of a service . . . to intentionally refuse to do business with, to refuse to contract with, or to discriminate in the basic terms, conditions, or performance of the contract because of a person’s . . . sexual orientation . . . , unless the alleged refusal or discrimination is because of a legitimate business purpose…”
The Larsens told the lower court that they wanted to make films that promote their view of marriage as a “sacrificial covenant between one man and one woman.” Thus they will only film heterosexual weddings, to “capture the background stories of the couples’ love leading to commitment, the [couples’] joy[,] . . . the sacredness of their sacrificial vows at the altar, and even the following chapters of the couples’ lives.” They also, they said, intend to post and share these videos online, in order to “affect the cultural narrative regarding marriage.”
U.S. District Judge John Tunheim dismissed their case, comparing their stated mission of promoting marriage as a bond between one man and one woman was comparable to posting a sign that said “white applicants only.”
Bad opinion, bad logic, bad judge. The couple made clear that they will “gladly work with all people—regardless of their race, sexual orientation, sex, religious beliefs, or any other classification.” However, as ” Christians who believe that God has called them to use their talents and their company to . . . honor God,” the Larsons decline any requests for their services that they feel conflict with their religious beliefs, and so state in their promotional materials.
In a 2-1 decision, the three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit reversed, ruling that the Larsons have a First Amendment right “to choose when to speak and what to say.”
Of course. While one may argue whether a cake is “speech” under the First Amendment, there is no persuasive argument that a video or film is not protected communication and speech by definition. The opinion cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1995 landmark decision in Hurley vs. Irish American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston, noting that the Court “drew the line exactly where the Larsens ask us to here: to prevent the government from requiring their speech to serve as a public accommodation for others.”
As with the various baker and wedding photo cases, I find the Larson’s conduct obnoxious, divisive and unnecessary. How does simply filming a wedding—I don’t care if it’s between a man and a musk-ox—constitute an endorsement, support, or a violation of their religious beliefs? It doesn’t. It can’t. Refusing to make a video of a wedding is an insult to any couple that requests it, and cruelly implies that they are less than worthy of association. Sure, the videographers have a right to withhold their services, but they are being jerks to do so. This is a Golden Rule matter. A law shouldn’t be necessary.
However, the Larsons should have the choice of whether to be good, ethical members of the community, fair and compassionate, and not be forced to act the way the State thinks they should act, even if the State happens to be correct, under threat of 90 days in jail and up to $25,000 in fines.
Naturally the Minnesota Attorney General couldn’t fathom the core Constitutional principle involved. You may remember him as the former co-head of a national political party that has been tipping toward totalitarianism of late: Keith Ellison, previously co-chair of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison fumed, saying that the decision “offended him as a human being”….
“A ruling that lets a business discriminate against LGBTQ folks today would let it discriminate on the basis of religion, race, gender, ability, or any other category it chooses tomorrow. The decision smacks of other dark moments in our nation’s history when courts have infamously upheld discrimination.”
Thus the question must be asked: is Ellison so dumb, so unqualified for his position, that he really believes this is what the decision says? My guess, having observed Ellison for years and found him to be a relentless agenda-driven partisan to whom facts and law mean little, I would guess that he made this statement without reading the opinion thoroughly, if at all. The ruling isn’t about discrimination, and it doesn’t encourage or enable discrimination. It isn’t even a freedom of religion case; this is mainstream First Amendment freedom of speech all the way.
A videography business isn’t a “public accommodation.” Nobody needs a particular professional videographer for a wedding or any other event. A professional videographer is an artist as well as a service-provider, and since the service includes expression and speech, it cannot be compelled.
Thought experiment: what if Germany had the U.S. Constitution in the 1930’s, with the current line of SCOTUS cases, including one that confirmed that a state can make it a crime for a “public accommodation” to refuse service based on political affiliation. (California has such a law.) Hitler, in this imaginary pre-war Germany, wants the brilliant director Leni Riefenstahl to film the upcoming 1936 Olympics. She refuses because, she says, he’s head of a party she despises.
Would the courts in this fictional Germany say she should be compelled to make her typical brilliant film making Hitler and the Nazis look like godlike heroes? No, they would not. She could not be forced to use the communicative nature of her art to express any thought or position she did not choose to. The issue, as in the Minnesota case, isn’t discrimination. It’s the right to free speech.
The national party Ellison helped corrupt and now represents on the state level no longer respects free speech when it gets in the way of its efforts to allow certain favored groups to trample the rights of others for their own benefit, including the bedrock American right to be a jerk.
By the way, I highly recommend reading the opinion by Judge Stras. It is interesting and well-reasoned.
Then you can explain it to Keith Ellison.
Or try.
Ethics Alarms 
This used to be a free country. Then came the civil rights act of 1964. Thanks for nothing “Greatest Generation”.
People are not free to undermine the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of others, and the Civil Rights laws quite properly addressed that.
You’re ignoring the fact that the civil rights act is just the start of the slippery slope that has taken us here.
We’ve forgotten that it was a necessary evil that trampled all sorts of rights. I totally concur that the ability to live free was being trampled by the unethical, hateful majority and something needed to be done.
But what’s happened in the meantime is that far too many think small, private enterprise is their social justice tool. The thought that you’re trampling the freedom of others isn’t even in their mindset and you’re a nutty alt-right to even consider that.
The civil rights act was necessary in the 1960’s. I don’t think it is today, because the racist people are now a minority, and definitely the less powerful. I don’t think a post civil rights act world puts us anywhere near what it was.
I’ll further argue that compelled conduct lets the racists hide. It’s part of why so many minorities think racism is more prevalent than it is, because racists can hide. I’m all for letting the sun shine on them so I can more easily distance myself from them,bas most would.
If I refuse to hire a Moslem, serve blacks or rent to homosexuals what ‘rights’ have they lost? They can still get jobs, dinners or a bed somewhere else. But when the government says I must then what they are saying is that others have a right to my money, my time, my labor, my property, meaning those things aren’t really mine at all. So whose rights are really being infringed here?
I think you misspelled your name. Shouldn’t it be George Lincoln Rockwell?
And that’s all you’ve got. Can’t answer the points raised so scream ‘Nazi’!
Now I will say that of course the government should not discriminate. And if that’s as far as the civil rights act went I’d have nothing to say but it doesn’t so I do.
What other answers are there to give? You’re wrong, you make bigoted pronouncements, a desire to deny people based on religion or immutable characteristics.
You toss Kantian ethics out the window and then set them on fire and defend it with number 24 on Mr. Marshall’s list, or at least the desire for number 24. You want it to be your right.
You hold Rockwell’s views and you hold his name. Insert something about shoes fitting.
Hmm. I wholeheartedly support your reasoning re: the Larsons right to refuse filming a same sex wedding: However using Leni Riefenstahl as an example of someone who would of good conscious refuse Hitler’s request to film the 1936 Olympics is mind boggling: Riefenstahl was at the very least a Nazi sympathizer who may have been taken in by Hitler. She was arrested by a team of U.S. Army personnel headed by John Ford.
You don’t know that alternate universe Leni….
I suppose I don’t understand your arguement that one should not be compelled to express an ideal that is an anethama to that person but that person should be considered a jerk for declining to express the speech in question.
Wouldn’t the corollary to this suggest we cannot compel a couple not to engage a business whose beliefs are in direct contradiction with your own but you would be a jerk to force them to serve you?
It seems to me that there are two opposing forces on the golden rule axiom. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you means treat people as you want to be treated. Sure, I would hate to be denied an accomodation by a business but I would also not want to be penalized for not providing a product or service that would in my mind violate my beliefs.
Being a jerk can occur when you deliberately choose a provider that is known to have opposing views. It is obvious that such a choice was designed to compel the other to submit to the customer’s ideology.
The law says you cannot discriminate in public accomodations based on sexual orientation. That means any sexual orientation. The law makes no distinction as to what that orientation could be.
Being a jerk can occur when you deliberately choose a provider that is known to have opposing views. It is obvious that such a choice was designed to compel the other to submit to the customer’s ideology.
That is also true, as we all agreed in the bakery and wedding photograph cases.
When the speech in question is public denigration and disapproval of personal conduct and relationships that are, quite literally, none of the speaker’s damn business in a nation built on the foundation of personal liberty, the speaker is a jerk. In a pluralistic society, irrational bigotry against groups or their conduct is destructive—to comity, to peace, to community. The bitter-enders on the topic of same-sex marriage no longer have any justification for public defiance. You don’t like same sex weddings? Great: don’t have one. Stop trying to make pariahs out of those who are different from you. Ethics is based on conduct. Anyone can believe anything they want, but when they set out to gratuitously hurt people by trying to make their completely legal, personal, vital (to them) choices targets of public antipathy, they are being jerks, bad neighbors, and unethical citizens.
The same would go for someone who deliberately set out to cause trouble for the Larsons by demanding that they videotape their same sex wedding.
Jack, I am of the opinion that individual rights stop at the tip of one’s nose.
Every individual is entitled to the same rights and each has equal responsibilities but you cannot argue that someone is interfering in a persons pursuit of life, liberty and happiness if it requires the compulsion of others under threat of civil action when other subjectively measured options are widely available.
If the creation of a videograph is a form of speech why is not a cake or even a basic wedding service?
Each of the above is offered with some differentiation to every couple. Thus, each is a product offered to the public. If we can argue that they are all the same and must be provided we can also argue they are all the same and none can be compelled.
Legalistic subtlties are of little use in attempts to harmonize competing interests.
The fact is no government edict can compel people to change their beliefs. Yes, they can force a violation of said beliefs but if it does it is merely engineering a desired outcome in which one group is marginalized to such a degree that it must submit and limit their happiness to ensure others have more hapiness.
My suggestion to cake bakers and videographers is to contractually establish that they be allowed to incorporate within the work that the opinions embodied within the work are not necessarily those of the creator.
Then let them choose if you are the right vendor for their event.
A basic wedding service is protected speech. No pastor can be compelled to preside over a gay wedding ceremony. I agree that custom cake-making should be as well.
It’s hard enough to be creative, nothing kills my muse faster than being told what to write.
Wedding videography is very competitive and it’s a buyer’s market. A provider who chooses to turn down business on principle is not inconveniencing anyone, other than themselves. There’s no legitimate reason to sue such a provider other than malice.
I tried to apply the Golden Rule as good and hard as I could, and imagined whether or not I would be offended if a gay videographer told me that he only does gay weddings. I couldn’t imagine any such scenario that could possibly either offend or inconvenience me in the slightest.
I don’t see how you reach that position. I don’t care how many grocery stores there are in my community: if one announces a policy that it won’t allow Greek-American ethicists to shop there, that marginalizes me, and suggests, publicly, there there is something that makes me a less than desirable customer. The same holds true for a professional wedding singer. The difference is that I can make the grocery store serve me, but not the singer.
“First they came for the Greek-American ethicists, but there was only one of them, so we did nothing…”
Next you will be forced to wear a symbol in public, say, a lowercase Phi letter from the Greek alphabet…
This topic/tactic has become nothing more than a club with which to beat to a bloody pulp anyone who disagrees with their viewpoint. It is thuggish.
Nice little company you have there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.
The lbgtq community can’t go after straight media content, so they strike at the “periphery of speech”, cake bakers, photographers, and now video content. In all the cases I know of, the providers were willing to work with anyone for “generic” services but drew the line at something that has religious meaning across the globe – marriage.
And it’s not like the “plaintiffs” couldn’t find other providers for the service. The general acceptance of gay marriage in the US, and I’m sure moreso in liberal Minnesota, puts to rest the absurd notion that the law needed exercised.
Regardless of the fact that even some “religious” people think the Bible is just an archaic writing badly in need of modernization, believers know it as God’s revealed truth, and therefore sacred. Notice that in these cases the proprietors are willing to exhibit the grace they’ve received and serve all, up to a point. Marriage. It is well known that in both old and new testament God refers to His relationship with His people in a marriage context. It’s no surprise that each defendant thus far has taken that exception.
As much as these things are litigated as free speech, they are really about the free exercise of religion. Moreover, these actions have targeted Christianity, specifically. Not surprising, Christ said in no uncertain terms, they hate Him, they’ll hate those who follow him, but, I digress. Take out free speech, and free exercise of religion won’t matter.
Being Minnesota, why didn’t they target a baker in the Muslim Somali community? Modern “Christian” nations seem to be the most tolerant of sexual sinners (to be fair, this also includes fornication and adultery – a boon to the personal happiness of many, with a lot of crappy side effects for many more… I digress, again…), and if they really wanted to prove a point, they’d target the far harder nut to crack, Islam.
So, no, this is not a simple application of the golden rule or the freedom to be a jerk.
It’s the typical leftist, totalitarian method of enacting law through the judiciary.
If we as a population wish to remove the free exercise of religion from the first amendment, there’s a method for doing so, and it would be the ethical way to do it.
But, as pastor often says, two worst things in the world are not getting what you want, and getting it.
One problem: your point doesn’t apply to this case. The videographers were the plaintiffs, not any customers. From the decision: “The Larsens have sued Minnesota in federal district court seeking injunctive relief preventing Minnesota from enforcing the MHRA against them.” Nobody targeted them. Maybe nobody would have. They filed the suit preemptively, assuming, probably correctly, that they would be targeted.
One thing I wonder is if the MHRA would have required them to film same-sex weddings, if they did the same for opposite-sex weddings.
Let us take consider the case of a photiographer who, because of the sex abuse scandal, refuses to film Catholic events and ceremonies, while willing to do the same for other faiths. Furthermore, this photographer would film other types of events for Catholic clients (for example, filming an Islamic wedding on behalf of a Catholic friend of the Muslim couple) and would refuse to film Catholic events and ceremonies for anyone (for example, refusing to film a Catholic baptism on behalf of Scientologist friend of the Catholic parents.)
Minnesota has prohibited religious discrimination longer than sexual orientation discrimination. Is this religious discrimination under Minnesota law?
the answer to that question would, of course, control the statutory interpretation of the case. For if refusing to film a Catholic ceremony on behalf of a non-Catholic client, while willing to film a non-Catholic ceremony on behalf of a Catholic client, nevertheless constitutes religious discrimination, then surely refusing to film a same-sex wedding on behalf of a heterosexual client, while willing to film an opposite-sex wedding on behalf of a homosexual client, would be sexual orientation discrimination.
And yet, neither the majority nor dissent cited a Minnesota Court of Appeal case (let along a Minnesota Supreme Court case) answering this question.
Ah, good on them. We all know it’s coming, they’re trying to impose a viewpoint, from the Colorado cake baker to the guy in Austin, Texas, who falsely accused the grocer of writing anti-gay slurs on his cake.
My view is that these commissions are simply one more tool the left can use to wage war by judicial fiat. There simply is not a wide spread issue of gays being unable to get services provided to them, which would be an issue. Even wedding services. The issue for them is that they can’t get ALL Christian proprietors to provide very specific types of wedding services. And it won’t stop at “commercial” services. Once “commercial” services provided by religious people are conquered, churches themselves will be next in a legal obligation to provide gay wedding ceremonies.
I dont think your Greek American ethicist hating grocery store is the same as the topic at hand, unless the worlds religions have historically believed a man and woman committing to very specific honor before God cannot have the food used in the ceremony procured by a Greek American ethicist, from a particular grocery store that refuses to serve same.
Yes, it is true gays were previously not able to get married, a problem under law, and a deep one given the religiosity of marriage and how it is, and has always been, viewed. Said problem now resolved.
But as you’ve often written, it doesn’t excuse the party historically oppressed doing the same thing.
Eugene Volokh commented on this.
https://reason.com/2019/08/23/videographers-have-first-amendment-right-not-to-make-same-sex/#comment-7906967
– Me
– Eugene Volokh
Good question, and the professor is correct.
Jack writes: “As with the various baker and wedding photo cases, I find the Larson’s conduct obnoxious, divisive and unnecessary. How does simply filming a wedding—I don’t care if it’s between a man and a musk-ox—constitute an endorsement, support, or a violation of their religious beliefs? It doesn’t. It can’t. Refusing to make a video of a wedding is an insult to any couple that requests it, and cruelly implies that they are less than worthy of association. Sure, the videographers have a right to withhold their services, but they are being jerks to do so. This is a Golden Rule matter. A law shouldn’t be necessary.”
It seems to me that you are not taking into consideration that we are in the beginning stages of a culture-wide reaction against decades of intense liberal indoctrination. In the conversation going on in that sphere-of-reaction (which I try to study and keep abreast of) there is talk not only about ‘defensive measures’ against the rot and disease of excessive liberalism, but also talk about how it might be replaced or corrected and how this might come about. People within this sphere are using terms that are unpopular: like deviancy and abnormality, sexual perversion, et cetera.
Just as the Hyper Left progressives have dominated the conversation by transvaluing traditional values and making what had been perverse to be normal and desirable, and the normal into the perverse — and utterly dominating ‘the institutions’ in the process — so the reverse movement will likely involve a similar Gramscian tactics. It is already happening and it already has a wide reach and effect.
You say that Larson’s conduct is ‘obnoxious, divisive and unnecessary’, which is fair enough as far as it goes. But in truth *you* (I mean this in a wide plural sense and I mean you as a ‘cultural phenomenon’) did not arrive at your view overnight. Your acceptance of these transvalued values occurred over a long space of time: social conditioning. And that is where the ideas of Gramsci enter in: change the cultural values and eventually ‘the revolution’ will become inevitable. See: ‘cultural hegemony’.
It is true that in the present day there is no representation that will not be made and has not been made. There is no *perverse* work of art, literature, film that is repressed. All are welcome, all are ‘valid’. And we live now in a circumstance where no person has any right at all to prohibit any of this, and even in a sense to have a moral position against it. We also live under societal rules that privilege corporations to have incredible power in determining attitudes. (I have referred to the book ‘The Marketing of Evil’ in this context). How has this come about? Well it has surely been a long, slow process that extends back well over 100 years. The core of it has a great deal to do with lessening of restrictions on sexual activity. Sexual liberation is the primary motor. Unfortunately, this leads to and has led to a Porn Culture. But only uptight religious people have a position to argue against it. Everyone else simply floats in this general environment and can do nothing about it nor do they see themselves as having a valid argument against it. Their children will be exposed to it and also perverted by it in one way or another. Oh well . . .
And people are beginning to react against this. This is how social movements get started. So, I would submit that the refusal of this video couple has both a passive and an active element. As an active statement it is just a small manifestation of what will become a general cultural refusal to accept the perverse as being ‘normal’. Through their resistance they reach out to others and encourage other forms of resistance. This reaction is beginning now and will pick up steam and energy in the next decades.
What happened to the Bianca Comparato avatar? I liked that avatar.
We don’t even need to go to the Hitler example. The left thinks Trump is Hitler.
Should performers be denied the right to perform at a Trump event?
On point, I think.
No ‘Mixed’ or ‘Gay’ Couples, Mississippi Wedding Venue Owner Says on Video
http://www.deepsouthvoice.com/index.php/2019/09/01/no-mixed-or-gay-couples-mississippi-wedding-venue-manager-says-on-video/
This dated TODAY.
Just not that many racists out there right Matthew B?
Now THAT he cannot do, I’m pretty sure. But I haven’t checked: I think a locale is a public accommodation, and there’s no discrimination allowed.
Is it different than refusing to marry a mixed-faith couple?
I take what valkygrrl has presented as a challenge. The challenge is to examine the entire question in the light of ethics and morals and to adjudicate it. I start from the position that encouraging inter-racial relationships, especially those that produce children, must be ‘frowned upon’ (as the saying goes) and that it is good and proper to do so. The reasons are really quite simple, and quite obvious. And by making the essential issue plain and obvious it certainly helps in developing a counter-position to the view that is presented in nearly all media, in film, in literature. So, here is another area that requires examination: the powerful molding institutions that have determined our ‘ethics’.
If we actually value ‘diversity’ we must recognize that diverse human groups became diverse because of their separation and isolation. Take a simple example such as the Aboriginals of Australia. Or the Esquimo. Take any people that are known to have distinctive racial characteristic, examine their history, and it is obvious that what created them was unique molding forces operating through evolution over time. No more time need be devoted to this because a thinking person with a basic level of intelligence understands this. It is *as plain as day*.
Therefore, if you are going to assert honestly that you ‘value diversity’ you will be forced by logic to defend that which protects the diversity that you value. We live in times in which forms of doublethink have us in its grip. We do not think in clear terms and we are discouraged to do so by a social environment that ‘shames’ us when we think or see in criminal terms. The powers that stand behind this social coercion are vast, and the way they attain their will is through the Gramscian ‘cultural hegemony’ I referred to just above.
Now, it is obvious that to *preserve diversity* — if we were really serious about this, and we are not, and thus we lie to ourselves about this and the lie covers over other unpleasant facts and thus ‘truth’ — but if we were really serious about preserving diversity we would immediately see in the most stark terms that racial mixing will bring diversity to its end. It is one thing to allow the creation of a Nation (the US) that would allow ‘enclaves’ to develop where such preservation of diversity would be naturally allowed because there would be no national policy to interfere. It is quite another to create and institute a policy of ‘forced integration’ and that includes employing PR and propaganda to influence people to integrate and de-diversify.
The site that valkygrrl referenced is a total Fake News site. I would bet, though I have not looked into it, that it is the sort of site that those called ‘radical’ and ‘fringe’ would describe as having been set up as part of a cultural-influencing scheme by big money interests. With this sort of ‘news’ it is big money, with Liberal and Hyper-Liberal individuals standing behind it, that falsely set up a news outlet that appears ‘real’ or perhaps ‘sincere’ is the proper word, but which is really just a vehicle for the game of manipulating minds, people and culture.
Is this getting any clearer? Because what I am describing is the very structure that has been developed in your fine country as a universal tool of social manipulation. This is not democracy in any sense as this term was used by the Founders. It is the manipulation and abuse of the basic concept of democracy and sovereignty and this is carried out by monied interests who design and control the propaganda industry. This is the prevailing reality under which we live. And it is unethical to continue to lie so brazenly about it!
All of these things can be exposed, seen, conversed and understood except for one small problem: there is no one at home to have that conversation! Thus ‘ethics’ is a joke. You are not talking about ethics you are justifying vast projects of cultural engineering and pretending that it is as ethical conversation.
I have just shown — by introducing Aristotelian logic among irrational people — where a really ‘ethical’ conversation is and the only place where it is located or could be located. If you really wish to ‘preserve diversity’ you will be obliged to speak in real terms that would allow such diversity.
You will not be able to defeat what I say because you will not engage in the conversation. What one gets when one gets to the core of a given problem or argument is something known as ‘dynamic silence’. Why this? Because if you came out into the field you would lose. Because I will slaughter you! I will cut you into so many pieces that those pieces, now minute particles, will turn into a sludge of ever-dividing molecules. You have no argument. You have no structure of argument at all. What you have is determined ideas developed by others with which you engage sentimentally, not intellectually.
So, this is just one instance where clarifying intellectual and rational thought can be brought to bear on the doublethink of American thinking in our present. Your doublethink is nefarious and criminal and behind it stand ugly things that mean no one any good at all. And I am afraid to say that with each passing day this ‘ugly stuff’ becomes more exposed and thus more visible and obvious.
Let me *sum this up*. To begin to think in terms of self-preservation — that is of white, European society — we must begin to turn against falsely constructed ‘liberal’ notions. This is not easy because these pervade our indoctrinated culture. At the same time, if we are self-respecting we can also extend our respect to others: to Black communities, to Latino Communities: to all communities. And if we really valued ‘diversity’ we would relate differently to those peoples and their situation.
The ‘liberal social project’ is a sham and a lie and this is now beginning to be demonstrated clearly. In order to defend and *empower* those ‘other’ groups requires not liberalism’s poisonous ‘ideologies’ but something more rigorous and more intellectual. Clear, hard thinking.
Now what is this you asked about my former avatar, my dear valkygrrl? 🙂
Here is a woman of color — a Melanite according to her terminology — who is using her mind to realistically examine and assess this racial-mixing project from a critical perspective. And from the perspective of her own self-preservation perspective.
She asks all the right questions.
I must confess it really makes me angry when I see such perverse doctrines presented through massive advertising interests that have power that you do not have, and will never have, to mold culture.
You have become a sick sick people, a perverse and ugly people — a devilish people — and you must begin to ask why. Why is this?!? How did this come about? Who are the responsible parties? And how can they be opposed? What is normalcy? And how can it be recovered?
Upstream, Jack made the contention that “The bitter-enders on the topic of same-sex marriage no longer have any justification for public defiance. ”
While I know Jack was not meaning this in the way I take it here (and thus did not address him in thread), I did have observations relevant to this sort of situation.
First, as has been touched upon above, ordinary people are no longer tolerated and simply expected to tolerate others. Now everyone must endorse whatever the left thinks is cool at this minute, at the cost of your beliefs, your livelihood, (increasingly) your freedom, and (inevitably) your life. We have track record where this ends up, and every day we see the water-laden jello being added to the slope to that end. For an up to the minute example, see what red China has done to weaponize social media, and what the left is doing here. Dissention will not only be suppressed, it will be punished.
Last, I find it amazing how any court decision, tradition, or cultural belief the left dislikes is never a closed topic, and is under attack until it is reversed. Yet, when something the left likes is at stake, you can never change the game again, like the shenanigans used to pass Obamacare, or the illegality of a home brew server, or the weaponization of the intelligence apparatus of the most powerful country on Earth used against a political opponent. Second Amendment rights are constantly challenged. Nothing to see here.
Yet the right IS noticing the hypocrisy, the double standards, and the two tiers of justice. The election of Trump was the shot across the bow of leftists, the media, and the elitist Swamp (sorry to repeat myself three times). Just because same sex marriage was (by hook or crook) passed does not mean it cannot be undone. Same with many cherished lefty laws (looking at you, Roe): sauce for the goose is now cooking the gander.
The left has overplayed their hand. Common, ordinary Americans are noticing. Revival is coming.