Do you refuse cakes to Jews, Hindus, and Muslims? Non-religious weddings? Do you only bake cakes for members of your tiny little sect, be it only 5 or almost 500 years old (such old)? Do you ask if your couples will engage in sex during Lent or other fasting times? Do you ask them if they will go to Church and raise their children to be Christian? Do you ask into the sexual practices of every couple that arrives at your door, denying cakes for those who use birth control, who engage in other sex acts beyond the procreative function? Historic Christianity forbids not only sexual activities not allowing for procreation, but also forbids sex acts prior to marriage or outside of marriage all together. Thomas Aquinas says any sex outside of marriage is intrinsically disordered – the same language used for same-sex sexual activity. He does not allow that male-female sex is “natural” as compared to “unnatural” but rather even the desire to have such action is disordered – because that’s not why God gave us sex.
Or do you only deny cakes and flowers for the one or two gay people that might show up at your door having heard good things about you from friends who love them deeply enough to wish them well at their ceremonies?
I’ve never had any qualms at all about attending the weddings of people who do not practice my faith (or any faith). If they are people I love, I love them. Likewise I don’t need to wonder about their sex lives, no matter what their sexes.
That is all.
I know the Orthodox Church’s teaching regarding sex and marriage. I know her teachings on idolatry, rejection of icons, and heretical sects as well. I can pray that my friends find lives more in conformity with God’s will and I can be Orthodox and – remembering the Lenten prayer of St Ephrem – assume their salvation is between them and God; but with my own sinfulness they will get into heaven before I even see the light of judgement day, on which day I will be condemned for my real sins of thought, word, and deed in exactly the same way that I condemn others now for the sins I only imagine them to be committing.
Let him who is without sin throw the first stone. In the meanwhile, I’ll thank you to claim your own religion and leave mine and the name of my Lord out of it.
On the other hand, Do you need a cake baked? Call this sinner. And pray for him.
Doxos 