I grew up Catholic, and while I was not the most attentive child in the church and have not remained religious, I did pick up a few things from attending. There was a lot of stuff about forgiveness, repeated mentions of treating others as you would wish to be treated, a surprising amount about bread distribution and a really great line about not judging people. Apparently either I was significantly more attentive than a lot of people who like to claim religious freedom or my childhood religion was using a different Bible from the one read south of the border. Refusing to sell baked goods to anyone is the complete opposite of what I retained from my distant church going days.
It has been a repeated refrain south of the border, in the wake of the supreme court ruling on marriage equality, that people want to refuse to bake wedding cakes for same-sex couples. They argue that it’s an issue of religious freedom, they don’t want to have cakes for marriages they don’t approve of, saying it’s against their religion to condone these marriages. Except, if one goes to the bible which they rhythmically thump instead of actually reading, it actually isn’t. It is explicitly stated, more than once, that one should show kindness to neighbors and a lack of judgement of their choices. Whether or not you think same-sex relationships are a sin is irrelevant, because it’s not your place to say. Judge not lest ye be judged, as the bible says, right in the book of Matthew. He was not specifically referring to the medium of cake sales, but it applies.
Also, quite frankly, if you believe in Jesus you believe in the equal distribution of baked goods. That was a man who loved bread, thought everyone should have plenty of bread, and shared bread as much as possible. One of the big miracles involved giving bread to thousands of people, bread has been a central point of the Catholic mass at a minimum. If we consider cake in the same class as bread, denial of cake is the most anti-Christian thing one can do, Jesus wants us all to share baked goods.
Even if same-sex marriage is not condoned by the church itself, the Bible is all about kindness and acceptance of the people around you. That means that while the church itself might not be able to host thanks to their various definitions of marriage, which are often specifically designed to encourage the creation of children, someone who doesn’t follow that religion is still your neighbour. Going by their own Bible, a Christian is supposed to be kind to their neighbours, whether or not they share the same religion or beliefs. Loving their neighbours is right there in Mark 12:31, and in Luke 10:27, and even in Leviticus of all places. A gay or lesbian couple is their neighbour, thus they must be loved, and allowed to buy a wedding cake.
Given that a guy who doesn’t even follow a religion can prove, with little effort, that there’s a ton of evidence within the text of the Bible which preaches against the kind of discrimination that people want to do, why does it still exist? Unfortunately, people want to hate someone, and religion itself is used as a way to justify their own intolerance, because they need an excuse to be awful. Same-sex couples are couples like any other, and we should celebrate when they find happiness, not deny them dessert.
