Progressive hypocrisy on display...

Progressive hypocrisy on display...  This is like shooting fish in a barrel, to be sure, but this video documents an unusually clear example of it.  Unless you've been sealed into a catacomb over the past week or so, you've heard about the Indiana pizzeria forced out of business by the progressive outrage over the owner's declaration that if she were asked to cater pizza to a same-sex wedding, she'd refuse.  Cue the outrage: crazy homophobic Christians are on the rampage!  The press was filled with a bazillion breathless stories, all featuring OUTRAGE!  Never mind that it was all a hypothetical, that the owners had never actually refused to cater a gay wedding (because nobody ever asked them to).  All the usual suspects chimed in, and right on cue the usual brain-dead celebrities started promoting a boycott of Indiana.

Crowder (the video maker) wondered what would happen if he were to ask a Muslim-owned bakery to make a wedding cake for a gay wedding – and, presuming that he'd be refused, how the progressives and their press lapdogs would respond.  Now you can almost certainly guess what those responses would be – but its still a great illustration of the hypocrisy that pervades the progressive, multi-culti world.  The hypocrisy is strongest when two or more of their cherished beliefs collide, as here, where gay rights and Muslim rights are in strict opposition.

I revel in the display of progressive hypocrisy, but ... that doesn't necessarily mean that I disagree with their position on the Indiana pizzeria (though I most certainly do disagree with some of their methods, and I believe the outrage is entirely misplaced).  I think these are genuinely challenging issues that really don't have clear answers.  Take the Indiana pizzeria case, and modify it slightly.  Suppose the owners had been asked instead if they would cater to a hypothetical marriage of two black people, and they refused.  Would we react differently to that?  I think that today virtually everybody would agree that was inappropriate behavior, and would condemn them – but that wasn't true even as recently as my own childhood.

There's a delicate balancing act here, with at least three competing elements: personal beliefs (religious or otherwise), the rights of individuals, and societal mores.  The Indiana pizzeria owners have a belief that gay marriage is wrong – do we force them to do something in violation of their own beliefs?  The hypothetical gay groom and groom want pizzas for their wedding – do we force them to go to a different pizzeria?  On gay marriage, American society is moving from outraged rejection toward at least grudging acceptance, but there's certainly no consensus on this yet – do we shove the notion down everyone's throat?

No easy answers here.  The only thing I feel sure of is that change is in the air...