AZCentral.com (“part of the USAToday network”), has published a propaganda piece entitled, “Phoenix artists sue rather than create art for same sex weddings.”
Brush & Nib is an upscale hand-painting, hand-lettering and calligraphy company that creates and sells customized art, including for weddings.
Brush & Nib reflects who Joanna and Breanna are and what they believe — only creating art consistent with their Christian beliefs.
And since the Bible very clearly states, “Thou Shalt Not produce hand-lettered invitations for gay couples announcing their impending wedding,” they should have a Constitutional right to discriminate against any potential clients who happen to be gay, amirite?
I’m sure by now we all know the schtick. The bigoted Christian business owners declare that their conscience forbids them from engaging in any conduct that acknowledges the existence and legality of gay marriage, and therefore the First Amendment gives them the right to practice open discrimination against gays. And of course, it’s all about “Free Speech.”
The pair willingly serve and will create art for anyone, but they cannot create art promoting certain messages and ideas. For example, Brush & Nib doesn’t create art that demeans others, promotes racism or objectifies the female body. They also do not create art that violates their Christian beliefs about marriage.
As usually, the bigots are overlooking an important point: violating someone’s civil rights is not “free speech.” This isn’t a case of government interference in some artist’s ability to freely express their own art. This is a business that accepts commissions to produce hand-lettered invitations, and therefore they have to respect the civil rights of their clients.
But of course, that’s entirely irrelevant to the goal of the bigots. It’s not a question of justice or fair business practices. This is all about the unending quest to find some way, any way, that they can still practice discrimination against gays and force gay marriages into a segregated social ghetto. They’re taking the shotgun approach, trying to find some court somewhere that will rule in their favor so they can claim a precedent.
And of course, no good propaganda piece would be complete without a couple quotes from, say, Martin Luther King, or maybe JFK.
No fair legal system requires citizens to go to jail before they can oppose injustice. If citizens had to do this, no one would challenge unconstitutional laws, and the government could pass these laws with impunity.
As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. noted, those “who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension” but “merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.”
John F. Kennedy framed it well: “If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.”
And never mind that JFK was referring to artists producing their own art, rather than to businesses trying to find some way to violate the civil rights of certain prospective clients. Do I even need to mention that this article was written by a staff member of the so-called “Alliance Defending Freedom” who is representing the two artists in their lawsuit against the city?
Quite aside from the inversion of the whole meaning of civil rights, I have one quick question on that, mister Freedom. It’s a fill-in-the-blank one, so it should be easy. Complete the following title: “Letter from a Birmingham ___________”
People like this talk enough about discrimination to demonstrate that they don`t understand it. Most people don`t understand it for the simple reason that living under oppression would be much more difficult if you couldn`t deny how unfair it is. Once you understand something, denial becomes next to impossible. In this case they deny both being racist and sexist and it`s perfectly possible and even likely that a sexist racist would say exactly that.
Someone has conditioned them to believe that some forms of discrimination are bad and some are good. It’s not unusual for groups of self-identified feminists to be racists or anti-LGBT or both despite that not making any sense. They have a map of the territory on which they fight their political battles. The map shows that the front line is in gay rights territory while women`s rights and the rights of non-white people are secured. Their map is wrong of course. Aside from the fact that things are not moral or immoral based on whether you can dominate the political conversation or not, women`s rights have taken a beating and they seem not to have noticed, and the Republican Party has decided quite strongly that they need an openly racist president. So why don`t they just acknowledge these forms of discrimination are also okay and contentious?
The answer is because bigots are an inherently weak minority and they know it. That means they have to pick their battles. They essentially let gay marriage happen because what few resources they have are being wasted on fighting abortion/Planned Parenthood and getting voter ID laws passed. So when they say they don`t discriminate against women and non-white people, they could equally assume a sense of comfort that those two political battles are won, not lost, while the gay marriage battle is obviously lost, but if they truly believed that anti-abortion and racism were in their pocket they would have absolutely no qualms about admitting to be sexist racists and use vulgar language to prove it.
So not only are bigots a weak minority, they are also disorganized and fragmented. While they all seem to be anti-LGBT, some cells are not confident about their stance on either race or abortion or both. When they go to the polls, the LGBT wedge issue is the only one that the Republicans can be sure of, yet every bigot who claims to be not-a-racist or a “pseudo-” feminist will vote based on that issue alone especially if it means voting in favor of a racist or anti-feminist. The problem is that such people are still a stark minority. Furthermore, a guy like Trump who fits that prescription literally doesn`t offer anything else but those things. And since these wedge issues were always just a distraction to pass anti-tax policy supportive of the wealthy such as Trump himself, now that things are so far unequal, it`s very difficult for most conservatives to defend their policies even to themselves by simply pointing at abortion or Mexicans or the Muslim in the White House. The wedge issue engine is out of steam and only that small minority of mental weakling die hard bigots oblivious to reality are sticking with it.
Unfortunately many people across the spectrum hate Hillary Clinton enough to vote for Trump out of spite alone and Clinton supporters are by definition oblivious since she was essentially anointed queen before the primaries even began and they weren`t even bothered by the lack of competition. The main reason for this is that the Democrats have been leaning far right for so long that they were oblivious to the fact that a Republican meltdown was inevitable in spite of Obama winning two terms. Clinton supporters mistakenly believe that they are centrists and that the majority are centrists and that any centrist would support Clinton without hesitation. All wild and inaccurate assumptions. In fact the primary season has been nothing but Clinton supporters either learning that they’ve been fooled or digging themselves in preparing to blame Sanders and his supporters for Trump’s victory in spite of the evidence that Clinton is an encumbrance and that was why she lost to Obama in the first place.
The answer is because bigots are an inherently weak minority and they know it. That means they have to pick their battles.
Yeah, the civil war didn’t work so well for them.
I doubt seriously that the artists were even asked by a same-sex couple to create anything; this is a way for them to make sure people know how godly they are. Much like legislation that has no practical effect except to help certain politicians show off their godliness.
Yes, the article states that this is a pre-emptive lawsuit, trying to win a ruling in favor of any future discrimination the artists might wish to practice.