I don’t often get into politics on this blog, but will today. Those who come here to read about my writing life, or engineering, or anything but politics, just gloss over this. I just discovered I have never created a blog category for “politics”, which shows how I avoid the discussion. I was going to blog about belt loops today, but will save that for another time.

Right now the raging debate is on religious freedom acts coming from State legislatures. As I write this, Indiana has passed one that the governor has signed. Arkansas has passed one that awaits Governor Hutchinson’s action. These two states thus join 19 others that already have such a law on the books. It’s also said these laws are similar to the Federal law passed in 1993 by bipartisan votes in the Democratic controlled Congress and signed by President Clinton. The laws from the early 1990s were for the purpose of making sure a few Native Americans could smoke their peyote (how fitting based on who supported it), and has no relationship to the current debate.

The debate centers on whether these laws are thinly veiled attempts to legalize discrimination against the homosexual community. Somewhere in the USA a baker refused to make the cake for the wedding of a same-sex couple. That case is winding its way through the court system, and is now, I believe, awaiting SCOTUS action. The homosexual community and others are against these laws, and believe that a person in a public business should not be allowed chose who they will serve and who they won’t.

Others debate that the laws are necessary because a person should be allowed to make a statement about whether they support a cause or not. Partaking in a cause through serving it as a business could be interpreted as supporting it. Hence, they want the right to refuse service as an expression of religious freedom and free speech. Refusing service is not discrimination, or if it is a person’s right to free speech trumps another’s right not to be discriminated against.

Both sides discuss this in relation to racial discrimination, some saying it’s essentially the same, others saying it’s very different. Refusing service to a person of another race is and should be against the law, all say. Some say refusing service to a person based on sexual orientation is the same as it is based on racial reasons; other say no, the two are very different. That’s the arguments, as I understand them. I could be wrong in some of these points, or over-simplifying. I have not researched this or read any of the laws involved. All I know is what I hear on television and read in the news.

My thought about this: I don’t care. Pass the laws or don’t pass the laws. Defend my free speech or take it away from me. Defend my religious liberty or take it away from me. I don’t care. How I live my life will be exactly the same.

I lived in Saudi Arabia for two and a half years, more than 30 years ago. At the time we couldn’t openly practice Christianity. There were no churches. Oh, in the western communities of Aramco there were unofficial churches, which met in Western school auditoriums, and for a while we were able to attend those. The government knew about them. Back in the early 1950s the king called in the oil executives, told them he knew all about their Christian gatherings and the pastors brought into his country as “special teachers”. You may keep them, he said, but if anyone ever tries to convert a Moslem they will be gone on the next airplane.

That had no bearing on our worshiping God, or practicing our Christianity. While we could we went to the “church” nearest us. When that was closed to us who didn’t work for the oil company, we got together with other Christians in our apartments or villas, maybe ten to twenty people, and worshipped how we wanted to. Those were very meaningful times of worship, more meaningful, in fact, because we were breaking the law to do it.

Typical of the debate I see, a Facebook friend (who I don’t really know, but I have an on-line connection to her through a common interest) posted this.

“Christians”, be careful who you condemn. You may find yourself in the next group denied service in a business because you may not be “Christian” enough to suit the owners.

I don’t know if she means this to be a warning, a prediction, or a threat. I don’t care. I find it interesting that she equates refusing to serve someone as condemnation. That is so far from true as to be laughable. Just because we oppose what someone is doing does not mean we condemn them. People in my office accept continuing education credits from vendor presentations. I understand this to be against the continuing education laws in most if not all states, and so I won’t accept those credits and encourage others not to accept them. But I don’t condemn those who accept them. We simply disagree.

But if this is a prediction or a threat, and service refusals to Christians are coming, I don’t care. Let them come. It won’t affect my worship practices one bit. I will continue to serve the living God in the way I see right. I will see being refused service because I am a practicing Christian to be a badge of honor, remembering that they did much worse to Jesus than to me.

Recently a homosexual hairdresser refused to any longer do the hair of New Mexico’s female governor because she came out in opposition to same-sex marriage. It actually doesn’t matter that he’s homosexual. He could be heterosexual and take the same position, refusing service for political reasons. I wonder what would happen to his right to refuse her service if these laws pass, or don’t pass. Of course, his reasons were political, I guess, not religious. Do we need a Political Freedom Restoration Act to protect his right to refuse to do business with a person who takes a political stand with which he disagrees? I assume he is not condemning her. he just doesn’t want to do business with her because of her political stance.

And that’s the crux of the matter so far as I’m concerned. Disagreement does not equal condemnation. At least it doesn’t in my mind, though it seems to in this friend’s mind. She condemns “Christians” for supporting these laws, even as she accuses “Christians” of condemning homosexuals simply because of a disagreement on same-sex marriage.

The debate gets coarser and harsher. Must disagreement be interpreted and labeled as condemnation? The sides are bucking up, not simply disagreeing and going on with their friendships and lives. All of which makes me less than optimistic about the future of the USA.