It’s not about the cake
As social media and news outlets explode with the news of the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the Colorado baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding, let’s remember this: It’s not about the cake.
Fine print aside (yes, the court justices only ruled that the baker was denied a prior fair hearing, so it’s not a death-blow to LGBQT rights, not on paper anyway), this has been going on since gay people stormed out of our ghettos and rioted for equal civil rights. Nothing worth winning in this world is ever won without a fight, and the Stonewall riots of 1969 were ground zero for our now nearly forty-year battle to achieve not only equal rights as tax-paying citizens of an allegedly free and democratic nation, but also, more elusively, for equal respect in society.
As the infamous 1970s cigarette ad slogan proclaimed, “We’ve come a long way, baby.” But, apparently, not far enough. While gay marriage is now legally recognized on a federal level and in every state, though some states tried to refute it with their ironic “Defense of Marriage” statutes — defending heterosexual marriage, that is —and highly rated shows like Queer Eye and Will & Grace introduced middle America to gay people who — gasp! — look and sound, hurt and love just like them, albeit in better clothes and with occasional jazz hands, the truth is we’ve yet to overcome the inner sanctum of Christian obstructionism, where, for reasons that continue to baffle the majority of civilized people, homosexuality is viewed as a global threat.
I won’t go deeply into issues of faith here. Put simply, I’ve always believed faith can be an integral part of the human experience, so if someone chooses to believe in Jesus, Buddha, or a tree, or any iteration thereof, fine by me. You see, I was denied the chance to retain my faith. Raised as a Catholic in a foreign Catholic country, I was devout as a child. I loved my Church. Upon confessing my still-nascent and bewildering attraction to men, I was informed by the very priest who’d taught my catechism and prepared me for my first communion that I was going to Hell (a very real place to me at the time) if I ever acted on my unnatural desires. That “if” created an abyss of doubt for me. Would God still love me if I never touched another man’s penis? If I only thought about it? Or did God, all-seeing and powerful like the wizard of Oz, already know about the dreadful sin festering in my ten-year old soul?
I decided God must already know, so there really was no point in trying to hide it. I touched another man’s penis. And have continued to touch ever since. I also stopped believing in mankind’s interpretation of God’s will. I became agnostic, as far as organized religion is concerned.
To all those out there, and there are far more than anyone should be comfortable with, who still claim that homosexuality is a sin and gay marriage is against God’s law, I wish I could explain what being gay is actually like. How coming to terms with your sexual identity can take years of suffering and self condemnation, which some of us never survive; that even as you try to hide who you are so you’ll fit in, you run the peril of being head-bashed into a locker in high school by a posse of testosterone-fueled jocks yelling that you’re a faggot. How you stop attending athletic activities in school because you’ve been harassed so many times, even if you keep your eyes firmly focused on the gym floor at all times, that you’d rather accept an F than endure more humiliation. I wish I could tell you how it’s only when friends who see how much you’re hurting offer you their hand and reassure you that what you feel isn’t wrong, that it’s normal and indeed human; that gay people have existed since time began and are responsible for some of the most famous art, music, and drama in history, that you start to grope your way toward self-acceptance. I wish I could tell you that we can’t turn anyone else gay. You either are or you aren’t. It’s not a choice and it’s not a curse. It simply is. I wish I could tell you what it’s like to suffer through a horrifying pandemic that kills over thirty of your friends, and while they’re dying, you’re forced to hear that it’s God’s wrath for our immoral behavior, even as your dying friends are refused medical care out of ignorance and fear. I wish I could tell you what it’s like to fall in love with the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, to navigate the shoals of telling your families and risk being ostracized all over again because you hope to get married. I wish I could tell you what it’s like to plan a wedding and find out you can’t buy the cake because the person behind the counter disapproves of who you are.
You see, it’s not about the cake. It’s about what the cake represents. It’s about the undeniable fact that someone thinks it’s okay to refuse service to someone else because they’re gay. Sure, there are thousands of other bakers, but it’s always the one who said no, who reinforced the lifelong message you’ve been fighting to overcome, that you’re an aberration unworthy of respect, which you remember. It’s never about the cake. It’s about the thought behind it. The message it reinforces. The reality that every LGBQT and questioning person is forced to confront, often on a daily basis.
When a day comes when we realize that just as you claim God is everywhere, in the infinite variety of nature surrounding us, so God must therefore be present in the complex beauty and love of every human heart — only then can we stop fighting over a cake.
Until that day, it’s not about the cake. And yet, it always will be.
