Wyoming Equality has the right to discriminate. They have a right to treat me differently than they treat others, just because of what I believe. They have the right to refuse me employment, just because of who I am. When they declined to speak and act in support of my views, they were perfectly within their rights.

Likewise, bakeries, florists and printers who think like Wyoming Equality have the right to refuse my request to create pastries, arrangements or prints that contradict the message they want to send. They have the right to call you and me bigots, homophobes and haters. They even have a right to say that we are morally wrong.

Every single day, groups like these exercise their first amendment rights. And it hurts. It hurts me, personally. It shames me publicly — as it is intended to — and it has created a climate where people who share the same ideas that I do are materially harmed on a regular basis. It hurts, but I still defend their right to discriminate.

Some, like Memories Pizza in Indiana, were forced to close due to threats of arson and bodily harm. Others, like Melissa’s Sweet Cakes in Oregon, had their equipment vandalized. Still more have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to the harassment and fines of their own state or city governments.

Businesses like Elane Photography, Arlene’s Flowers and Masterpiece Cake Shop have been shuttered. Public servants like Kelvin Cochrane and Ruth Neely have been fired for expressing their beliefs off the job.

Discrimination is happening every day, in plain sight. I wish it would stop. I have personally talked with LGBT lobbyists and asked them to stop. I have publicly written in these pages asking to be included in a serious conversation of how we might work together to stop it. (“Let’s Work Together to Protect All Wyo. Citizens,” Jan. 3)

There are many other civic-minded people as well who sincerely want to join hands to protect all Wyoming citizens from harm to both their person and property. Instead, two Cheyenne city councilmen have been working in secret with Wyoming Equality for months, refusing every request even to see a draft of what they are working on.

It is clearer every day that the real point of the ordinance is not to stop actual discrimination but to insert “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” language into city code. That’s the whole thing. Anybody who thinks there’s a better way to address discrimination is excluded from the table.

Advocating for this SOGI language, Wyoming Equality’s Sara Burlingame has a favorite talking point which was quoted in the WTE last Thursday: “[it is] currently legal to fire, evict or refuse service to someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.” (Councilmen Again Pushing for Protections for LGBT Residents, July 20, 2017)

Of course, this is true. But it’s a half truth — rather, it is a scintilla of the truth. The whole truth is that it is currently legal to fire, evict or refuse service to someone because of their political party, hair color, height, weight, IQ, schooling, tattoos and a million other relevant and irrelevant factors.

But is anyone saying that we should include all of this in an ordinance? That would be silly. Laws are not given to make everybody virtuous, or to make everybody do whatever I think they ought to do.

Laws are passed when there is actual harm that is happening which needs to be stopped, not simply when there is potential harm few, if any, are actually doing. So where is the actual harm? Who, exactly, has been denied employment or housing based on sexual orientation or gender identity? We have been debating these SOGI laws for years and still haven’t seen one single case of this kind of discrimination in Wyoming.

Andrew Koppelman, a law professor and progressive activist, has studied discrimination nationwide and found, “Hardly any of these cases have occurred: a handful in a country of 300 million. In all of them, the people who objected to the law were asked directly to facilitate same-sex relationships by providing wedding, adoption, or artificial insemination services or rental of bedrooms. There have been no claims of a right to simply refuse to deal with gay people.”

Again, there have been no claims of a right to simply refuse service to gay people. None. What people are claiming is the right to decline saying things, by word or deed, that they don’t believe to be true. They simply want the same right that Wyoming Equality exercises every day.

For this reason, I find it offensive and disingenuous when people who are defending the First Amendment are smeared as “haters” who want to deny service to certain people. Those who make these unjust claims know better. They just don’t want to talk about the real issue.

There simply is no rising tide of discrimination against people on the basis of gender ideology. But there is, demonstrably, a rising trend to punish people who disagree with gender ideology. So why would Cheyenne want to jump on that bandwagon?

Perhaps Rolling Stone magazine offers a clue. In a June 23 article, “Meet the Megadonor Behind the LGBT Rights Movement,” Andy Kroll details how the software mogul, Tim Gill, is stealthily using his $500 million fortune to bankroll SOGI legislation across the country.

Most interesting for Wyomingites is that he is not giving his money to national candidates. Instead, he is quietly giving thousands of dollars to elect LGBT-friendly state legislators and to advance local SOGI ordinances.

Perhaps someone should ask Richard Johnson and Scott Roybal if they are writing Cheyenne’s ordinance alone or if the Gill Foundation is calling the shots. Kroll relates how even the ACLU was forced to sing Gill’s tune. If it can do that, it’s not too far-fetched to consider the same possibility in Cheyenne.

But let’s get back to Wyoming Equality’s right to discriminate. Do I want to pass a law that strips them of these rights? By no means. I will reason and cajole. I will seek to persuade them both publicly and privately to respect my person and my ideals. But I will never, ever, seek the force of law to hinder their rights to speak and act according to their convictions. I wish they would do the same for me.

Forbidding convictions is not only unAmerican, but it’s unhuman. No matter how passionately I disagree with someone’s philosophy, there is one thing that we should always be able to agree on: The freedom to speak and act according to one’s convictions comes from a source higher than government. It derives from our common humanity.

Government has no right to take it away. We shouldn’t give it the power. The sweetness of a momentary victory comes at a bitter cost to our common dignity.

Right now, people on both sides of the issue are free to say and do things that challenge the other side. We are both free to disagree using reason, logic, morals, beliefs and even feelings. In this respect, the playing field is level.

We can all hope, pray, and work to see that we use our freedoms in charity and in mutual respect. But an ordinance which takes rights away from one side of the debate will not bring about love and respect. It will only slant the playing field.

Jonathan Lange has a heart for our state and community. Locally, he has raised his family and served as pastor of Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Evanston and St. Paul’s in Kemmerer for two decades. Statewide, he leads the Wyoming Pastors Network in advocating for the traditional church in the public square.