Discrimination

I have been following for the last few years the vigorous efforts on the part of a few businesses owned by Christians to acquire the legal right to deny their services to persons whom they believe to be, I guess you would have to say, sinners.  One such situation involved a wedding catering group which argued that their firmly held Christian beliefs prohibited them from involving themselves in a gay marriage celebration.  This seems to me stupefyingly un-American in that we are a mongrel country, a people of enormously different and divergent belief systems, united by our belief in the supreme value of liberty with a constitution that specifically prohibits a state religion; ergo all beliefs are private and those involved in publicly sanctioned commerce cannot discriminate.  Historically we have come together as a society that accepted difference. My indignation is enormous, and fueled in large part by what I have had to endure through the years of my teaching career by students who arrogantly wanted to impose their belief systems upon my teaching and the classroom experience.  I think, for instance, what I have encountered so very frequently.  The class will be studying Sophocles' Oedipus the King and a number of students will insist that "he is punished for his sins."  First of all, I will insist that he is not "punished."  His abdication as king and his self-mutilation are his own attempts to impose upon himself some sense of personal responsibility for what he has done.  This is a noble act by a human being, actually supremely arrogant in its way, to wrest from fate the responsibility where it truly belongs.  Oedipus really "did" nothing.  He went out of his way to leave Corinth just to avoid what the oracle had foretold; he was blameless in that ancient culture for his attack on the man who barred his progress at the crossroads; as any heroic figure newly arrived into a state he would be the natural spouse for the reigning monarch (every legend suggests this), and as such he marries the widowed queen.  Fate "acted" upon him, he "did" nothing.  But many Christian students will have none of it.  He  is a parricide who commits incest: these are "sins."  There is no way to get them to understand that sin is the knowing transgression of the laws of god, and that the ancient Greeks had no such moral or religious system. "The Bible says so, God says so." Whatever these tiresome mindless children learned in their Bible classes must trump investigation, discussion, the acceptance of alternative value systems.  There they sit in their know-nothing splendor braying at the top of their lungs about things they know nothing about.  If the catering service can deny the gays, why have I not had the right to keep such knee jerk Christians out of my classes?