It’s basic good manners not to ask people to do something they don’t think they can do. They’re happier and you’re happier if you find someone else who wants to do the job. You might call this “anticipatory tolerance.” It’s one of the things that makes a diverse society work. I don’t push you if I can help it, you don’t push me if you can help it, and we can keep saying “hello” to each other when we pass on the street.

Not everyone does this. Bakers, wedding photographers and bed-and-breakfast owners, are being abused for declining to support causes and behaviors they can’t support. Some homosexual activists, and their allies, can’t leave them be.

I can understand being hurt or annoyed or even angry, but their reaction to disagreement is often excessive, even hysterical. The rest of us would just shrug and go to another baker or call another photographer. If a local baker has a big picture of Richard Dawkins in his window, I’m not going to ask him to make a cake saying “God Loves You!” or “Jesus is Lord” or “Atheism is stupid.” I definitely won’t ask him to do it and then sue him if he doesn’t.

The Way People Rub Along Together

Most of us see the dangers of taking unnecessary offense. Live and let live, give and take, different strokes for different folks, even turn the other cheek: these are the slogans of a mutually respectful society. Being courteous may inconvenience me from time to time, but it’s a fair trade, since others being nice to me will sometimes inconvenience them.

But, as I say, not everyone feels this way. Some same-sex attracted people and their allies refuse to practice the anticipatory tolerance that others find a natural part of living with people who are different from you. You must do what they want or else you’ll hear from their lawyers and any state agency they can pull in. They could just walk down the street and find another baker, but no.

This strikes me as odd. I understand that their sexual attraction is for them part of “Who I am” and that they don’t like someone implying “There’s something wrong with who you are.” I wouldn’t like it either. But the extremity of their reaction, that’s a little puzzling, especially their siccing the law upon the poor baker who hasn’t done anything to hurt them.

St. Paul helps explain this kind of reaction. He tells us that the law is written on our hearts. We know some things to be true. It’s what called the natural law. Even though we can eventually talk ourselves out of believing it, it remains in our hearts. Many homosexual people, I think, still hear the inner voice that tells them what their heart knows, and it is not what they want to hear.

It’s a reaction we should all recognize, because we all want to do something we know at some level we shouldn’t. And if we do it, we don’t want people telling us we shouldn’t do it. Especially if the thing we want to do seems so good and so necessary. Who can be against love?

Sexual Alchemy

One of those truths is that men and women are made for each other. The parts fit together and when properly combined get something done (i.e., create children). The body by itself tells us that a couple needs one of each, not two of one. Any other erotic relation is at least less natural. 

As Deacon Keith Fournier has put it, same-sex marriage requires a kind of sexual alchemy that’s no more possible than the chemical kind. The sexual alchemists deeply want to believe that it works, that they can transform one thing into another. We can all understand why they want this so deeply. They want what we all want. It hurts a lot to have affections society won’t let you express or legalize.

I understand that. I can only guess how it feels. But alchemy doesn’t work. Lead can’t be turned into gold, even if the king says it can. Men can’t be made into women, nor women into men. Same-sex marriage can’t be transmuted into marriage as societies have long understood it, even if the Supreme Court says so.

The sexual alchemists have invested everything in their work. They face bankruptcy if it fails. They’ve even got the king on their side. Yet, even so, a barely repressed voice inside keeps saying, “The others are right, that’s lead.” 

The alchemists can’t drown out that inner voice, but they can stop other people from saying what deep down they know is true, and wish were false. When they sue the poor baker, many of them are really telling their own consciences to please, please, Just Shut Up.