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November 18, 2013
Opinion
www.theoakleafnews.com
Christians resist the rainbow dreams of blissful matrimony
Netflix busts competition Ken Kutska A&E Editor
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Deborah San Angelo Staff Writer
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e’re in the midst of a social experiment that treats gays like people. Tensions are building as more states legalize same-sex marriage and the Christian right clings to ancient taboos. Gay relationships threaten the fabric of the Christian universe. They are zealously uncompromising on the issue. Do they have post-traumatic stress from being thrown to the lions? Has their own non-heterosexual curiosity become intolerable as they witness homosexuals living authentic lives? It doesn’t matter. Christians have the right to be exactly how they are. But knowing how they are, why would a gay couple go to a Christian bakery for their wedding cake? Maybe to make an example of them. Two lesbian brides-to-be are suing a bakery in Gresham, Oregon for refusing to make their wedding cake. They estimate their emotional damage at $100,000. Their wedding memoirs will include bagging some Christians. Besides a lawsuit, the bakers also face fines for discrimination. But that’s just the icing on the cake. Following months of relentless attacks by angry homosexual activists, the bakery shut down. The LGBT militia inundated them with threats, break-ins, harassing phone calls and e-mails. It expanded the bullying to vendors associated with the bakery. The bakery’s client base abandoned it. The owners pulled their kids out of school because of the media firestorm. Mob tactics succeeded in enforcing equal love rights. Are the bakers really victims? It’s a cake, for God’s sake. They weren’t asked to bless the marriage, just bake a cake. What biblical passage says, “Thou shalt not bake a wedding cake for lesbians”? A business operating under a public license has to abide by public laws. No one goes to a bakery to get a sermon. They not only denied the women their cake, they called them “an abomination unto the Lord.” Are they absolutely sure they haven’t baked cakes for illegitimate children, members of the KKK, Hitler devotees, or pedophiles? If you want to discriminate under the cover of religion, don’t operate a for-profit business. Or lie. You can still practice bigotry
Illustration by Daniel Barba
and stay in business. There are plenty of legitimate and legal reasons to decline service. Or make a lousy cake. There are no legal statutes against bad-tasting, poorly decorated wedding cakes. Gays won the right to buy a cake from someone who doesn’t want to sell them one, but eating food handled by people you’ve offended isn’t the smartest thing to do. Having your cake and eating it too might come with a lingering aftertaste of Christian urine. The number of gay couples suing businesses is growing. Gay couples sued bakeries in five states over the past year. In Washington, a same-sex couple sued a florist who denied service for their wedding. In Kentucky, a T-shirt company was sued for refusing to print gay themes. Two gay men in Iowa leveled a discrimination charge against the owner of a bistro for refusing to host their wedding ceremony. No shoes, no shirt, no morals, no service. The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled against Christian owners of a photography studio who refused to photograph a gay wedding. The studio argued they didn’t want to convey conflicted views of marriage through photos. The line becomes blurred between bigotry and artistic
Should artists be forced by the state to use their talent in ways that violate their conscience? vision. Given that photography is a means of artistic expression, shouldn’t they be free to decide who and what they photograph? Should artists be forced by the state to use their talent in ways that violate their conscience? Baking, floristry and catering can all be considered art. But once you open a business and
offer these artistic services to the public for money, you’re required to follow the same rules as any other business. The public is everybody, not just people you share the same viewpoints with. Waiters, bartenders, musicians, reception hall owners, tuxedo and gown fitters, wedding guests - some of the people involved in making a wedding are bound to be uncomfortable with the idea of homosexuality. Some gays themselves are uncomfortable with it. Going after uncooperative vendors like a swarm of yellow jackets won’t change anyone’s beliefs. Refusing service won’t change anyone’s sexual preference, though. Christians want to counteract what they see as outof-control progressivism. For them, it’s a spiritual battle between the godly and the godless. They try to enforce morality. However, gays try to enforce normality. They demand that everyone celebrate gay love. Uncooperative vendors will be punished. Both sides suffer from inflated persecution complexes. Neither side wants to be seen as catering to the other. Both are willing to stoop to the lowest levels of decency over some cake.
t looks like the era of the Saturday evening rental is a thing of past, left to the mercy of Redbox, Netflix and Amazon. Dish Network shut down its remaining 300 Blockbuster rental locations and ended mail-order rentals. The blue and yellow video giant is now defunct because it failed to adapt to the new age of digital online streaming. It has been apparent for a few years now that movie rental stores are in a bad spot. No one wants to go and then return to the store or be hassled by rental fees. The development of online technology and streaming formats such as Netflix and Amazon Prime have made renting easier and cheaper. At $8 a month, Netflix streaming has led many people away from box store rentals. A lot of the television and movie studios have realized that Netflix and Amazon are the way of the future for video rentals. Blockbuster and other rental companies like Hollywood Video didn’t do enough to get with the times and were left behind. Blockbuster had a great idea starting a mail-order online service, which is top-notch. The company could have done so much more with the available technology and could have stopped Netflix right from the getgo with its own streaming service. I always thought Blockbuster would have ultimately beaten Netflix if they had just adapted. They had so many opportunities, but perhaps it’s because their owner, Dish Network, prevented them from changing their model or they were blind to Netflix creeping up on them. When the company was bought out there may not have been enough capital left to develop such services. Seven years ago, Blockbuster had enough cash to make a bid to buy Circuit City, which went out of business. Had Blockbuster invested that money in future technology and not in a dying box store, maybe they’d still be viable today. I don’t know how Netflix sneaked up on Blockbuster, or why from the beginning it was never taken seriously as a competitor. It always looked like Netflix was nothing more than a knockoff Blockbuster that people could turn to if they didn’t want to drive to a rental store to peruse the shelves of new releases. Netflix has ended up destroying the last of the dangerous competition in the rental business at this point. On the horizon, cable and satellite companies are already starting to feel the pinch in the realm of television with Netflix starting to produce its own content. There is nothing in the current market, other than Amazon or another company like Google or Comcast, that could eventually develop their own online streaming markets big enough to topple the Netflix empire. In the end, Blockbuster fell victim to its own inability to adapt its business model to the new age of digital and evolving technology. The time for action is now for nonstreaming services to either evolve or fade away like VHS.