Rev, I made the initial claim about the article. Firstly, I hope you didn't take my post as an attack on you. Nothing I said was to you personally, but addressed the article.
That being said, I retract my statement about it being a lie, in light of what has been said. If the man was holding to Sharia Law, it wasn't a lie. But I still agree it was hyperbole. "Sharia Law comes to WalMart" does not invoke images of a man exercising his religious freedom to refuse to sell alcohol. It brings up much more disturbing images.
My original post was from my phone, and was, imo, too succinct. I'll explain myself further now.
Let's work under the assumption that it was due to religious beliefs, and not because he was under age (which seems to be the reason). While I agree that a baker should not be forced to serve a cake for a gay wedding if that's against his religious beliefs, it's not the same thing as this case at all.
WalMart was not refusing anyone service. It was one employee. A person wishing to buy alcohol could have done so at any other lane. It wasn't an entire business, or even an entire location, stating "we disagree with your lifestyle, so we refuse you service".
Years ago, I was a waiter at a restaurant. I never worked at one that sold alcohol, but I knew people who did. And they were allowed to exercise their religious belief and not serve it to customers. If a customer ordered it, someone else made it and delivered it to the table. It's a common practice, especially if a waiter is under 21.
Personally, if a business is catering to someone's beliefs, even if they're not Christian beliefs, I applaud them. Standing up for religious freedom is a good thing. If we deny Muslims the freedom to not sell alcohol, we have to deny Christians that freedom, too.
The reason Muslim bakeries don't get targeted is because everyone knows Muslims don't own bakeries. They own convenience stores. (ok, that was a bad joke, but I'm leaving it in because I think it's funny.) But really, it's because the homosexual community isn't targeting Muslims. They're targeting Christians. My guess is that a Muslim bakery has never been asked by a homosexual to make a cake for a gay wedding. Muslims are more outspoken about their beliefs (and, honestly, a lot less divided) and people don't want to challenge that.
In my viewpoint, this goes along with the right to self defense of a Christian. Christians as a whole are too soft spoken. We gladly accept persecution instead of speaking up for ourselves. We lose ground and get stepped on because we are afraid of offending someone.
But let's look at Islam. They aren't afraid of offending anyone. And they are growing. Christians are afraid of offending people and turning them off to our message. But reality is saying that's not the case. Muslims stand up for themselves. They step on toes. They speak up about their beliefs. And they grow.
Kind of makes one think that we're doing something wrong.
