I don’t care what side you are on, forcing people to participate in activities which go against their personal beliefs is a bad idea. With that as the rule, the outward winners will always be the ones who hold power. And while you may be advantaged by a particular ruling on one occasion, there could easily come a time when you are on the other side and you will be the one forced to do things you don’t believe in. That is not the belief foundation America was established upon. That said, the imposed will of government is more and more trumping the right of individual conscience and turning this country from “the land of the free” into the “dictatorship of the powerful.”
In 2013, Aaron Klein and his wife, Melissa, declined to provide a cake for a lesbian wedding. While they had no problem selling products to homosexuals or even employing them, because of their religious beliefs they did not want to participate in a homosexual wedding by baking the cake for it. Later in the year, one of the lesbians filed a complaint against the baker with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI). After their deliberations, BOLI decided against the Kleins, who were then forced out of business. Now, they have ruled that the Kleins must pay the lesbian couple $135,000.
If this was just about the business it would be bad enough. But the business has already been closed and the fine comes down anyway. What that means is that the government is coming after the Kleins personally. Unless something changes, in order to pay this fine, they may lose their home and all else they own.
If government power is to hold sway over individual conscience, there is no end to the possibilities we might see in the future. We could see:
* kosher delis forced to sell pork,
* homosexual bakers forced to bake cakes for the KKK,
* Christian ministries forced to perform services which conflict with Christian beliefs,
* DJs forced to work events they find morally repulsive,
* Muslims forced to allow Christian weddings in their mosques,
* Atheists forced to sell Bibles in their Atheist bookstore,
* Pacifists forced to go to war,
and the list could go on. This approach is just absurd on its face.
Individual freedom is a value which emerges from a Christian theistic worldview platform. Forced government intervention emerges from a naturalistic worldview platform. To the degree we allow Naturalism to dominate the culture, we will see more and more change, like the example above, which destroys freedom.