{"id":29209,"date":"2012-07-27T06:37:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-27T11:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=29209"},"modified":"2012-07-27T06:52:59","modified_gmt":"2012-07-27T11:52:59","slug":"do-you-remember-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=29209","title":{"rendered":"Do You Remember…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…when conservative Republican Dave Kleis, mayor of Saint Cloud, barred gay-friendly Starbucks from that city?<\/p>\n

No?<\/p>\n

OK. \u00a0How about when Pat Anderson, the conservative Republican mayor of Eagan, spoke out against gay-friendly Target locating a store in her city?<\/p>\n

Got nothing?<\/p>\n

Well, of course not – because there really\u00a0are <\/em>no examples of conservative mayors using the power of their city government to squelch a legitimate business, not due to the business itself or the behavior of its customers, but because of the political beliefs of the business’ owners <\/em>outside the business itself.<\/p>\n

But the headlines are alive with the stories of the mayors of Boston and Chicago bringing the full weight of government down against “Chick-Fil-A” – using the city’s\u00a0regulatory\u00a0apparatus to try to keep the chain of (apparently) restaurants out of their cities, not because Chick-Fil-A discriminates against anyone in any part of its business life, but because its owners, in their private, non-business lives, oppose gay marriage.<\/p>\n

I don’t know what Chick-Fil-A is. \u00a0I mean I know, it’s a fast food joint of some kind. \u00a0 I don’t think they’re even in Minnesota. \u00a0But what the heck – this deserves a free ad:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

More seriously?<\/p>\n

One of the early objections to the idea of gay marriage was that if you made it the law of the land, then it’s a very short leap – a step, really – to requiring <\/em>churches to perform them. Just like with civil rights rules regarding, say, renting that violate landlords’ rights to free association on their private property, or the ongoing official persecution of the Boy Scouts for their not-gay philosophy; it is just a matter of time before politicians, eager to rack up points with their bases (left or <\/em>right) abuse the law and use the full weight of their government bureaucracies to penalize churches that oppose gay marriage on theological grounds.<\/p>\n

What was the saying? \u00a0“First they came for the fast food restaurants – but I did nothing, because I was Vegan. \u00a0Then they came for the churches that didn’t perform gay marriages, and I did nothing, because I support gay marriage and am a post-structural Unitarian. \u00a0Then they came for me, and nobody did anything, \u00a0because I’m so freaking annoying”? \u00a0Is that how it went?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…when conservative Republican Dave Kleis, mayor of Saint Cloud, barred gay-friendly Starbucks from that city? No? OK. \u00a0How about when Pat Anderson, the conservative Republican mayor of Eagan, spoke out against gay-friendly Target locating a store in her city? Got nothing? Well, of course not – because there really\u00a0are no examples of conservative mayors using […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29209"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29214,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29209\/revisions\/29214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}