Tony Perkins, president of the anti-LGBTQ group Family Research Council, told fellow anti-LGBTQ activist Jon Scruggs, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, that the thought of requiring a business to offer equal access to goods for gay people sounded “like indentured servitude.”
Yesterday, on FRC’s “Washington Watch” program, Perkins hosted Scruggs on air to discuss the Supreme Court arguments in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. Perkins told Scruggs that requiring business owners not to discriminate against LGBTQ people seemed like a “slippery slope and there’s really no end to what the government could then force you to do.” Scruggs said he agreed because the attorneys arguing for nondiscrimination protections believe that calligraphers should be forced to write wedding vows and that bakers should have to write “bless this marriage” on a purchased cake if requested, which Scruggs called “scary things.”
“That sounds like to me, John, that sounds like indentured servitude. You have no choice in the matter. Yes, they’re compensating you, they’re giving you something, but you have no say as to what you do with your talent, your ability and your skills,” Perkins said.
Scruggs agreed, adding, “And even worse, not just that type of servitude based off of something that’s irrelevant, but something that cuts against the core of who you are.”
