There has been a very tantalizing question being tossed
about these days and it has to do with whether companies or corporations can be
treated as individuals.
This may seem strange to you since in your mind you cannot
fathom a company as an individual. You can understand the owner of a company as
an individual but the company itself?
A lot of the arguments are of course of a legalistic manner
and will be argued by lawyers but for us, the question has a more direct impact
as when it applies to everyday life.
Take the baker in Colorado that refused to make a wedding
cake for a gay couple. As an individual whose religion hates gays and forbids
him to have anything to do with them, he has the religious freedom to follow
those precepts. Now as a baking company that bakes wedding cakes, does the
company have the same religious freedom rights to hate gays and therefore to
not serve them? Does a company have religious rights?
My wife, in a knee jerk reaction, said that it’s his company
and he can serve who he wants to. Well not so fast, there are laws on our books
that prevent discrimination on a number of levels (race, gender, religion,
etc.) and now include “sexual orientation” which means being homosexual.
In her case, she saw the company and the individual as one
and the same. I owned my own company for 32 years yet I was constrained in my
behavior by a myriad of laws governing even what I could ask prospective
employees before I hired them.
But in this case, the baker states that he has to violate
his conscience in order to continue working. Let us unpack the concept of
violating one’s conscience.
My daughter is a vegetarian and although she can physically
eat meat, her conscience tells her that eating meat violates what she believes
in and that is that animals should not be butchered for our consumption. Obviously,
eating meat does not violate any laws or rules of behavior; eating meat
violates the dictates of her own conscience; she does not prohibit or hinder
anyone else from eating meat.
The baker’s conscience and religion appear to be one and the
same. Baking wedding cakes is his business but baking one to be used in a gay
marriage ceremony is against his religion he says and therefore against his
conscience. The baker’s religion places him in opposition to gay marriage but
does baking a cake to be used in a gay marriage ceremony mean his endorsement
of gay marriage or is his business is to merely sell wedding cakes?
The bottom line is that if the baker feels selling his cake
to a gay couple for a wedding is against his conscience then that is that. If
his discriminatory stance is against state and/or federal law, then that is
that.
This issue is not over so get ready for phase 2.
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