The ridiculous gnashing of teeth over passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana need to be quelled, so here it is:

If we are not free to discriminate, we are not free.

You may not like it if someone refuses to bake a cake for a homosexual ceremony, but that does not give you the right to force them to do so.

You and I would agree if you said it was despicable that a crotchety old white man refused to serve a hamburger to another man because he had dark skin, but you and I would not agree if you insisted that the crotchety old white man be made to serve the hamburger.

Discrimination should not be celebrated…

…but it should not be criminalized.

I realize this is a monumental concept to absorb, but we must address it – right here, right now – lest we ultimately cede our freedom, our ability to think and act of our own accord.

Discrimination is a completely natural behavior. We discriminate when we choose who to date, who to marry, where to go to school, where to work, where to eat. Discrimination is innate. It is instinctive. To criminalize discrimination is not to eliminate it, it is to allow one person’s opinion as to what is “ok” to be enforced as superior to another person’s “ok.”

If we criminalize discrimination, and we have, we will have given government the ability to look into our most private, personal decisions and punish us for those decisions deemed “bad” by some panel, or special interest. Government will have the power to tell us who we can hire, who we can fire, who we must serve, what we must allow. Anti-discrimination will be a blanket motive for insidious and totalitarian government overreach.

People have said the Indiana law is dangerous. And how would you describe a government able to tell you who you must work for.

And that’s exactly what this is. The decision as to whether or not we can decide whom we want to serve with our labor. Who we choose to bake a cake for.

If discrimination is illegal, we can be forced to provide our labor to someone we would rather not. We no longer have free will. We are not free.

This “conversation” regarding Indiana’s RFRA needs to launch a campaign to carry that concept to it’s farthest end, that is, the complete reversal of anti-discrimination law, with one exception, discrimination in government.

Why?

Because government is the only entity on the face of the earth with intrinsic monopoly power. Imagine a government that refused to give you a driver’s license because of the color of your skin. Or that taxed you at a higher rate because of your higher income – wait – you mean our government is DISCRIMINATING?! I guess some discrimination is good after all.

This issue is not fuzzy or malleable. It is absolute.

If we are not free to discriminate, we are not free.