Let’s begin today by going back to everybody’s favorite whipping boy, Gary Johnson, and everybody’s favorite subject, compulsory gay wedding cakes. Here’s a portion of the recent interview with Johnson conducted by Reason’s Nick Gillespie:
GILLESPIE: Let’s talk about your stance on religious-liberty issues, which has angered a lot people on the right and many libertarians. Your position is that you essentially want to extend anti-discrimination protections for race and gender to cover sexual orientation when it comes to businesses that are open to the public. Yet you support an opt-out for vaccinations. Why not support an opt-out for the religious owner of a business who doesn’t want to bake a gay Nazi wedding cake?
JOHNSON: Because it would create a new exemption for discrimination. At the end of the day we’re just going to agree to disagree. But you bring me specific legislation dealing with a cake baker not having to decorate a cake for a Nazi and I’ll sign it.
At the risk of being deliberately misquoted by the New York Times, I’m compelled to point out that if there exists a group in the modern Western world that is the consistent victim of unremitting, crushing discrimination, Nazis are that group. Nazis are so relentlessly discriminated against that here we have anti-discrimination law champion Gary Johnson, in the middle of his screed about the evils of discrimination and the important role government can play in fighting it, pausing to explain that he believes the anti-discrimination laws themselves should discriminate against Nazis. That, my friends, is some hardcore discrimination.