MY NEW HERO
Mitchell Moore
Mississippi Christian cake baker Mitchell Moore blasted lawmakers in his state…for the ‘stupidity’ of passing a law that ‘decriminalizes discrimination’ against LGBT people. The Republican owner of Campbell’s Bakery in Jackson told NPR during an interview on Wednesday that Gov. Phil Bryant (R) and GOP lawmakers were actually violating Christian principles with a new law that claims to protect the “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions” of business owners…. “I am here to bake cakes and to sell those cakes,” Moore explained to NPR host Renee Montagne. “I’m not here to decide arbitrarily who deserves my cake and who doesn’t. That’s not what I do. That’s not my job.”…. “So leaving aside the stupidity of passing it because it decriminalizes discrimination - which, that really is kind of the biggest issue - but I can actually say I think the law of unintended consequences is going to come back to bite the people who signed this bill,” Moore warned. “If it is my sincerely held religious belief that I shouldn’t serve them, then I can do that. And I can hide behind that language. But that language is so vague it opens a Pandora’s box. And you can’t shut it again.”
It’s far too easy to paint all Christians with the same broad brush when it comes to the using their religion as camouflage for hatred, bigotry, and homophobia. The truth, of course, is that the majority of Christians- even in places like Mississippi and North Carolina- are good and decent folks ready, willing, and able to live and let live. They recognize, understand, and accept that not everyone thinks, believes, lives, and/or loves as they do, and that this fact in no way provides them the right to judge others and find them wanting.
Unfortunately, too many good and decent Christians have stood by mutely while others steeped in hatred and bigotry have hijacked their faith and made it about opprobrium and homophobia. State governments in Mississippi and North Carolina have decided to ignore the myriad pressing and intractable problems they face and instead focusing on finding new and different ways to legislate the LGBT community back to second-class status.
Now THERE’S some inspired and prescient leadership, eh?
Mitchell Moore is conspicuous for being one of the few Christians in Mississippi willing to stand up and call out the Magnolia State’s legislature and governor for trafficking in discrimination and religious oppression. He’s a Republican and a Conservative Christian, but that doesn’t mean he lacks a conscience or an understanding of what the teachings of Jesus Christ represent. If he can recognize that legalizing discrimination based on “sincerely held religious convictions” may well be an exercise in proving the Law of Unintended Consequences, you’d think others would be as well. Not so much…or so it would seem.
Once it’s legal to discriminate based on one’s “religious convictions,” one can only speculate how long it will be before an atheist refuses service to Christians…and things will only get worse from there.
Memo to good, God-fearing Christians: When you decide that legalizing hatred and discrimination based on YOUR particular narrow moral/theological/ideological framework is the acceptable and righteous thing to do, you can’t claim to be surprised when someone flips the script on you. It WILL happen, and the butthurt will be epic. It’s what happens when you believe your prejudices should be given the force of law.
Be careful what you ask for and agree to…because you just might get it.
