The state of Indiana seemed to catch the right moment to spark a national debate on protection of religious freedom as Easter and Passover approached. On Thursday, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed an amendment to the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or the RFRA, emphasizing that the law is not a license to discriminate but meant to protect citizens’ right to believe. 

Many were confused as to why states need additional laws to protect religious freedom when the First Amendment already protects that. Mainstream media outlets immediately seized the chance of demonizing Indianapolis as the new Selma. 

The backlash and fury pointing to RFRA were greatly amplified when a TV reporter asked a family-owned pizza shop how it would respond to requests of catering a gay wedding. The owner, Kevin O’Connor, who is a Christian, said his family would prefer to not participate in a same-sex couple’s ceremony. All of a sudden, O’Connor was receiving an outpouring of hatred toward him, his family and his pizza restaurant. 

The media has tried to navigate the public opinion by describing Christians as hateful and anti-gay while describing the LGBT community as one that has been oppressed and its rights trampled on. A high school basketball coach even tweeted, “Who’s going to Walkerton, IN to burn down #memoriespizza w me? ” The pressure mounted to a point that O’Connor had to shut down his restaurant and has no idea when he will open it again.  

Incidents such as this have dramatically increased in the past few years across the country. This is exactly why a state law to protect religious freedom is needed. The Constitution does not specifically state how the right to exercise religions should be protected and define what religious freedom is. Indiana has set a precedent of what states can do to protect religious freedom. 

In fact, the RFRA is more than a law protecting religious freedom; it’s an action that will restore people’s common sense of how to respect others’ beliefs and how to interact with people with different faiths. 

It reminds us of the common sense that exchange in a market economy is a conditional activity. Any business transactions are not based only on buyers’ and sellers’ consensus on prices but also plenty of hidden conditions that most of us ignore. The first principle of doing business is that it is mutually voluntary. A person with mental sanity would not force a seller to sell items at a price that is beyond the seller’s request. The same concept applies to the O’Connor case. Price is one of the conditions that makes a deal, but not the sufficient one. In O’Connor’s case, he felt that catering a party for a gay couple is in direct conflict of his Christian faith. Thus he was not obligated to proceed in the transaction and had no liability to the other party.  

The RFRA also reminds us that Christians are usually the targets in the name of protecting civil rights, marriage equality or anti-discrimination. But why don’t those who bullied O’Connor walk into a Muslim or Jewish bakery and ask them to bake a gay wedding cake?  Comedian Steven Crowder posted a video of him asking a number of Muslim bakeries in Dearborn, Michigan, to bake a wedding cake with two men holding hands on top of it. His experiment clearly showed that many of the bakeries refused to serve him. Following the logic of those who stand against the law, these bakeries would be all discriminatory. As he concluded, the RFRA is not about discrimination against people, but rather to preserve the rights for private businesses to determine the level of engaging in particular activities. 

It would be mistaken to have the perception that the RFRA legalizes discrimination against people based on sexual orientation or race. As O’Connor explained to the media, he would not refuse to service members of the LGBT community. If they walk into their store and order pizza, they are absolutely treated the same as others. It is illegal to screen people’s race, gender and sexual orientation as conditions to service them. Thus the RFRA has no relation to discrimination and civil rights. 

My advice of how to interact with people whose faith is radically different from you: Leave them alone peacefully, rather than aggressively forcing them to agree with your view.