Ben Carson, the pediatric neurosurgeon, right wing whacko, presidential wannabe, was speaking about same-sex marriage at the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines when he said this:
What I have a problem with is when people try to force people to act against their beliefs because they say "they're discriminating against me." So they can go right down the street and buy a cake, but no, let's bring a suit against this person because I want them to make my cake even though they don't believe in it. Which is really not all that smart because they might put poison in that cake.
Really?! He says this very casually, as though it is not big deal. He says it is not smart for a gay couple to buy a cake from a fundamentalist Christian baker rather than the not smart thing--or legal thing for that matter--being for the baker to poison the cake. Here is a link to the video as I haven't been able to imbed videos lately. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...
In his blog for Huffington Post, "No Cake For You! Fundamentalist Cake Warriors on the Loose," James Peron reveals the mindset that allows Christian fundamentalists to justify this kind of absurd and perverse logic.
Having grown up among these people, having attended their schools and Bible college, I am familiar with their psychology. They need to be victims. One reason they act so offensively with so many people is to solicit rejection, thus "proving" biblical prophecy that they are being persecuted "for His sake." Hardly the case, but it's the best they've got, so they run with it.
The so called "cake war" started in Colorado two years ago when a gay couple sued a baker who refused to bake them a wedding cake as it went against his religious beliefs. When David Mullins and Charlie Craig visited Masterpiece Cakeshop to order a cake for their wedding reception, Masterpiece owner Jack Phillips informed them that because of his religious beliefs the store’s policy was to deny service to customers for same-sex weddings. The couple filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Division (CCRD) under the Colorado state law prohibiting public accommodations like Masterpiece Cakeshop from refusing service based on race, sex, marital status or sexual orientation. The CCRD ruled in their favor and the ruling was affirmed in a decision from the Colorado Office of Administrative Courts.
A second battle was engaged in 2014 when another Colorado bakery owner refused to write an offensive message on a cake ordered by a Christian customer.
When Bill Jack arrived at the Azucar bakery in Denver in March 2014 and ordered two Bible-shaped cakes, Marjorie Silva said she was happy to oblige. But when she saw the messages that Mr. Jack wanted written on the cake, she quickly decided not to go through with it.
http://www.csmonitor.com/...
According to Ms. Silva, herself a Christian, the customer wanted her to write "God hates gays," and other anti-gay biblical messages and she refused.
Instead, Silva said she told Jack that she would make a cake with a blank Bible page so that he could draw the messages himself. She even claims she offered him frosting and a pastry bag to do so.
“I told him, ‘I’ll make you a cake any flavor and shape that you like and then I’ll give you the icing and you can write the message yourself,’” Silva told the Daily News.
But according to Silva’s account, Jack became “very pushy and disruptive,” refused to write the message himself, and said he needed to talk to an attorney
.
Jack, the founder of Worldview Academy, a "non-denominational organization dedicated to helping Christians think and live in accord with a Biblical worldview," filed a complaint with the Civil Rights division of the Department of Regulatory Agencies.
Some on the Christian right are trying to make a connection between the two cases, but it is just another false equivalency, and the Colorado court was having none of it.
Respondents argue that if they are compelled to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, then a black baker could not refuse to make a cake bearing a white-supremacist message for a member of the Aryan Nation; and an Islamic baker could not refuse to make a cake denigrating the Koran for the Westboro Baptist Church.
However, neither of these fanciful hypothetical situations proves Respondents' point. In both cases, it is the explicit, unmistakable, offensive message that the bakers are asked to put on the cake that gives rise to the bakers' free speech right to refuse. That, however, is not the case here, where Respondents refused to bake any cake for Complainants regardless of what was written on it or what it looked like.
The difference being that one baker refused a service to gay customers that would be otherwise gladly provided to other customers, whereas the second baker was refusing to provide a service that would be refused consistently to any customer making the same request.
So what these fundamentalist hate mongers do is to fight for the right to hate and show that hate through their words and actions. Peron correctly states:
The fundamentalist believes he is entitled to rights that must be denied to all others. He thinks he should be protected from discrimination while being free to invoke his faith anytime he wishes to discriminate.
Fundamentalists are becoming quite explicit in this. With the help of third-rate Republican office holders, they are proposing legislation that exempts Christians and the religious from such laws but not others. If you are a secular bigot, you must obey the law, but if you are a bigot for Jesus, you don't have to.
Back to Carson's disgusting remark about baker's poisoning gay and lesbian customers, after considerable criticism on social media he went on Fox to explain, and by his response he appeared to have not been joking.
Anchor Megyn Kelly prompted, "now some are claiming you’re suggesting gays who complain about what they view as discrimination, risk getting poisoned."
Carson was only too happy to respond.
"You know, that would be a very immature interpretation of what is a common thing, never make your waiter or your chef angry because you don’t know what they’re going to put in your food. People who look for something like that to make an issue out of really don’t have much of an issue. So, I guess that’s rather comforting."
http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/...
What is comforting is that with extreme candidates like Carson in the Republican presidential race, the rest of the field will be pulled so far to the right, so far off of what is moral and just and reasonable, that the eventual nominee will be irreparably damaged goods by the time of the national election.