hoo boy. the heated Douhat, Stern, Saletan, Friedersdorf argument about bigotry

I'm with Stern.

On Wednesday, the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf penned a lively response to my recent piece explaining Ross Douthat’s canny and dishonest defense of homophobia. In my original post, I casually noted that when a business owner denies gay people service because they’re gay, he qualifies as a bigot. Friedersdorf takes issue with this claim, which he believes “is itself prejudice rooted in ignorance.” I beg to differ.

At the heart of Friedersdorf’s article is an insistence that there are reasons other than homophobia that explain why a business owner might refuse service to gay people. But he doesn’t actually name any; instead, he justifies his assertion by pointing out that Elaine Huguenin, the now-infamous photographer who refused to shoot a lesbian wedding, is exceedingly polite over email. Friedersdorf excerpts an exchange between Huguenin and the would-be lesbian client, Vanessa Willock, highlighting how courteously Huguenin phrased her rejection of Willock’s request for service. As Friedersdorf puts it:

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Here is how I understand this argument: Because Huguenin’s rejection of Willock (solely on the basis of her orientation) was worded very graciously—and perhaps because the wedding wasn’t a real wedding—Willock should not have sued.

Leaving aside Friedersdorf’s strange addendum about Willock’s pseudo-wedding, I see two problems with this logic. The first is that Friedersdorf seems to think that true bigotry always loudly announces itself as it enters the room, when in reality it thrives in the cracks between superficially civil conversation. (Remember the old quip about the Jewish gentleman who has just left the room.) This kind of tactful bigotry—a sister of “polite racism” and a close cousin of pretext discrimination—arises from the same place as any kind of bigotry: hate, fear, ignorance, or whatever base emotions lead a person to believe that some humans are less worthy than others. By dressing up her homophobia in good manners, Huguenin might have softened the blow for Willock. But the ultimate effect of her actions is the same as if she had placed a sign on her shop door stating “No Gay Couples Served Here.”


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http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/03/06/homophobia_bigotry_prejudice_conor_friedersdorf_calls_me_ignorant.html

Saletan:

Is everyone who opposes gay marriage a bigot? If a photographer declines to participate in a same-sex wedding, should she be held legally liable, on that basis alone, for discrimination?

I don’t think so. Over the past several days, I’ve been following a lively exchange on this topic between Ross Douthat of the New York Times, Mark Joseph Stern of Slate, and Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic. I like all three of these writers. I was a best man at a same-sex wedding 23 years ago, and I was a fan of gay marriage even before that. But I’m disturbed by what I see today. We’re stereotyping and vilifying opponents of gay marriage the way we’ve seen gay people stereotyped and vilified. This is a deeply personal moral issue. To get it right, we need more than justice. We need humanity.



The exchange began on Sunday, with Douthat’s column about proprietors who decline, on religious grounds, to participate in same-sex weddings. On Monday, Stern denounced these proprietors—“that infamous trio: a florist, a photographer, and a baker, who claimed their Christianity required that they deny service to gay couples.” Criticizing these and other “bigots,” Stern asserted that “their ‘dissent’ is a hatred of gay people so vehement that they’ll violate non-discrimination laws just to make sure they never, ever have to provide a gay person with a basic service.”

On Wednesday, Friedersdorf challenged Stern’s characterization of the dissenters. Friedersdorf quoted from the photographer’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, which gave her account of the events leading to her conviction for discrimination. The email exchange between the photographer, Elaine Huguenin, and the prospective lesbian client, Vanessa Willock, didn’t seem hateful:

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http://www.slate.com/blogs/saletan/2014/03/07/gay_marriage_and_religious_freedom_don_t_stereotype_the_christian_wedding.html