I disagree. I think that some rational persons, in particular many religious persons, consider themselves accountable to God for all symbolic activity in which they engage.
This view is supported in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 5:20, which calls Christians to be ambassadors for Christ. Engaging in a form of symbolism is an act of speech.
The Old Testament / Hebrew bible is full of strictures against engaging in symbolic support of claims that the Lord is not in charge of everything and worthy of exclusive worship.
Thought experiments involving role-reversal are useful for everyone in this kind of discussion. Would you consider it okay for the law to compel a Muslim-owned advertising company to write "Islam is wrong. Mohamed was a militant con artist" all over a city's billboards? If not, why not?
Or would be okay, on your view, to force a Jewish-owned movie-making company to produce and promote a movie claiming that the Jews had it coming in the Holocaust, if it could somehow be shown in court that the submitted script was a guaranteed money-maker for them?
My contention is that some Christians consider writing messages counter to their theology to be objectionable in the same way. And that the very debate about whether or not it's sufficiently a matter of compelled religious speech is itself a question whose answer depends on one's religious viewpoint.
I don't think any rational person assumes ...
I disagree. I think that some rational persons, in particular many religious persons, consider themselves accountable to God for all symbolic activity in which they engage.
This view is supported in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 5:20, which calls Christians to be ambassadors for Christ. Engaging in a form of symbolism is an act of speech.
The Old Testament / Hebrew bible is full of strictures against engaging in symbolic support of claims that the Lord is not in charge of everything and worthy of exclusive worship.
Thought experiments involving role-reversal are useful for everyone in this kind of discussion. Would you consider it okay for the law to compel a Muslim-owned advertising company to write "Islam is wrong. Mohamed was a militant con artist" all over a city's billboards? If not, why not?
Or would be okay, on your view, to force a Jewish-owned movie-making company to produce and promote a movie claiming that the Jews had it coming in the Holocaust, if it could somehow be shown in court that the submitted script was a guaranteed money-maker for them?
My contention is that some Christians consider writing messages counter to their theology to be objectionable in the same way. And that the very debate about whether or not it's sufficiently a matter of compelled religious speech is itself a question whose answer depends on one's religious viewpoint.
Oh I see. So creating a wedding cake that has two men on the top instead of a man and a woman is the same as plastering billboards all over town that degrade a religion? Or the same as making a movie in favor of the holocaust? You're just showing the fact that you're not being rational about the situation.
2 Corinthians 5:19 says that you should not be holding peoples sins against them. The next verse does not say that you are allowed to treat sinners as second class citizens. In fact, the message of Jesus Chris says the exact opposite. So how do you construe that verse into allowing discrimination? Some people believe that black people are sinners - that their skin is the curse and taint of Cain. Does that mean that I can use 2 Corinthians 5:20 to avoid doing business with them because they're black? No. The verse says that you should be an ambassador of Christ. The same Christ who went to lepers, to prostitutes, and other second class citizens of the bible and healed them. Did all of those people become his followers? No. But he did not neglect them. So how are you living like Christ if you neglect the needs of the gays, If you turn them against Christianity? Perhaps when you're living like it says in 1 John 2:6 you can cast the first stone against gays. Until then, you sound just as bigoted as those KKKers in the South did 50 years ago.