The right of uninvolvement

By Neal Larson

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled last month that professional photographers do not have the right to refuse service to gays getting married. It coincides well with the movement across the country to enforce non-discrimination laws in employment and housing. And now, photography.

Next week, who knows what industry in which state will be forced to be compliant with the zeitgeist?

This has nothing to do with making sure gays have access to photographers. Undoubtedly every community has hungry photogs willing to take pictures of just about anyone doing just about anything. Furthermore, the Supreme Court justice who wrote the opinion did not address what happens when a photographer’s schedule suddenly “becomes full”, or when a photographer “gets sick”, or when their car “breaks down” or their “camera battery went dead.” Hard to say who will police the motivations of photographers and investigate every declined request for service.

And does this apply only to Christians declining on religious grounds? What about the Hindu photographer asked to work the local barbecue? Or the Muslim photographer who would like to opt out of shooting the pig roast? Something tells me that the atheist photographer who can’t make it to the bar mitzvah or baptism probably won’t be scrutinized.

Declining to be involved ought to be a slam dunk American right. But it’s not. Simple uninvolvement is irrationally interpreted as hostility, hatred, bigotry. Don’t get me wrong. Hostility exists, but it’s against the Christian who simply wants to run a business according to her own conscience.

As I’ve written extensively before, a certain class of elite who view people as a herd that must be controlled have a disdain for personal liberty exercised in ways (especially Christian ways) that deviate from politically correct behavior defined by the elite themselves. To them, we are cattle, and a growing number of judges and politicians are their willing cow dogs, doggedly keeping us all moving forward and afraid to look sideways.

A few years back, an effort was made to force pro-life (and all) pharmacists to dispense abortifacient drugs. This is no different. The left is not happy with simply being allowed the freedom to engage in abortion and gay marriage. Everyone else must be a willing, and preferably eager, participant. Nobody even suggested the idea that a young woman wanting to end a pregnancy would not get her legal drugs if a pharmacist wanted to be uninvolved in the transaction. Lots of pharmacists all over with various political views are more than capable of helping young women erase the consequences of a poor decision.

It’s as though if we Christians are not feeling and being oppressed and controlled, someone on the left is not doing their job. Liberals have a little party inside every time a Christian is persecuted.

Most folks are asleep to the steady erosion of our most intimate rights, those tied to our conscience. I don’t know how to wake them up. They exist in a foggy daze, where tolerance actually means intolerance — of Judeo-Christian values — and where rights must be filtered through the increasingly narrowing sieve of political correctness. And where behaviors that simply by their nature cannot support or contribute to society, are held up as virtues that one cannot simply tolerate or acknowledge, but must embrace.

The battle over control of the human soul extends back, way back, and rages still today. America once shined as a beacon of individual autonomy, yet today the simple non-act of being uninvolved is intolerable. Perhaps tyranny more than creeps upon us now. Ask the religious photographer, pharmacist, or wedding-cake maker. Ask the owners of Chick-Fil-A and Hobby Lobby. Ask anyone wanting a big soda in the Big Apple where that pendulum is headed.

Those who “know best” are usurping by degrees what our nation’s Framers acknowledged as a unalienable gift from God. If we don’t fight for it now, it may be gone forever. Ignore the crazy slobbering cheerleaders of utopianism who grace the halls of academia and entertainment, and much of government, and fight for who you are and what you have been given. It is not theirs. It is yours. You are not what they say you are. You are much, much more.

If they will take away your right to not be involved, what won’t they take?

Neal Larson of Idaho Falls is a conservative talk show host on KID Newsradio 590am and 92.1fm. “The Neal Larson Show” can be heard weekday mornings from 8:00 to 10:00. His email address is neal@590kid.com.