Every writer knows the feeling. When you wake up one afternoon (or evening) and feel the insatiable urge to create, to assuage your mind - that furious organ that, even in sleep, wrestles endlessly with innumerable thoughts and notions - by allowing it to overflow onto the virgin page. Yet despite your best efforts nothing seems to manifest.
When that occurs, I often find that I can reinvigorate my creative side by going back and reading from authors that have inspired me. Poets, playwrights, novelists, and Focus on the Family columnists. One of my personal idols is a man by name of Matt Kaufman, who has written quite frequently for the webzine Boundless. And let me tell you that one of his past articles has affected me greatly. I have felt the hand of God touch me in places I didn't even know could be touched. At least I assume it was God's hand.
The article is entitled Gays Vs. The Garden Guy, and it details the story of a Houston landscaping business that refused to do business with a couple. The reason: the family which runs the small business refuses to work for a homosexual couple.
Upon learning of the relationship when one of the men referred to his "partner," Todd decided to turn down the job. Sabrina wrote the potential clients a straightforward e-mail honestly explaining why. Its contents don't take long to read:I am appreciative of your time on the phone today and glad you contacted us. I need to tell you that we cannot meet with you because we choose not to work with homosexuals.
Best of luck in finding someone else to fill your landscaping needs.
All my best,
Sabrina.
Needless to say, there was a bit of an internet scuffle, and Kaufman stepped in to let us all know just who was at fault.
Now in a free society, much less one that was historically Christian, this whole thing wouldn't have been a big deal. The Farbers' choice would be widely understood as perfectly legitimate.Exactly. In a free society, people are free to choose who they do business with. If I own a restaurant, and someone, say, comes in without wearing shoes, or perhaps with darker skin than me, it's more than reasonable for me to simply refuse service. After all, it's my restaurant, isn't it?
But Todd Farber, the owner of Garden Guy, Inc., is definitely more of a man than me. As Kaufman notes, some Christians may have taken a different path, and decided to do business with them, and perhaps attempt to get them to change their sinful, heathen, God-and-America-hating ways before being sent to a fiery, painful, completely justified eternity in the bowels of Hell. That's, after all, is called being "tolerant".
In fact, Todd had worked for homosexual clients in the past. He stopped, his wife said, because he had grown increasingly "grieved" to see the lives they were living.As a true Christian - that is, a right-wing evangelical Republican - I have often been remiss of my moral obligations. Often times I have tried to respect homosexuals by constantly informing them that their very existence on this earth makes them responsible for everything that has ever gone wrong for this country, including 9/11. But thanks to Kaufman's wisdom, I know now that it is my duty as a God-fearing American to regard them as not even worthy of normal human interaction.Believers can debate among themselves which course they would have taken in the same position. But the Farbers not only had a right to do as they did, they had a serious moral reason: They were trying not to confer acceptance on an inherently illegitimate relationship. For Christians, that's a responsibility — a matter of simple duty.
[Gay activists] want society, via the state, to officially confer its stamp of approval. They want everyone else to recognize and honor that status in a host of other ways (benefits, "non-discrimination" laws, etc.).
Forget marriage benefits, and forget equal protection under the law. As Christians we must take it one step further: forget selling them homes, forget letting them live in our apartment complexes, forget letting them attend our schools, our churches, live in our neighborhoods, dine in our restaurants, use our laundromats, or interact with us in any way that may confer to them that their lifestyle is somehow "accepted". The problem isn't that secularists or the liberal media tells them that homosexuality is okay, but that we reinforce that notion by constantly interacting with them as if they were normal human beings.
In the spirit of this new perspective, I officially declare that gays are no longer allowed to read this blog. That's right. If you really desire to hear my opinion, go get yourself a trophy wife, divorce her, re-marry, get divorced again, and get married a third time like every other good Christian who respects the sanctity of marriage.
To ensure that this web blog remains free of gay readers, I will proceed to inundate it with a series of stimuli which, I believe, will so revile the homosexual reader that they will be unable to proceed any further:
If all that rough, grizzled, obscenely masculine patriotism doesn't keep them at bay, than I don't know what will.