Will We Surrender on Religious Freedom?

“They won’t go to Indiana, but they will go to Saudi Arabia.” That’s Carly Fiorina speaking about Apple CEO Tim Cook and his well-publicized opposition to Indiana’s religious freedom law.

Fiorina, a former CEO herself, was underscoring what she quite rightly views as hypocrisy. Here Cook is, excoriating Indiana lawmakers for protecting the freedom of business owners to act according to their consciences. Yet he has no qualms when it comes to doing business in countries where homosexuality is a crime punishable by death.

The double standard is truly remarkable. Maybe the oxygen content in room air gets thin at the top levels of some corporations. Something has to account for this myopia. Whatever the cause, it’s contributing to a level of near-hysteria about Indiana’s law (30 other states provide the same legal standard)—and making it nearly impossible for its true goals to be understood.

Unfortunately, our hashtag-addicted, ADD culture doesn’t grasp nuances well. We’d rather, say, bully a pizzeria into closing for honestly answering a question about whether they’d be willing to cater a same-sex wedding. We won’t listen. We’d rather shout.

Had we listened, we’d know the owners of Memories Pizza hadn’t refused service to a soul. They were responding to a hypothetical situation. And they never said they’d turn away a customer who ordered a pizza. They said they wouldn’t cater a same-sex wedding, which they feel would imply that they condoned the union.

You can agree or disagree with that belief. But what could be more American than respecting their right to believe it and act upon it, free of persecution?

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