The Right to Religious Freedom and Restraint from Emotional Distress

(A patriot, who wishes to remain anonymous, has posted the following to me. It is the product of deep thought and research, so I wanted to pass it on to all my readers as a think piece for our times.)


An end goal of political correctness is a world in which all lifestyle choices receive equal validation and people are protected from encountering any expression of disapproval. It is a world in which all disagreement is disapproval, all disapproval is discrimination, and all discrimination is evil. And evil, of course, must be eradicated. Current attitudes regarding discrimination appear to be focused on branding any and all forms of discrimination as equally heinous and then declaring that such discrimination must be eliminated by any means necessary, regardless of how repressive the means. But discrimination is merely human conflict under a pejorative label. Conflict cannot be eliminated from the human condition, but it can be controlled (Robert D. Kaplan, The Humanists Dilemma and Asia’s Cauldron). The First Amendment is an example of an effort to place boundaries around forms of conflict/discrimination that satisfy the human demand for individual freedom while maintaining some control regarding the consequences of actions based on those freedoms. The First Amendment rejects the currently popular notion of “inclusiveness,” wherein everyone is welcomed everywhere. Quite the opposite, the First Amendment concerns itself with maintaining each individual’s fundamental right to be exclusive respecting how he speaks, how he elects to form alliances with his fellow beings and how he chooses to conform his behaviors with transcendent principles to which he feels he owes allegiance. The First Amendment concerns itself with non-tangible, non-quantifiable, non-material outcomes. The result is not infrequently the rejection of another person’s beliefs, verbal expressions and interpersonal interactions—in other words, disapproval. Rejection of another’s value system is obviously a form of discrimination. Yet the First Amendment protects—and is intended to protect—exactly those forms of rejection/discrimination respecting forms of expression when the only offense is disapproval and the only injury a person can claim is that their feelings were hurt. The following formulation reflects the historically established approach to balancing the competing interests of freedoms vs. feelings: Unintentional emotional distress resulting from the exercise of First Amendment freedoms is a necessary risk incurred in permitting those freedoms and such distress is an acceptable consequence of the exercise of those freedoms because it is grounded on the premise that the individuals involved are capable of taking responsibility for their own emotional responses while the state is limited to ensuring that everyone has equal access to those freedoms. Offended individuals frequently claim to have been “demeaned,” “dehumanized,” or “made” to feel like a “second-class citizen,” a “lesser person” or otherwise “caused” to feel any number of negative emotions, as though they are merely helpless, artificial agents who have no conscious control over their feelings and thus cannot be held accountable for the management of those feelings. In their eyes, it is unreasonable to expect them to seek to achieve emotional self-reliance or internal validation and, since emotional self-reliance is an unattainable objective, it is the world that must be structured to provide the validation they are entitled to. Hence the conflict distills between those who believe freedoms must give way to feelings, and those who believe freedoms should have priority over feelings. Critical to acknowledge however, is that while feelings are experienced individually, and thus can only be managed individually, freedoms are experienced only in the collective. (There is no meaning to the “right to associate” if one is the only person on the planet). This is also consistent with the historical reality that humans establish governing societies for mutual physical protection—they do not establish governing societies for mutual emotional validation. If emotional validation is sought, it can be obtained through the First Amendment freedom of the right to associate. Moreover, the republic was established in an era when self-reliance was an essential survival skill including, obviously, emotional self-reliance. It was most famously stated by Eleanor Roosevelt in this manner: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” This can be expanded indefinitely via the form “No one can make you feel________without your consent.” This acknowledges a fundamental human truth, that while feelings can be provoked they cannot be compelled. Granting that a first response may be involuntary, it is also clear that a sustained response involves an element of choice. This is implicit in the oft-advised response to unwanted speech attributed to Voltaire: “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” All human interactions evoke some level of emotional reaction. The question then becomes one of who shall be held responsible for another person’s emotional responses. The core issue in the current debate then, as previously noted, is a disagreement over the proper involvement of the state; that is, what should the state regard as more important: the protection of one citizen’s freedoms, or the protection of another citizen’s feelings. It is the opinion of this writer that protection of feelings must not become a state responsibility, as it implies that the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness must now be replaced with the presumption that happiness is now an entitlement. Rather than a pursuit, happiness should be a guarantee—and the state is expected to bend its resources, insofar as it can, to ensure that the desired level of happiness is obtained. Hence the excessive focus on feelings. This subject of feelings has represented a thorny problem when it comes to issues regarding homosexuality given that aversion to sexual practices outside the male-female model appears to be a human universal and likely has evolutionary roots as an adaptation designed to maximize the biological potential of the human species. Rejection of another’s behavior or ideas is frequently, albeit erroneously, interpreted as diminishing that other person’s worth as a human being. In the minds of those offended, if you disapprove of their behavior, that’s the same as saying that they themselves have no worth. In the social science world, such disapproval is regarded as “psychologically damaging” and “the worst thing you can do is to make people feel guilty or bad about themselves.” (Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Dan Quayle was Right, Atlantic magazine, April 1993). An example of such an occurrence is the lawsuit tendered against the bakery “Sweetcakes by Melissa” for declining to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple based on their sexual orientation, declaring that their religion forbad them to do so. The bakery lost the suit and was fined a combined total of $135,000 “in damages for emotional and mental suffering resulting from the denial of service.” To come to an understanding of why gays are so obsessed with their feelings, it is crucial to recognize that the gay-rights movement is a mass-movement in the fashion described by Eric Hoffer in his book “The True Believer.” That is, a movement offering its adherents a “sudden and spectacular change in their conditions of life.” Such movements exhibit some universal characteristics: From The True Believer: “There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change. The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, health and so on.” From the Wikipedia article on Eric Hoffer: “...mass movements and juvenile mindsets tend to go together, to the point that anyone, no matter what age, who joins a mass movement immediately begins to exhibit juvenile behavior.” Examples of juvenile behavior within a mass-movement are numerous. For one, it is evidenced in how juveniles view the world. To the juvenile mind, the entire world revolves around their world, and their world revolves around their feelings. Another, as any parent can tell you, is that juveniles are famously disinclined to accept any responsibility for things they perceive to be wrong in their world and frequently react negatively when they are told they cannot have something they want. They see themselves as abused victims unjustly attacked. Frequently they also believe themselves entitled to some form of reparation. These instances in which a wedding vendor declines to lend their skills to the celebration of a same-sex wedding exhibit a consistent pattern: an expectation by the offended party that they should have everything their way, little or no regard for what might matter to another, and temper tantrums when they are not given what they want, including obstructive and manipulative behaviors—such as dragging people into court as a means of punishing those who disagree with them. This dynamic is also called Spoiled Child Syndrome (Bruce McIntosh, Pediatrics Magazine, January 1989) and, like the juvenile mindset of Hoffer’s thesis, has no upper age limit. One author succinctly put it this way: “inside every adult, sometimes not very far inside, is a bratty kid who wants everything his own way.” This pattern holds in every case where a wedding vendor has been dragged into court for pointing out that the faith that they hold allegiance to does not permit them to associate with something their religion warns may violate their scriptural injunction to “avoid the very appearance of evil.” Like the getaway driver in a robbery, while not guilty of committing the actual robbery, is yet complicit, by the assistance rendered, in sanctioning the intent of the crime, the religious wedding vendor, by being compelled to play a supporting role in the public sanctioning of what their religion declares to be a forbidden sexual relationship, is in danger of being perceived by their God to be casual or even indifferent to the covenants they have made with that God. For the believer, eternal consequences follow. Additionally, from The True Believer, “All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and single-hearted allegiance.” The common outcome for wedding vendors who decline to provide forbidden services is to be the focus of intense hatred and intolerance, sometimes very well organized with protestors, calls for boycotts and even threats to suppliers who continue to support the vendor’s business. There is no allowance given for what the faith of the vendor requires of him. This fits perfectly with the definition of spoiled child syndrome, but it also fits perfectly with the definition of the word bigot as “one who regards or treats the members of a group ... with hatred and intolerance.” This is simply bigotry dressed up as righteous indignation and we should call it for what it is: Gay bigotry. Gay bigotry it is one of the most virulent and vengeful forms of bigotry currently on display in America today. Other bigoted groups target primarily freedom of speech, but gay bigotry attacks the entire first amendment as it applies to individuals—free exercise of religion, freedom of speech and freedom to associate. A consequence of the obsession with protecting feelings over freedoms that we are currently seeing coming from those who champion (or so they say) “social justice”— especially in these cases involving gay-straight conflicts—is that some justices are now abandoning their oath of impartiality and are beginning to calibrate their verdicts based on the anticipated emotional responses of the litigants—Sweet Cakes by Melissa being a particularly egregious example. The gay couple involved suffered no tangible, quantifiable or material harm. Their suffering was strictly emotional distress, for which they refused to accept any responsibility. As they were perfectly capable of attenuating their feelings had they chosen to do so, this can only be regarded as self-inflicted pain. Its difficult to see how the Republic or any of its citizens can be held responsible for, or has any obligation to mitigate, self-inflicted pain. By justices abandoning their oath of impartiality in cases involving emotional distress and religious freedom they are effectively claiming for themselves the right to interpret whether or not a particular practice or religious policy actually violates what the believer’s religion requires of him. Thus, they interpose themselves between the believer and his God regarding what constitutes acceptable worship of, and service rendered to, that God. This undermines the very idea of the free exercise of religion, for the First Amendment free-exercise clause is predicated on the premise that the believer, and the believer alone is empowered to determine what his god requires of him and, therefore, the state must accept the believers interpretation when no substantive injury to another can be attributed to the actions of that believer. In a short while, the Supreme Court will be dealing with many of these issues when it takes up the case of Jack Phillips, a baker from Colorado who declined to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Should the court find against Mr. Phillips, the court will be establishing the precedent that the republic values the feelings of one citizen over the freedoms of another. This is a complete rejection of the fundamental reason America was founded in the first place—the establishment and protection of liberty— and leads to a harrowing conclusion: The gay-rights movement stands as one of the most lethal attacks on our republic that has ever occurred because it seeks total—totalitarian— control over the First Amendment. This is not a movement in search of fairness, it is a demand for power and control—the power to dictate to the rest of the world how the world will see them, and the power to control what people can and cannot say about them. A pertinent exercise to make clear to the court what the real issue is in the case of Mr. Phillips might be to conduct the following thought experiment: Suppose we conduct a survey in a state which has voter initiative. The question is: “Which is more important, to protect people’s freedoms, or to protect people’s feelings?” Should the result of the survey indicate that the people believe that freedoms are more important to protect than feelings, let’s then assume that the citizens of that state use their initiative process to place the following amendment or statute into their state constitution or legal code: Unintentional emotional distress resulting from the exercise of First Amendment freedoms shall not constitute a basis for conferring protected status, creating protective legislation or instigating punitive litigation. This amendment is very narrowly defined, as it is limited to the consequence of emotional distress only and does not extend to any tangible, material or quantifiable loss, and is further confined by the limitation that such distress be unintentional (no bullying allowed) as well as be limited to actions that can be placed under the umbrella of the First Amendment. Would the Supreme Court find such a state amendment or statute unconstitutional? By what stretch of anyone’s imagination could they do so? The bakers, photographers, florists and other wedding professionals affected by so-called public accommodation laws are in no way intending to cause harm of any kind by merely seeking to ensure that their actions conform to their beliefs. That the First Amendment protects this form of behavior—which is technically discrimination—is known already, as the court has previously stated with reference to the Boy Scouts, that the right to associate includes, of necessity, the right to not associate. Would the Supreme Court declare that churches have the same right to not associate if they chose to deny their worship services to homosexuals? Wouldn’t that also constitute a denial of service? Why should an offer of money alter the terms of first amendment freedoms? The question to direct to the judges, therefore, is whether these public accommodation laws that are claimed to be violated are themselves being unconstitutionally applied when they conflict with the freedoms enumerated in the First Amendment. A judgment in favor of Mr. Phillips would not “enshrine discrimination” in the constitution. The outcome would merely be an end to bigoted, hate-driven lawsuits against people of faith as a means to exact vengeance upon them for holding to a moral standard that regards homosexuality as sinful and a violation of divine, if not secular, law. It would simply reaffirm the long-established, traditional understanding that the state is responsible for protecting people’s freedoms, and the people are responsible for managing their feelings. And it would be achieved by merely requiring that the state act as it should in remaining impartial with respect to people’s feelings and leaving it up to the contestants to solve their own emotional problems. In other words, responsibility would be allocated where it belongs. Such a reaffirmation is reasonable, rational, logical and perfectly fair. The playing field is leveled; everyone shares the same First Amendment protections as well as responsibilities. There is no favored treatment. And with the First Amendment, there must not be. While actions constituting rejection/discrimination in alignment with First Amendment freedoms may occasionally vex some as evidencing bad manners, they must never be illegal. In a sense, the contest over freedoms vs. feelings is a simple maturity issue. Adults don’t go around blaming everybody else for their unpleasant feelings, but juveniles do. Those members of the gay community possessed of a juvenile mindset seek a world where their lifestyle is unconditionally accepted everywhere, something no one else can claim any entitlement to. Their dream is universal approval, something no one else has ever had access to, for it is outside the reality of history as well as of human nature—a reality history supplies ample evidence for. It is a fundamental conflict as old as humans have walked the earth. It is the clash between dreams and reality. But when dreams and reality clash, adults go in search of a different dream while juveniles demand a different reality. Adults will acknowledge and accept this; people afflicted with a juvenile mindset who believe their feelings to be the hinge on which the universe is supposed to turn as well as the foundation of America’s public policies—in short, those who believe that their feelings are more important that anyone else’s freedoms—will rage against it, as we have plainly seen and, no doubt, will continue to see. An alternate version of the proposed initiative: Neither unintentional emotional distress—nor incidental hardship experienced as a byproduct of such distress—that may result from the exercise of First Amendment freedoms shall constitute a basis for conferring protected status, creating protective legislation or instigating punitive litigation.