"A Muslim cleric walks into a gay bar…" begins leftist thinker Sally Kohn's op-ed for The Daily Beast.
But, it's no joke. Kohn is advocating for businesses to "be forced to serve everyone." Why? Because "everyone deserves equal treatment."
As she admits in her article, Kohn is all for forcing conservative Christian-owned bakeries to make cakes for same-sex weddings and call it "freedom." To achieve this "freedom," Kohn proposes a sweeping national passage of non-discrimination laws so that private businesses conduct themselves accordingly. "Once upon a time it was lunch counters," writes Kohn, attempting an equation to the civil rights era, then adds, "Now it's wedding cakes."
Kohn reasons that it must be hard to be a conservative in today's America. She compares them to "fundamentalist Islamists:"
When fundamentalist Islamists terrorize innocent citizens, you tweet something about how we have to stop all Muslims from imposing their Sharia law on 'us.' And when the Supreme Court announces it will review a set of cases on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, you freak out about gay people imposing their gayness on all of 'us.' Of course, you don’t seem to mind imposing your intolerant version of Christianity on all of 'us' and we let you try — because we call that freedom.
She had even more to say:
Conservatives, stop worrying about all the ways you feel you’ll be 'discriminated against' yourselves by having to treat people equally and start pondering why you’re so invested in perpetually propping up your rights to discriminate against others. That’s hypocritical. And un-American.
To "prove" how pro-American she is and so finely tuned to the nation's core value of freedom, Kohn lists a few other scenarios she believes businesses should be "forced" into:
An atheist baker should be forced to make a first communion cake… If you run a bakery, you run a business, not a church.
A fundamentalist Muslim barber should be forced to cut a butch lesbian’s hair… So yes, if a fundamentalist Muslim barber runs a haircutting business, he should have to serve anyone who wants to pay for a haircut, including me.
A gay restaurant has to serve straight people… It’s intriguing that so much attention is focused on how poor unfortunate white heterosexual Christian conservatives will be forced to accept the lifestyles of heathen gay couples…Those championing the right to discriminate generally want the right to discriminate against others, but for others to not be able to discriminate against them.
A radical lesbian feminist hotel has to give a room to a devout heterosexual Mormon couple… And just in case you’re worried, non-discrimination laws that require a radical lesbian feminist hotel to accommodate a devout heterosexual Mormon couple do not force the radical lesbian feminists to change their beliefs. Sheesh. Nor are they being forced to implicitly endorse the devout heterosexual Mormon couple’s lifestyle choice. Who would even suggest such a thing?!
A gay rights organization cannot fire a devout Christian… [U]nder some laws, especially gay rights anti-discrimination laws, some religiously oriented non-profits have an exemption. But you’ll note the reverse is not true.
A transgender bar has to serve an orthodox Jewish rabbi… Let’s say a group of Lubavitch Jews decide to take in a drag show.
Kohn promises that the point of all of this is not to "make private businesses contort themselves in service of tolerance and pluralism," but only "that businesses should [be forced to] serve everyone the same and not discriminate."
There would be some "common sense" exemptions, according to Kohn -- say a religious group, who "believed digital cameras robbed those being photographed of their souls," couldn't use the laws to force a digital-only photographer to take their photo. Or that a dye-free bakery couldn't be forced to make a homosexual couple "a rainbow wedding cake." You know, "common sense exceptions" like these.
Kohn promoted her piece in the following message posted to Twitter:
