Encouragement.

These events are a few weeks old, but I felt today that I had some thoughts to put down. Reported in the press, a couple of Christians who run a bakery were approached to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, proclaiming 'support gay marriage', and the Christians declined. As far as I'm told they were not hostile, they simply did not take up the offer of some business on conscientious grounds. Christian teaching rejects the notion of same-sex relationships and the bakers seem to have felt that they were acting untruly to their own beliefs to make a cake celebrating such a relationship. So it seems the same-sex couple did not simply take their business elsewhere, they had to start a lawsuit over it. They can have their same-sex relationship, I know that, but they cannot tell other people 'you have to approve and want to be part of it.' So they set out to make trouble for people who stood by their own convictions. The next development was, as I heard it, an appeal went out seeking help for these Christians, and the response was such that they have been given much more money than they would lose if they lost the lawsuit, so they are better off than if they had knuckled under and done what the non-Christian society tries telling them to do. I was delighted to see that people will stick by them and back them up when they stand by their beliefs and convictions, and will not be told they have to celebrate something they do not believe in because an intolerant society, proclaiming 'freedom for all', takes away their freedom. This is not about beating up on same-sex couples. it is asserting that Christians, Jews, or others who do support the idea of same-sex coupling can stick by their own beliefs. They are NOT trying to stop the homosexuals from having their wedding. They merely choose not to be personally involved. We must all have that right to our conscience. I will not turn up at a homosexual or lesbian wedding ceremony and throw bad eggs. I'll leave them to it. But I will can not be told I have to attend the ceremony and show approval of it. That is what real tolerance actually involves. We can't stop certain things but we can't be told to support them. It was really good to see other standing by this couple instead of abandoning them to suffer, with people making pious comments like "I don't judge" and letting the Christians suffer for acting on their own convictions. I say again, they did not try to stop the wedding, they simply chose not to be involved. If those who set out to sue them feel refuted by the support the Christians received, let them just get this: they can do their own thing but not force others to tell them they're wonderful. A bad thing it is to curtail freedom under the guise of protecting it.