Hey, Cupcake!

"That's gotta be your next column," my cousin Dieter, pulling on his Editor Hat, told me.

After making my reply to this (which consisted of this look: "???"), Dieter clarified that he was talking about a Facebook post I just made.

"You mean this?" I asked him, going on to quote what I had scrawled in my status:

"Been following this brouhaha about the baker who didn't want to make a wedding cake for a gay couple due to "Christian values." Maybe it's just me, but why make such a fuss over it? Personally I wouldn't want ANYTHING that came from the ovens of people who want to put people like me INTO ovens."

"That's it," Dieter said. "You gotta write about that!"

For heaven's sake, why?

"Controversy!" Dieter exclaimed. "Marketplace of ideas! This is the next big crux in the Christian war on gays, and it's cresting right now!"

"A cresting crux?" I asked. Some editor Dieter makes.

"Look," he rushed on. "Anti-gay Christians used to claim that being gay was some sort of 'choice.' "

"They still do," I pointed out.

"Now," Dieter interrupted, "their new narrative is that gays are stealing their rights simply because gays are claiming their own."

"Well, yes, but that, too, is a bullshit claim they've made for ages."

"Now," Dieter plowed on, "this whole idea of the poor, downtrodden Christians being hurled to the sharp spikes at the bottom of the pit of multi-culti rainbow diversity is becoming the central facet of their ever-morphing fairy tale."

"What fairy tale?" I was getting exasperated. I was also getting a headache. Really, it was my own fault for trying to make a straight line out of Dieter's haphazard ramblings.

"The tales they tell about all you all," Dieter replied.

"Us... fairies?" I asked, getting a little heated.

"Now, now," he chided. "Let's not start hurling epithets."

"I -- You -- "

"So," Dieter added, "this whole cupcake fracas is becoming the face, or shall I say, the mask of the straw man the Christians are setting up."

"What straw man?!"

"Ah, but the straw is turning into media gold!" Dieter exclaimed. "The more they insist that their rights are being trampled by 'filthy gays' trying to live with the same rights and access as anyone else, the more their followers swoon under their sway!"

I was no longer even trying to parse any of this.

"Don't get that glazed look," Dieter cried, sounding hurt. "The look of a shinily-sugary glazed donut made by an anti-gay baker who won't sell the same said donut to the hordes of gays who mysteriously want his anti-gay carbs," he added, unprompted.

My glazed eyes were now rolling impatiently.

"It's like you say," my cousin continued. "Why should gays want anything from people who scorn and contemn them?"

I made a note to try the word "contemn" in my next round of Words with Friends -- assuming, of course, it turned out to be a word at all.

"Yes, that's 'contemn' with a T, not a D," Dieter added, peering at my notepad. "And here's the thing: If the free market were just allowed to run its natural course, the problem would be solved. This whole lawsuit in Colorado against the baker who wouldn't bake a cake for a gay wedding..."

"Same-sex wedding," I said sharply. "Weddings aren't straight or gay. The people getting married might be, but weddings..."

"Yes, yes," Dieter yawned. "So," he resumed, with a sudden spurt of fresh, ADD-addled energy, "think of all the advantages to letting anti-gay bakers simply not make money off gay customers. I mean, are you all crazy? Trying to force some bakery bigot to take your hard-earned cash in exchange for a pastry? Really?! Maybe try this: Give your money to someone who actually wants your business! Inhabit the 21st century and start Yelping about it! Who needs lawsuits? That's so, like, antediluvian. It's, like, practically the same thing as muskets at twenty paces."

"Hold up," I asked, pen scratching, "A... N... T... I? E?"

"Hey!" Dieter snapped, snatching the quill from my hand. "You're not even listening to me!"

"Are you talking?" I asked. "Are those random syllables coming from your direction actually language? Are you making sentences? Or even paragraphs?"

"To re-frame," Dieter stated with a deadly patience and a glower, "there's no down-side to spreading the word via contemporary social media about bigoted business owners, letting them lose their customers, seeing their shops close, and allowing non-judgmental proprietors to rise in their place. If they don't want your money -- what the hell. Don't give it to them. Why do we need the courts or the government interceding at this point? Back in the day was one thing. Now we've reached a point where the marketplace itself has woken up to the opportunities inherent in equality. If one guy won't make your rainbow cupcakes, another guy will. Or..." He leaned forward with a twinkle. "Gal."

"Are you trying to get me to write about 'Baked by Melissa?' " I asked.

"Why wouldn't you?"

The New York-based bakery had just announced its "limited edition Wildberry Pride cupcake," timed to coincide with New York's Pride festivities.

"Well," I ruminated, "why wouldn't I?"

It had taken a considerable amount of dissecting, interpretation, and a consultation or two with an oracle and an out of print edition of an eldritch volume titled "The Dictionary of Orsus," but finally I had pieced together what my lunatic cousin was talking about. Dieter, who is a bit of a DINO (he votes Democrat... or claims to... but spouts the fiscal conservative party line) was riffing once more on the Wisdom of the Capitalist Market. His argument, in thirty seconds or less:

Pursuing our right to be served equally by anti-gay business owners could backfire if we use legal channels to secure that right. Instead, why not use social media to clue in our friends, family, and the community at large to bakers, hoteliers, and so forth, who refuse to provide us goods and services because their personal beliefs dictate their professional conduct to the point of excluding us?

There are several reasons why court intervention and anti-discrimination laws are good things, in my opinion, but I had to concede that Dieter had a point, if only this: The anti-gay "Christians" who are so terrified of the dollars they might make from gay customers that they won't extend their services to us might, being businesspeople, have a higher calling than the cherry-picked, poorly-translated scriptures they use as their (ir-)rational basis for denying us. That higher power is money. They may think they don't want our cash, but if we stopped spending it at bigoted businesses they would eventually have to rethink that position.

Maybe they'd even get a little more educated about their own sacred scriptures, which condemn heterosexual divorce much more strongly and with far less ambiguity than they attack gays. (That whole thing about gay sex being an "abomination?" Science fiction, based on a mistranslation of the original word. Turns out the scriptures, in their own language, warned the Jews that certain sexual temple rites were taboos for Jewish people, not "abominations" for Christians, secular folk, or anyone else.) I mean, we are talking about people who overlap with, or lie close to, the whole "prosperity gospel" thing, right? You know, the interpretation of the Good Word that basically says money is God's way of showing he loves you? Turns out money isn't just speech; it's also piety. But notions of piety, like anything else, change over time. Looks to me like money takes a hand in that process. Sooner or later, the primacy of money re-writes all doctrines and ideologies. That, as far as I can tell, is the "Wisdom of the Marketplace."

"Hey!" Dieter objected, seeing me type those words. "That is not what I'm saying!!"

I'm not just being snarky here. Have you seen the news? The United States is now officially an Oligarchy. Money, not voters, set the national agenda. If we've seen a huge jump in equality over the last few years, it's in large part due to the fact that the homophobic scales have fallen away from the eyes of big business, which sees that GLBT employees are dedicated, talented, devoted, hard-working, and good for the bottom line. The anti-gay small-fry are a fading blip who are driving their own demise. Bet we see Gay Days at Chick-Fil-A before too many years pass by.

"You are totally putting words in my mouth!" Dieter snarled, even as I typed his next line of dialogue.

Yep, and good call on "Baked by Melissa," cuz. That's one company that deserves some rainbow colored props!

"Don't change the subject!" Dieter wailed. Ah, but we arrived at the end of the column, and (though I hate to pull a Bill O'Reilly on anyone, even my raving cousin) the exchange came to a halt with me having the last word and Dieter gnashing his teeth.

Albeit, on a rainbow-colored cupcake.