Geez, which is it, guys:
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| Tony Perkins |
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council:
At W.W. Bridal Boutique, it isn't unusual to see two women shopping for wedding dresses. What is
unusual is two women shopping for wedding dresses for the same
ceremony. That's the predicament Victoria Miller found herself in as the
owner of the Pennsylvania shop. When a lesbian couple contacted the
store for an appointment, Victoria explained that she couldn't help the
women find gowns for a ceremony that violates her Christian faith. Right
now, an employee explained, the Bloomsburg store doesn't service
same-sex weddings. Instead of showing the tolerance their movement claims to practice,
the women turned to social media to bully the shop -- trashing its
online reviews and sparking a city-wide firestorm. Miller, whose
orthodox beliefs are in the bulls-eye, isn't backing down. "We feel we
have to answer to God for what we do," she told reporters, "and providing those two girls dresses for a sanctified marriage would break God's law." Obviously, W.W. Bridal Boutique isn't the only wedding dress shop in
town. These women could have easily taken their business elsewhere --
but chose to retaliate instead. That's because, at its core, this isn't
about accommodation. It's about forced acceptance. When religious
liberty clashes with homosexuality -- as it has from bakeries to flower shops -- the storylines are all the same: conform or be punished.
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| Brian Brown |
Brian Brown, National Organization for Marriage:
Target and other companies need to be forced to realize that it is their alignment with the radical cause of redefining marriage that is "bad for business"—not states' marriage laws that uphold and protect the common-sense idea that kids do best with a mom and a dad!
So I'm announcing a new boycott today, against Target, for insulting consumers like you and me. The brief they signed in court this week insinuates that people like you and me, who would vote to uphold traditional marriage, as akin to segregationists and racial bigots. Would you want to shop at a place that viewed you in that way?
I'm not exaggerating. Take a look at this description, from the brief, of the marriage laws in Wisconsin and Indiana:
[A law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman] requires that… we single out colleagues with same-sex partners and treat them as a separate and unequal class as compared to employees with heterosexual partners.
Target also complains that such a law "upsets our business philosophy and prevents [us] from reaching our full economic potential because it dissuades employees from living and working in the jurisdictions where we do, or want to do, business."
If two lgbt groups held such contradictory positions, you just know it would be a subject widely debated in the media. In this case, no one but the crickets seem to be making noise about these two contradictory positions on boycotting held by anti-gay groups. I think it's because
we aren't making enough noise to draw attention to the hypocrisy. Sometimes it's not about what the anti-gay right gets away with. It's what the lgbt community allows them to get away with.
