Skip to main content

No Service to…Anyone


Normally I’m a believer that if you’re open for business, you’re open to servicing everyone, but that concept is changing for many of us. Thanks to the right-leaning Supreme Court allowing a baker to refuse service to a same-sex couple, supposedly due to his religious beliefs, then why can’t a restaurant owner, who is a conscientious objector to the Trump administration, ask his excuser-in-chief to leave the restaurant? Making discrimination legal and valid in one case just opens the floodgate for more. It’s going to be hard to put this genie back in the bottle.
I’m sure the right wing will claim they are only following their deeply-held religious beliefs, but what about deeply-held environmental beliefs, or fashion style beliefs? My experience with religion is that this discrimination won’t stop at LGBTQ individuals, but will soon target women, minorities, people of other religions (ironic, I know), and all sorts of other “others.” After all, look at Mississippi’s HB 1523.
If we’re lucky, people will begin to understand why our Founding Fathers believed in separation of church and state because so-called religious liberty won’t provide liberty for all religions or for all people.

Popular posts from this blog

Men

 I’m starting to enter the next stage of grief – anger . I ended up canceling my reservation for this morning’s Pilates class because the new instructor is a man. He may be a Harris supporter and an ally to woman, but I knew I’d wonder the entire time if perhaps he really wasn’t. If perhaps he was like my now dead father who registered to vote for the first time in 1984, not to support Reagan, but to vote against Geraldine Ferraro who was Mondale’s VP running mate.  My mother made light of the situation, but I knew as a teenager that it was a crappy thing for him to do. It was certainly not the worst thing he ever did, but I remember it the clearest. My father had four daughters, and, at that time, three granddaughters, yet he couldn’t stand to have a woman, even a far more competent woman, be allowed to serve at that level.  I’ve turned off the news and haven’t been reading the papers, so am missing ( not missing ) the chatter. My guess is that my fellow white women will...
Read more

IndyShorts

I was at IndyShorts last weekend, which was the second year Heartland Film Festival has provided a separate four-day venue for short films. It’s always hard to get back to real life after being away, but, for me, it seems especially hard after being at film festivals. Whether you’re a filmmaker or a film lover, the atmosphere at a film festival becomes contagious. At times I daydream about just going from one to another, constantly watching films that I might not get a chance to see otherwise (although with streaming that’s becoming less true). Of course, I know I’d get tired of the constant need to search for food I might actually be able to eat, and would miss my husband and cat, but for brief periods of the year, it’s not a bad time to spend away from home. I particularly like the set up of this festival with most of the films and programs taking place at Newfields , with beautiful grounds that are accessible to clear your head and move your body, ample ...
Read more

November 6, 2024

Despair doesn’t even begin to explain my current mood. I keep thinking I’ll wake up and this will be some terrible dream. Then I become more despondent wondering how this can possibly be my life now, how millions of voters could choose a convicted sexual abuser and convicted felon for the highest office in the land. It’s unlikely he’d be able to get a job at McDonald’s. Then my head fills with conspiracy theories. In normal times I wouldn’t believe them, but reality seems far too unbelievable at present.  Instead, my mind begins creating a 1970-ish political thriller. It’s bleak, yet an image of a noble and handsome man, looking much like a young Warren Beatty with great wavy shoulder length hair, who is working to figure out what happened. The plot includes a cabal of wealthy industrialists with a puppet politician at the ready who will be put in place after the more troublesome winner is disposed of. There’s fraud by various accomplices along the way. Of course, to stay true to t...
Read more