The Patriot Post® · Our Hashtag-Addicted, ADD Culture Won't Listen

Ed Feulner: “Unfortunately, our hashtag-addicted, ADD culture doesn’t grasp nuances well. We’d rather, say, bully a pizzeria into closing for honestly answering a question about whether they’d be willing to cater a same-sex wedding. We won’t listen. We’d rather shout. Had we listened, we’d know the owners of Memories Pizza hadn’t refused service to a soul. They were responding to a hypothetical situation. And they never said they’d turn away a customer who ordered a pizza. They said they wouldn’t cater a same-sex wedding, which they feel would imply that they condoned the union. You can agree or disagree with that belief. But what could be more American than respecting their right to believe it and act upon it, free of persecution? Now, if a case goes to court, and the government proves that it has a compelling reason to insist that the owners act in defiance of their beliefs, so be it. Due process has been followed. But to simply say their beliefs are garbage? That they aren’t to be respected because they don’t align with our own ideas of political correctness? That’s wrong. As Founding Father James Madison, our fourth president, put it: ‘The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right.’”