There has been a lot of stories in the media lately concerning marriage equality and businesses that assert the right to withholding services to participants of same-sex weddings. In almost every case a very sly bit of slight-of-hand is used in these stories that subtly bias the piece.

Word choice is paramount in writing, Mark Twain advised aspiring writers to always use the precise word, noting that there is a world of difference between ‘lightning and lightning bug.’ A similar but I suspect quite deliberate word substitution going on in many of these pieces. Consider the following sentence:

The baker has strong religious convictions.

That’s a clear, declarative statement that is perfectly logical. Now let’s change one word:

The bakery has strong religious convictions.

Huh? How does a bakery have religious convictions, strongly held or otherwise. A bakery is a business, a company, a baker is a person and the two are not the same.

What is going on is that the person who owns the bakery is asserting that his business has the same religious beliefs as a person does and the owner is doing it to retain the option of    discriminating who is served and under what conditions.

I assure that this concept that the baker and the bakery are one and the same is purely a marriage of convenience. Let that bakery produce a product that poisons a wedding party and you will swiftly find that the baker’s assets are separate and protected from the bakery’s assets.