Bake the cake, bigot.
A new PRRI survey found that a majority of Americans, a stunning 61%, believe businesses should not be allowed to refuse services or products to gay people based on religious grounds. So, for example, if a religious baker is asked by a gay couple to bake their wedding cake, that baker, despite their religious objections, should be forced to provide the cake or face the consequences of the government.
“Only half (50%) of white evangelical Protestants and fewer than half of Mormons (42%), Hispanic Protestants (34%), black Protestants (25%), and Jehovah’s Witnesses (25%) believe small business owners should be granted permission to refuse services to gay and lesbian people,” the survey found.
A frightening amount of support for the infringement of the First Amendment, indeed.
PRRI’s 2016 American Values Atlas findings were based on roughly 40,000 people from across all 50 states, interviewed on issues concerning religiously-based service refusal, as well as sex-same marriage, among other topics.
“For the first time in a PRRI poll of this size, no major religious group reports majority support for religiously based service refusals of gay and lesbian Americans,” said PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones.
In a culture where there is a victimhood hierarchy, every increasing level more virtuous than the last, it’s easy to overlook the rights of individuals who are nowhere to be found on the official Oppressed Victims List. But by forcing people to violate their closely-held religious beliefs, you are indeed creating victims of such people, stripping them of their civil liberties.
Look no further than the high-profile, real-life example of Aaron and Melissa Klein, Christian owners of a bakery called Sweet Cakes by Melissa. The Oregon couple has been ruined by a lawsuit after they refused to cater a lesbian couple’s wedding because it violated their Christian beliefs. In 2013, they were found guilty of discrimination and fined a whopping $135,000 in damages.
Again, are Aaron and Melissa not victims? Were they not denied their First Amendment rights?
Unsurprisingly, the survey also found large support for same-sex marriage. A majority of Democrats, 71%, and 38% of Republicans were found to support same-sex marriage. But, expectedly, a generational divide was highly visible: a majority, 54%, of under-30 Republicans supported gay unions, the first time this group was found to be supporting gay marriage in PRRI survey history.
“The religious groups in which majorities oppose same-sex marriage make up less than 20% of the public,” said Jones.