Memo to Businesses: When You Provide a Service, It's Not About You

Why should a baker be forced to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple if he's against same-sex marriage? 

The answer is simple: If you offer a service to the public at large, you shouldn't be able to make a distinction because of your religion, your preferences or your ethics. Why? Because it's not about you.

Of course, you should be able to exercise your religious rights when it's just about you. No one is forcing you to marry someone of the same sex, but what business of yours is it what someone else decides to do? You won't be eating dinner with that same-sex couple when they come home from work. You won't be sharing their bed. You won't be cleaning their cat's litter box, taking their kids to school, washing their dishes or paying their hospital bills. You won't be reaping the benefits of that marriage - the love, the retirement plan, the vacations spent together - and it's not your responsibility. Which is to say, you don't get a say.

Because it's not about you.

Those actions only become "about you" when you engage in them yourself, when they become an integral part of your own life. That's the distinction.

If you're serving the general public as a businessperson, the service you provide is not about you, either. That service is provided for your customers. It's about them. Hence the old saying (too often ignored these days) that the customer is always right. That saying doesn't come with a qualifier like "as long as he's a straight, white, Protestant, Bible-believing male who roots for the Dallas Cowboys." It stands on its own, just as the money exchanged in any such transaction stands on its own. It's legal tender for all debts public and private. Says so right there on the currency. If the money doesn't discriminate, why should the service? It's a two-way street.

Here's the good news: If the service is about the customer, the money is about you, the merchant. You get to use it to buy school supplies for your kids, take a vacation with your spouse, buy cat litter for your feline friend, and so forth. Is that really so bad? You worry that someone else's same-sex wedding is damaging your marriage in some nebulous, undefined way, but isn't that money actually affecting your marriage far more tangibly and directly? And in a good way!

And you shouldn't worry about churches being forced to perform weddings for same-sex couples, either. That's a different slice of cake altogether. The distinction is simple: Unlike businesses, churches aren't offering their services to the general public. They're offering them to people of their own faith because, by definition, a church is built on moral and doctrinal agreements among members of the same faith. 

Religious institutions such as churches, mosques and temples wouldn't exist without the faith to which they're attached. It's their fundamental raison d'etre. The same cannot be said for businesses owned by Christian, Muslim, Wiccan or Buddhist owners. They aren't in business to spread or facilitate their faith; they're in business to make a living by serving the general public. If their religion conflicts with their ability to provide the service they're offering, they should find another line of business - or, if they prefer, another religion. The choice is theirs.

This is, in fact, exactly what an Alabama judge decided to do: To avoid issuing licenses to same-sex couples, he decided to stop issuing licenses altogether. According to the judge, the law states that counties "may" (as opposed to "must") issue marriage licenses. So he's taking his county out of the marriage business.

Clearly, the government isn't a private business, and the judge's action amounts to using the law as an excuse to enshrine a form of institutional bias. But I have to give the judge credit for one thing: He understands the principle that it's all or nothing. If you offer a service to the general public, you must serve everyone in the general public equally. Your only alternative is to pack up your tent and go home - where you can eat that cake you refused to bake for that same-sex couple (if it isn't stale by the time you get there and doesn't aggravate your diabetes).

If you're in business to serve the general public, that includes people of both genders, of all races, creeds and sexual orientations. If you don't feel comfortable providing a service, stop providing that service ... to everyone. But don't pretend you have a problem with the service itself when your real issue is with the person on the other end - someone who has every right to live her own life independently without being told by some business she isn't good enough. If you think you can or should play a role in her life by limiting her options, that's your ego, not your ethics, talking.

And as I said, it's not about you.

Same-sex marriage: Traditional values are no longer an exclusive club

Justice Antonin Scalia is right.

"One would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie," Scalia wrote in his dissent to Friday's announced 5-4 decision overturning same-sex marriage bans nationwide.

What Scalia did was identify marriage as a conservative value. A family value. And he acknowledged that Friday's ruling gave same-sex couples the right to participate in that conservative institution. What self-described conservatives against same-sex marriage won't like about the court's latest ruling is that people they perceive as "the other" have been given the freedom Friday to become part of "their" tribe - as if marriage were somehow exclusively theirs. That's not conservatism, it's elitism.

Opponents of same-sex marriage don't tend to like the "hippies" Scalia ironically quoted as authoritative in this matter, viewing them as promiscuous, irresponsible, pot-smoking layabouts. That is, of course, a grossly unfair stereotype, but it's one that has persisted in right-wing circles for decades. And that's the point: Some self-described hippies don't smoke pot, some are extremely responsible and socially active, and some are just as committed to the idea of monogamy as those who are likely to vote for Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum or Mike Huckabee.

For decades, gays and lesbians were forced to undergo the indignity of whispered exchanges and secret rendezvous in bathhouses or highway rest stops. Like anyone else, they had a strong drive to experience sexual intimacy, but they were forced to pursue that intimacy in settings that encouraged "one-night stands" or what society would label "promiscuous behavior." Society at large came to view promiscuity as a natural part of the gay experience, when in fact it was just the opposite: Gay and lesbian individuals had to settle for such behavior because they couldn't speak openly, court openly, develop long-term intimate partnerships openly. Sure, some enjoyed having multiple partners - just as some "straight" individuals do.

The point is that promiscuity wasn't some kind of "side effect" of being gay, it was a situation enforced upon the gay and lesbian community by a then-majority view of people who "didn't want to see that put in their face." Then, because same-sex partners went underground with their relationships - out of necessity - the members of that same majority mocked them: "See, we told you so! They're a bunch of promiscuous bed-hoppers." Talk about a no-win situation.

What the Supreme Court did Friday ended that. It validated that everyone in the United States has the right to embrace a conservative tradition, regardless of what the self-described conservative "elite" would prefer. Folks with similar views tried to keep African-Americans from eating at certain establishments - and thereby participating in another conservative institution: capitalism.

The opposition to gay marriage, like the opposition to racial equality, isn't about defending conservative principles, it's about keeping others from exercising those principles themselves. Justice Scalia's words Friday ripped the pretense off that motivation and exposed it for the world to see. He also exposed it as the constitutional affront such opposition embodies: a brazen reassertion of the long-discredited "separate but equal" doctrine. 

Most courts across the country had already recognized this. Now, it's writ large for the nation to see in Scalia's own dissent.

Thank you, Mr. Scalia, for showing your true colors. And thank you, Justice Kennedy, for allowing the rest of us to show ours.

Sincerely, a monogamous, straight, white male ally 

It's not even really the Confederate flag

There's a lot of heated debate about the so-called "Confederate flag" online, with each side accusing the other of historical ignorance. One side insists it signifies racism, while the other says it's a symbol of Southern pride.

The result is one big verbal brouhaha. A fight. And that's oddly appropriate when you think about it. Flags in general started out as tools of warfare. They were used to identify members of a military group, to rally the troops and to coordinate attacks. To defend the flag was to defend what it stood for: your comrades in arms and the kingdom, nation-state or tribe for which they were fighting.

These days, flags fly over embassies and state capitol buildings, ballparks and cemeteries: places far afield from any battle. Some battle flags evolved to become national flags. But the flag we call the "Confederate flag" (also known as the "rebel flag") was never among them. The rectangular flag with white stars on a blue "X" set against a red background was actually rejected as the Confederacy's national symbol at its founding in 1861. A flag featuring a blue field with a circle of stars against three broad stripes or bars - two red and one white - was adopted instead. They called it the "stars and bars," a name often incorrectly applied to the "rebel flag."

It was only in 1863 that a similar square insignia was adopted for use as part of the Confederacy's national flag: but even then only as a blue field in the banner's upper left-hand corner. Never in the history of the Confederacy was the rectangular "rebel flag" used as the national banner. It was always a battle flag - a banner designed for and used in military combat. It was employed as the battle flag of a single state within the Confederacy, Tennessee, and for a period of time as the Confederacy's navy jack. 

Given its origins, maybe it should come as no surprise that it continues to generate conflict. Indeed, conflict is precisely the purpose for which it was used. Some people see it as a symbol of racism; others as an emblem of Southern pride. Even if we were to accept, for the sake of argument, that it's only the latter, it wouldn't change the fact that it seems to resonate strongly with those who see it as a call to arms, a reason to fight. And this raises a pair of questions: Whom are you fighting? And why are you fighting?

For some who use it, there's can be no argument that racism is a motivation. The flag has been widely used by white supremacist organizations such as the KKK for decades. But for those who aren't racists, who don't hold such despicable attitudes, the same two questions remain? Where, indeed, is the battle if not 150 years in the past?

That's when the war ended, and the combatants from both sides lie peacefully in their graves. The cause for which it flew, Southern independence, has long since been decided, and no one's seriously talking about resurrecting it. Indeed, would anyone truly wish to revisit a conflict that left more than 620,000 people dead, a million others wounded and countless families displaced and torn asunder?

When it comes to pride, wouldn't it be better to adopt symbols of peace, rather than shouting angrily back and forth as we wave battle flags against one another? We have enough conflict in the modern world without reaching back a century and a half to dredge up more from the graveyards of history.

A Flock of Seagulls Walks Into a Bar (Or, Why Twitter Doesn't Fly for Me)

Elmer Fudd walks into a bar. ...

Stop right there. I don't want to hear another joke about someone - whether it be Elmer, Kermit the Frog, Cardinal Wolsey or Tyrion Lannister - walking into a bar, pub, tavern or similar establishment. The thing is, I really don't care for bars. They're either deader than the cellphone I lost under the couch five years ago or so loud I can't hear anything but what sounds like a flock of seagulls being attacked by a swarm of bees.

And I'm not talking about the '80s band with the weird hair. At least those guys could carry a tune as far as MTV land. A lot of people in bars can't, even though some karaoke night wannabes wind up singing "Love Shack" in a voice even more strident than the original. (The lyric "tin roof, rusted"? I think describes some of their vocal cords.)

That's the only reason I ever went to a bar: for karaoke night. I never joined a band because I worked nights. This is what I told everyone and is, in fact, quite true. To a point. The real reason (which I'll never tell anyone - shhhh!) is that I was too lazy to learn an instrument and not quite good enough with the microphone to get within a mile of a recording studio. I suppose that's why I always finish third or fourth or worse in those karaoke contests.

Still, karaoke is fun. Going to a bar for any other reason is not. Yeah, you get to drink. Whoop-de-doo. You have to pay something like four times as much for a beer as you would if you got it at the supermarket, and then you have to find someone to drive you home after it's all said and done. In the meantime, you're getting screamed at by a those angry seagulls and buzzed by those pesky bees. If you stick around long enough, two drunks will probably get into a fight, and you'll swear you're on Pit Road at a NASCAR race. That might be fine for some folks, but did I mention I'm not a big NASCAR fan? They just go 'round and 'round in circles, and occasionally, there's a crash. Pretty much the way people operate at a bar.

Now, you might say that going to a bar is all about the aforementioned birds and bees: It serves a purpose in the mating ritual of the species known as Libidinous Solitarious. Having evolved to take the form of Libidinous Matrimonius, I have no use for such rituals at this point in my middle-aged existence. In fact, I never did, because they never worked for me. (You might assert that this is because I was simply not a member of the subspecies Desirablus, to which I would counter that, had this been the case, I would likely never have evolved to the status of Matrimonius.)

The simple fact is, bars just aren't and never have been my scene, which brought me to an epiphany the other day about why I don't like Twitter.

"Now, that's a bit of a leap," you may be saying.

But stay with me here. The connection between the two came courtesy of my friend John, who offered the following analogy: "Twitter is like talking to yourself in a busy pub with a gang of mates stood round you, sometimes they'll answer back, sometimes the random stranger stood next to you at the bar will answer back instead, with the person who's just nipping past to go to the toilet chipping in a few thoughts on his way past ..."

John's from England, and being in England might make being in a pub tolerable simply for the novelty of it. At least they have darts there. But as to the mode of conversation John described? Well, it wouldn't exactly make me feel special to be a detour on en route to a porcelain pit stop, and I've got zero interest in chatting up random strangers. (This probably accounts for why I never met any romantic interests at a bar. Not that I regret this: The people you meet at bars invariably start out as strangers, but I'm convinced that most of them are better off staying that way.)

John's analogy, for me, was spot-on. Whenever I've gone on Twitter, it's always felt as chaotic as a bar scene. The bees swarming. The seagulls flocking and squawking.

And me? I just ran. I ran so far away ...

When it comes right down to it, though, there's another reason I don't like Twitter. Just count the number of words in this post (if you're a masochist), or better yet, trust me.

"I don't like Twitter because it's too chaotic." That's 39 characters. I could have used Twitter if I'd wanted to and saved you all a whole lot of time. But I didn't want to. Where's the fun in that when you can engage in the sort of unrestrained verbosity I've exhibited here?

I think I've made my point.

As Elmer Fudd said when he stumbled out of the bar, never to return: "A-ba-dee aba-dee, a-ba-dee, that's all folks!"

How a Notebook Changed My Perspective on Bullying

A couple of years back, I wrote a book titled Undefeated to illustrate a simple principle: that the abuse of power is wrong. Period. No one person or group has a monopoly on cruelty, and those who dole out abuse in one culture or time period might wind up on the receiving end of abuse under different circumstances.

I learned that lesson early.

When I was a child, I was bullied. They say middle school (aka junior high) is hell, and I can attest to that. But, to be candid, there was a time when I was a bit of a bully myself. In sixth grade, some "friends" and I started giving another friend a "hard time" by knocking his notebook out of his hands when he was walking down the corridor to his next class. It was all in fun, supposedly. That's what I told myself to justify it. In reality, it was vicious and cruel.

Then, one day, everything turned on its head, and for some reason I became the target. Suddenly, it wasn't so much fun anymore.

Initially, I took it as a challenge. I'd outsmart them. I asked my parents to take me to the store and buy a "bully-proof" notebook. I thought I'd found one: one with a zipper to keep everything safely inside so that, the next time they knocked it out of my hands, none of my homework would come spilling out onto the pavement.

Except it did. Because the first time they knocked that slick new forest-green, zippered notebook out of my hands, they picked it up off the concrete, unzipped it and proceeded to shake out the contents until they were strewn all across the canopied corridor of A.E. Wright Middle School. Game, set and match. I was beaten. And to this day I remember how I felt when it happened: utterly defeated.

It wasn't because of anything I'd done (unless you believe in karma). The reason they knocked that notebook out of my hands wasn't because of who I was or what I'd done; it was because of who they were - and who I'd been when I did the same thing to the other kid in the first place. Mean. Selfish. Brazen. Willing to rationalize doing something hurtful by saying we were "giving someone a hard time"  or that it was all just "good, clean fun." It may have been fun for the notebook-knockers, but it wasn't fun for the person on the receiving end. It wasn't clean, and it certainly wasn't good for anyone.

There wasn't anything special about me or the other kid who wound up on the receiving end of these "pranks." We weren't minorities in any sense of the word; we weren't bad kids or layabouts or troublemakers. We were just there. A couple of years later, after I'd put on a bit of weight, some of the bullies took to calling me the "great white whale." It seems I had committed an unpardonable sin by being out of shape and pale as a scoop of vanilla ice cream (my Danish ancestry) in sunny, surf-obsessed Southern California. But that was just an excuse. If it hadn't been that, it would have been something else.

Because it wasn't about me. It was about them.

"It" is never about the victims. It's never about their sexuality, their gender, their race, their religion, their ethnic background or any of that. The bullies would like everyone to believe that it is, because they're under the warped impression that it will justify their abusive behavior. If something is wrong were their targets, it would mean something must be right with them. And this argument, if we accept it, blinds us from realizing that the wrong lies wholly with the perpetrators. 

There's nothing wrong with being gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, cisgender, lesbian, asexual, Asian, Native American, white, Pacific Islander, Aboriginal Australian, black, Indian, Ainu, Inuit, Latino, Norse, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, an atheist, a polytheist, a woman, a man, a child, a senior citizen, a monotheist, a pantheist, a deist, an agnostic, a Gnostic, a poet, a scientist, an artisan, a cultivator, a merchant, a musician, an author, an engineer, a mathematician, a philosopher, a historian, a teacher, a chef, a healer, an advocate, a tailor ...

There is something terribly wrong with treating anybody as inferior because they belong to any of these groups, any one of which might be on giving or receiving end of abuse. Christians have been persecuted, and they've also been persecutors. So have atheists (remember the Soviet Union?). Name any ethnic group, and chances are they've been on each end of the stick at one time or another during their history. Power can be abused by anyone for any "reason," and the so-called "reasons" are never rational. 

The abuser-victim dynamic can flip in very short order, just as it did with me in middle school, as it did with the Christian church in the fourth century, or as it did with the Soviet Union in the early part of this one. Race, ethnicity, gender, etc. are never more than excuses for abusers to inflict their cruelty - and they're always bad excuses, at that. Regardless of the differences that we use as a foundation to build up barriers, one person's life is intrinsically no more and no less important than anyone else's. Human dignity recognizes none of these barriers and demands to be recognized despite all of them. Anything less is unacceptable.

On Life in a Small Town

It’s funny the connections you find here. I’ve heard the old cliché that, in a small town, everyone knows everyone else, but I’ve never really lived in a small town before. The closest I came was back in the 1980s, when I lived in Tulare in the San Joaquin Valley: Its population at the time hovered just below 40,000. That’s almost as many people as live in San Luis Obispo — the biggest city in our county — these days.

When I lived in Fresno, people called that a small town, too, but it wasn’t. By the time I was born more than a half-century ago, it had already crossed the 100,000 threshold. It wasn’t the Los Angeles megalopolis (I’ve lived there, too), but it was plenty big. My favorite restaurant there was (and is) El Torito, and I still lament the fact that SLO County doesn’t have one.

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