Dear Abby… Yes!

Dear Abby hit the nail on its head.

Couple New To Florida Aren't Happy With Gay Neighbors
Dear Abby

By Abigail Van Buren

Feb. 19, 2014

DEAR ABBY: My husband and I relocated to Florida a little over a year ago and were quickly welcomed into our new neighbors' social whirl. Two couples in the neighborhood are gay -- one male, one female. While they are nice enough, my husband and I did not include them when it was our turn to host because we do not approve of their lifestyle choices. Since then, we have been excluded from neighborhood gatherings, and someone even suggested that we are bigots!

Abby, we moved here from a conservative community where people were pretty much the same. If people were "different," they apparently kept it to themselves. While I understand the phrase "when in Rome," I don't feel we should have to compromise our values just to win the approval of our neighbors. But really, who is the true bigot here? Would you like to weigh in? -- UNHAPPY IN TAMPA

DEAR UNHAPPY: I sure would. The first thing I'd like to say is that regardless of what you were told in your previous community, a person's sexual orientation isn't a "lifestyle choice." Gay people don't choose to be gay; they are born that way. They can't change being gay any more than you can change being heterosexual.

I find it interesting that you are unwilling to reciprocate the hospitality of people who welcomed you and opened their homes to you, and yet you complain because you are receiving similar treatment.

From where I sit, you may have chosen the wrong place to live because it appears you would be happier in a less integrated neighborhood surrounded by people who think the way you do. But if you interact only with people like yourselves, you will have missed a chance for growth, which is what you have been offered here. Please don't blow it.

What she said was beautiful, the right wing think that they can discriminate against LGBT people, but when other people do not condone their behavior what do the conservatives do? They try to pass laws that legitimize their discriminating behavior as they are doing in Kansas, Tennessee, and Idaho.

As they become the minority they start claiming religious persecution, in an Op-Ed article in the Hartford Courant about the Kansas bill the writer Mary Sanchez wrote,

So religious conservatives now take up the mantle of a minority. That's one of the few honest things about this conversation. Their view of homosexuality will soon be (if it is not already) a minority opinion.

Yet they miss crucial points. No government authority — neither the courts nor the executive branch — is telling people that they can't continue to decry homosexuality. They can quote the Bible to condemn it all they want. Preachers can preach that God has naught but fiery damnation in store for LBGT people. Churches can continue to bar gay couples from marriage and any other sacrament.

But that long-enshrined First Amendment protection of speech and religious freedom isn't good enough for these folks. No. They want the assurance that they can also run a public business, advertise their services to one and all, and still maintain the right to tell a gay person they aren't welcome. And never face the legal ramification of a lawsuit, if such a thing could ever transpire in Kansas.

As she points out, no one is telling them that they have to change their religious beliefs; they just have to treat the public equally. Whether they are black or white, Christian or non-Christian, disabled or not, married or single, straight or gay, cisgender or transgender; they have to treat them equally. They can put signs all over their restaurant stating their religious beliefs, telling LGBT people they are going to hell all they want, but they cannot refuse to serve them.