Recently there has been a lot of discussion regarding Kansas’s legislative attempts to protect the religious conscience of service providers from needing to provide services which maybe compromising to their faith. There has been a considerable amount of back and forth discussion on this issue whereby some has called it discriminatory and others that this is a question of freedom. Along this has been charges of inconsistencies of providing services for fornicators and all kinds of sinful and idolatrous people but yet not for homosexuals, etc.

I don’t know why the issue has become so complex. It’s really quite simple. There is a distinction between persons and their actions or services or products. The point is not whether the person requesting the service is gay or straight or whatever, the point is the character of the service provided itself, whether it is a cake or a photography for a gay or heterosexual wedding.

That the distinction is so blindingly obvious can be seen in the following scenario. Let’s say we have a gay man who is going to marry a woman and wants to have a cake for his heterosexual wedding (yes, it can and does happen, see here.), or if you want to raise the stakes even further, you can have a gay man marrying a lesbian (yes, that does happen too, see here.), the Christian would happily provide a service for such a wedding and event, because the service for the event itself is not directly contrary to their conscience in the way that a gay wedding is.

Therefore, the point is not the person’s “sexual orientation” requesting the service but the character of the service itself, cakes or photography for gay/straight wedding, regardless of the sexual orientation of the person asking for it. The person requesting the service is one thing, but the character of the service itself is another. It is one thing to serve as a photographer at a heterosexual wedding, regardless of whether the persons getting married is straight or gay, it is another thing to take pictures of gay weddings and romances.

Thus, if we have two straight guys who wants to shoot a totally gay romantic scene or passionately making out, the photographer should have the right to refuse such a scandalous action, even if they are both straight. It has to do with the service itself rather than the persons requesting the service. On the other hand, there is no objection for a Christian hardware store owner to sell light bulbs to a gay couple or fix their homes, because that service isn’t involved in their homosexual behaviour but is extrinsic to it. Selling a light bulb isn’t involved in homosexual behaviour in the same way that taking a photo of a gay romantic scene is. It really is that simple.

Update: Would Jesus have offered His carpentry services to the construction of a brothel? Discuss. -Trevin Wax