Jeb Bush Says Gays Can Have Flowers, But Not Gay Flowers

Jul 17, 2015

Jeb Bush is saying words with his mouth again, and as we all know, that doesn't tend to go well. Speaking at Thumbtack, a start-up in San Francisco, Jeb! attempted to answer the age old question: Should people discriminate against gays by refusing to sell them flowers?

“I don’t think you should be discriminated because of your sexual orientation. Period. Over and out,” he replied.

Over and out! So no discrimination, that's good. But should people discriminate against gays by refusing to sell them flowers?

“The fact that there wasn’t a law doesn’t necessarily mean you would have been discriminated against.”

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See, it's all fine. Nobody should discriminate against gays, even if there's not a law specifically prohibiting that. (By the by, the EEOC just ruled that anti-gay discrimination equals sex discrimination according to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, so we're a lot closer to having a nationwide law for that.)

But should people discriminate against gays by refusing to sell them flowers?

Citing the frequently-used example by religious freedom advocates, Bush said that in the case of a florist approached by a gay couple, “you should be obligated to sell them flowers, doing otherwise would be discriminatory.”

This is all fantastic! Jeb Bush is super pro-gay, and he says that you shouldn't discriminate against people because of their sexual orientations, and you should sell them flowers, if flowers are what they want, because otherwise, you'd be discriminating against them.

But we still haven't answered the question: Should people discriminate against gays by refusing to sell them flowers?

But he said that the objecting florist should not be required to participate in the wedding, a fine line that he hopes will appeal to all sides of the debate.

Ohhhh. So the gays get flowers, as long as they're not going to use the flowers to gay marry somebody, otherwise the florist would be "participating in the wedding," in which case the gays don't get flowers.

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