This news today…
Rick Santorum has weighed in on the debate over Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act using what appears to have been the most provocative comparison he could think of. "Tolerance is a two-way street," he told CBS News yesterday, arguing that businesses should have the "ability to say we're not going to participate in certain activities that we disagree with from a religious point of view." "If you are a print shop, and you are a gay man, should you be forced to print 'God Hates Fags’ for the Westboro Baptist Church—because they hold those signs up?" he asked. "Should the government force you to do that?" Santorum described the Indiana law as a "good bill" and said he had hoped Indiana Gov. Mike Pence wouldn't amend it, the Guardian reports.
Santorum’s analogy is flawed, of course, because the
hypothetical gay shop owner is not refusing this printing job claiming “freedom
of religion.” Rather, he is refusing claiming, “freedom from hate speech.”
But, Santorum’s analogy does give rise to claims of
freedom based on “genuinely held religious belief” because one will have a
great deal of difficulty delineating between “good religious belief” and “kooky
religious belief.” Simply put, religious belief is not rational and deciding
between one irrational belief and another will be impossible. So, if I can show
that I genuinely hold some belief or other, then it is valid, at least as far
as the law goes no matter how kooky it may seem to other religions or
non-believers.
