So in case you hadn't heard, the 'gay lobby' is still hard at work: according to the LSN headline, "Christian jeweller made gay couples’ rings but still got targeted by gay lobby" (see story here).
The first thing to note is that, yes, homofascists are still homofascists (angry, violent, irrational, mob-mentality types). But hopefully we understood that already.
The second thing to note is that the lesbian quoted in the story seems to be quite reasonable.* Aside from the intrinsic unreasonableness of her actual view of marriage, there is nothing unreasonable about her not wanting to do business with a jeweler who publically posts, right there in his business, his support for a view of marriage which she opposes. If a business-owner wants to mix business and politics, that's his right, but he shouldn't complain if he doesn't like the impact it has on his business.
[*Whether or not she had a binding contract after putting down her deposit is a different matter, which I will set aside. It is a technical legal matter. (fwiw, I don't think her breach of contract was reasonable and it sounds like it was not legal either - but apparently the jeweler decided to let the homofascist mob settle the question).]
Rod Dreher's comments, on the other hand, are not so reasonable. (I would note that Dreher's writing is, generally speaking, pretty intelligent and interesting.) He writes: “Is a fundamentalist Christian permitted to send her osso buco back to the kitchen if she discovers that homosexual hands cooked it? Of course not. Some delicate snowflakes are more delicate than others.” Please. What a bad analogy. A better analogy would be, "Is a fundamentalist Christian permitted to cancel her order of osso buco and leave the restaurant if she notices a pro-gay-marriage sign in the window?" And if we again set aside the breach of contract issue, the answer should be, "Of course." That is, we have a fundamental right to avoid doing business with business owners who use their businesses to promote things that we find offensive.
Another serious problem with Dreher's analogy is that it seems to suggest that the fundamentalist Christian's aversion is just visceral, to the ickiness of homosexual hands, as opposed to based on any kind of reasonable, principled objection. That would hardly be defensible, and would only make sense as an analogy if the lesbians didn't want to do business with the jeweler merely because of the ickiness of his pro-marriage hands. But that was not the case. They just didn't want to do business with a businessman who used his business to promote beliefs about marriage which they rejected. The old-fashioned term for this is 'boycott.' Thus Dreher mischaracterizes the situation when he talks about “the next phase in the March of Progress. You must not only bake the cake, or arrange the flowers, or make the ring, you must hold the correct opinion when you do it.” This is no 'next phase' of anything. It is just the ordinary right to freedom of association.
And it's just common sense that business owners shouldn't antagonize those whom they want as customers. I would certainly be within my rights to avoid a jewelry store that publicly promoted a perverted view of marriage. And yes, - pace Weatherbe, the LSN author (see article) - when it comes to freedom of speech and association, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
So yes, business owners should be free to post signs promoting their political views and allegiances (and they should be able to do so without being threatened by a fascistic mob, even if it's just on FB). And of course customers should be free to patronize whichever businesses they choose. And, for that matter, people should be free to post short slogans and assertions on Twitter. But whether such a mode of political discourse ('sloganeering') is really a good idea, whether it actually contributes to the formation of a well-informed citizenry and a healthy polity, is another question entirely. It is, in any case, rather sad to observe people who seem unable to form or follow thoughts more than 140 characters long. That's something that all people should work to overcome, regardless of their views about marriage.
