NOM BLOG

George Will: "Advocates of Gay Rights Should Begin to Restrain The Bullies in Their Ranks"

 

Columnist George Will writes about the case of the New Mexico photographer fined for refusing to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony:

"... New Mexico, whose marriage laws discriminate against same-sex unions, has a “compelling interest” in compelling Huguenin to provide a service she finds repugnant and others would provide? Strange.

... The Huguenin case demonstrates how advocates of tolerance become tyrannical. First, a disputed behavior, such as sexual activities between people of the same sex, is declared so personal and intimate that government should have no jurisdiction over it. Then, having won recognition of what Louis Brandeis, a pioneer of the privacy right, called “the right to be let alone,” some who have benefited from this achievement assert a right not to let other people alone. It is the right to coerce anyone who disapproves of the now-protected behavior into acting as though they approve of it, or at least into not acting on their disapproval.

So, in the name of tolerance, government declares intolerable individuals such as the Huguenins, who disapprove of a certain behavior but ask only to be let alone in their quiet disapproval. Perhaps advocates of gay rights should begin to restrain the bullies in their ranks."

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