WTE: Civility depends on distinguishing between ideas and persons

I had not intended to raise the controversy. The words on the page did that. They were so clear that nobody argued about what they meant. Where we differed was whether they should be understood literally or not. I said yes. Others said no. Each person in the Bible study had to choose one or the other and there was no middle ground.

Life is sometimes like that. The only way to avoid controversy is to never state one’s belief. People take that tack every day. Our culture teaches us to do so. But that really doesn’t make sense.

First, nobody in his right mind will deliberately and systematically conceal the truth from friends and acquaintances. If there is anything that I am willing to conceal from people I love, it is obviously something that I really don’t think is true.

Second, as the definition of “religious beliefs” grows ever more expansive, there are fewer and fewer things that we are allowed to say in public. The idea of God used to be common sense. We only argued about what He was like. Now, the very idea is deemed “religious.”

Prohibitions against murder and adultery also used to be common sense. Now, these same morals are chalked up to “religious fundamentalism.” What common ground that we hold today will become “religious,” tomorrow? God only knows.

Once my opinion was on the table, I supposed I could have lied. I could have retracted my words and claimed that I never really believed them. What kind of a person would that make me? Would anyone want such a person as a neighbor?

Thankfully, human beings have been disagreeing for a long time and we have learned to deal with it. We make a sharp distinction between what someone thinks, and who that person is. No matter what someone might believe, he or she remains a human being who legitimately claims my respect.

That’s how we have gotten along for millennia. You may hate my ideas. That’s okay as long as you don’t hate my person. We are still at peace. But if you stop caring about changing my mind and start attacking my person—whether by slander, theft, fines, incarceration, or murder—that’s a threat to my very existence, not just my ideas. The law must get involved to protect me. That’s how civilization and civil conversation works.

But this fundamental distinction between ideas and persons is under serious attack today.

Of course, civility has always been rejected by the immature--in playground quarrels and barroom fights. More recently, it has moved into social media where there is less face-to-face accountability. Our darker side loves to bypass civil conversation and attack people. That’s a sad reality.

But the more serious attack on civility is happening in public law itself. Whenever somebody is punished because of his or her ideas, or when those ideas are treated as though they were an attack on someone’s person, civilization is in jeopardy.

That is exactly what is happing with increasing frequency—through inept laws and malicious prosecutors who exploit them. We are seeing a good example of this onehundred miles south of us right now. Colorado baker, Jack Phillips, only recently concluded a six-year struggle to maintain the civil distinction between person and idea.

Since 2012 he has been pleading for the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (CCRC) to recognize that his unwillingness to communicate false ideas is not at all the same as a personal attack on the people who wanted him to.

A baker—who demonstrably serves all people but who has a long and noble history of declining to express ideas that he does not believe—should not be attacked in his person. Declining to celebrate a divorce, or bake obscenities, or decorate a cake enthroning Satan should be praised, not punished.

Jack’s pleas were finally heard by the United States Supreme Court. On June 4, SCOTUS recognized the distinction between a person and an idea. It stipulated that “religious and philosophical objections” to an idea are protected by law, while maintaining that attacks on persons are not.

This put an end to a six-year-long attack on Jack’s person by the CCRC. But now they are at it again. Jack does not agree with the idea that maleness and femaleness are up to us. Neither do I. I doubt many of you do either. But the CCRC wants to run Jack out of business unless he says what he does not believe.

The irony is that the CCRC actually is attacking Jack’s person with loss of property while falsely accusing Jack of the same. Two months ago, we could have explained its actions as an honest mistake. But it is that no longer. The CCRC’s error of six years was publicly rebuked by the highest court in the land. Now it’s a malicious denial.

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission is being anything but civil. In so doing, it is contributing to the breakdown of all civility. So also does anyone who refuses to acknowledge the difference between a person and an idea. It is foundational to all civilization.