You do what you want to do and I’ll do what I want to do. This is the American interpretation of freedom. We do as we like and if we see something we don’t like we keep walking. We choose how to spend our time, as well as what to do with it.
Now. If a person has the right to participate in something, they also have the right to not participate. Right? Likewise, everyone has a right to their individual beliefs just as everyone has the same right to not believe the same as someone else. It only sounds confusing.
The simplistic belief of “live and let live” is apparently too complicated of a concept for the liberal Attorney General of Michigan, Dana Nessel, to comprehend. Her elevator doesn’t reach that floor.
If she does understand the concept she either isn’t letting on or she doesn’t believe in it. Nessel thinks it’s perfectly okay to force people and businesses to do things that are in violation of the morals and ethics they pattern their lives by. This is, of course, provided she sees no problem with it.
A Michigan court of appeals ruled against forcing anyone from having to do work for someone else that they disagree with. Nessel thinks it was a wrong decision so she’s appealing it.
The Detroit News reported that a wedding venue, Rouch World, which refused to host a same-sex wedding, immediately followed by a business called Uprooted Electrolysis which refused to pluck the hairs of a guy who was transitioning to a woman, started this entire ruckus.
According to Michigan law, if one person wants to deny service to another due to religious reasons, they have as much of a right to deny the service as the person who is requesting it has to demand it. But, the service provider wins out by virtue of being…the provider.
If a person cannot control his or her life based on the way they see justified to live it, then they are being controlled. And this is how Michiganders see it and like it. They have the option to associate, or not associate, at their individual discretions. Except for Nessel.
Here’s where the wiggle room to discriminate Nessel is complaining about stems from. ‘If defendants determine that a person treated someone who ‘identifies’ with a gender different than the gender that he or she was born as then that is dissimilar treatment on the basis of sex, and they are entitled to redress that violation through the existing (Michigan Department of Civil Rights) procedures.’ The ruling stated further that ‘sex’ could not be taken to mean ‘sexual orientation’ according to a 1990 Court of Appeals precedent.
Because Nessel feels the ruling is a free license to discriminate, she countered with the following words. “I respectfully disagree with the Michigan Court of Claims on its ruling in this case as it relates to sexual orientation,” she said. Nessel was invoking the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling this summer to add sexual orientation and gender identity, in addition to its original biological meaning.
Things would get kind of weird Every speck of dust would be questioned and analyzed. For instance, can a black man be forced to frequent the shop of a KKK member if the member represents a small minority of a town or a state’s population?
Should a Christian-owned bakery be forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding because there are only a few gays in town so they’re a minority and can’t be refused?
Economist Walter Williams once said that discrimination is not always a bad thing. It simply means to choose the options which are best for oneself. As an example, he said that by proposing to the woman who later became his wife, he discriminated against all other women. He chose the option that was best for him.
It’s doubtful Nessel will be successful in her quest since she’s just about the only person in the entire state of Michigan who feels this way. But hey. Let’s give her “A” for her wasted effort.
