My family and I recently visited a zoo in the Midwest. Eating in the picnic area, we sat catty-corner to an Amish family. The men and women shared the work of mixing ingredients to make potato salad.
The women wore long dresses and bonnets, the men pants and plaid collared shirts. They appeared happy, unfazed by any differences between themselves and the summer crowd.
I wondered how it must feel to walk out your front door and enter a world where the majority follow customs unlike your own.
Inside the zoo I noticed two Muslim women covered and wearing hijabs. I spotted a family with girls in long skirts. I watched a teen walk by in shorts I found too revealing.
We live in a country where people with drastically different ideologies coexist. Yes we have our issues. Discrimination shows itself. Still not one person I saw at the zoo hid their religion to enter a public place.
Freedom of religion is one of our country's greatest attributes. We need to protect it. We need to preserve the right to live our faith of choice out in the open.
But when does that right infringe upon others? What lines do we draw and who holds the power to draw them?
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Christian baker who refused to create an artistic wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Following the 7-2 decision, the baker, Jack Phillips, wrote when he operates his business, he's always mindful of whether God is pleased with his creations.
"That's why even though I serve all people, I can't design cakes that celebrate events or express messages that conflict with my faith," Phillips wrote in a piece syndicated across the nation. "It's also why I've declined requests to create cakes that celebrate Halloween or memorialize a divorce."
Legal scholars called the court's decision narrow. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion and called for balance in future decisions.
"The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts," Kennedy wrote, "all in the context of recognizing that these disputes must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market."
Clearly, the decision created more questions than answers about religious freedom laws. At what point do personal beliefs get reigned in by the government? Can someone refuse service to LGBTQ couples? Can someone do the same to interracial or interfaith couples? Can a Muslim baker refuse a Christian or vice versa?
What if the customer ordered a Satanic cake? Would the public rally for the bakery owner or the devil-worshiper?
I'm torn. I'm not interested in doing business with a person whose judgment of my lifestyle would lead them to turn me away. I do not favor the idea of forcing someone to compromise their core beliefs - even if I disagree with them.
Yet perhaps I'm comfortable with that stance only because my religion, Christianity, remains dominant in America. I have never walked out my front door into a world where I am not the majority.
The hardest question in the land of the free is knowing when it's okay to put up fences.
Contact Sarah Whitman at sarahrothwhitman@gmail.com.
