Wedding Photographer Has The Perfect Response After Losing A Client Who Opposed Gay Marriage

[KamaAina]

https://www.distractify.com/all-we-see-is-love-1223427907.html

Like many people on Friday, Clinton Lee, a photographer from St. Petersburg, Florida, donned rainbows to show his support for marriage equality.

Clinton also made a post saying he would be happy to photograph any same-sex weddings over the weekend. "All we see is love," he wrote.

Most people were ecstatic at his support. But one client sent him a message saying they would no longer be using him for their upcoming wedding because he supports gay marriage.

The couple also asked for their deposit back, which the contract they had already signed stated was non-refundable. But, Clinton explained that he wasn't going to keep it, because he had already donated their $1,500 to GLAD - a Gay Rights charity.

[wordpix]

1. nice response, excellent!

[mnhtnbb]

2. Good one!

[retrowire]

3. Boom

karma justice is served.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

4. I hope the donation was in their name.

[SoapBox]

5. Excellent.

[angrychair]

6. great story

I cant help but remark on the audacity of these bigoted assholes to even think they had a right to ask for their deposit back. I mean think of the degree of fuckery you have to descend into to even make the request. there about as worthless as abstinence only education is to Bristol Palin.

[RiverNoord]

9. I agree that most are bigoted assholes, but

there are some generally decent people who genuinely believe that their religion requires them to oppose gay marriage. I'm an atheist, but I can't completely dismiss all who take such a position as assholes. I do believe that they are entirely wrong, but some systems of belief will always divide some people from some other people. That reality will never change.

Such people are definitely the minority - most are point-blank bigoted or, perhaps moreso, homophobes.

However, it doesn't take a bigot to want money back in completely inappropriate circumstances - that's been happening every since money has existed...

[angrychair]

13. I see your point

I'm also an atheist and as a general rule-of-thumb try not to come out swinging on the religious (of any kind) right from the beginning but let them step in their own mess. While I do know some religious people, who may otherwise be good people, they will always be perceived to be of questionable intelligence, to some degree, for their adherence to a mythological belief system and often their insistence in drawing me into compliance with their disillusion.

[RiverNoord]

28. I guess I see it a little differently.

There's a major difference between low intelligence and a low tolerance for challenging beliefs that you are comfortable with. Very intelligent people can, instead of questioning an aspect of a belief system when it is challenged, develop intricate conceptual frameworks that provide the structure to maintain the original belief system, or modify it just enough to sustain what they consider to be the most important elements of it.

Lots of very smart 'theologians' have been doing exactly that for millennia. It's amazing how religions grow out of generally contradictory hand-me-down stories into intricate systems of belief, though almost always with enough room for alternate interpretations to allow for schisms and outright warfare over alternate interpretations...

[marym625]

18. Sorry, but genuinely decent people don't discriminate and aren't bigots.

Last edited Thu Jul 2, 2015, 02:20 AM - Edit history (1)

Religious or not.

My grandmother was a devout Catholic. She fasted on Fridays long after that was done away with and long after, had it still been in place, was past the age it had to be followed. She never missed Sunday mass. She still spoke most of it in Latin. She prayed from her prayer book every night and every morning. She said the rosary I don't know how often. She wore a scapular. She gave money to the church every Sunday even when she couldn't afford it. And so many more things a good Catholic did.

But in the 30s she let her little daughter attend a protestant service with her friend. In the 40s she welcomed her divorced brother into her home. In the 50s she complained to the church when they wouldn't allow the child of a friend that committed suicide to be buried in the Catholic cemetery. And in the 80s she cried with the lover of her gay grandson when he was dying of AIDS.

So no, genuinely decent people don't discriminate because of religion

[Bernardo de La Paz]

24. +1 Excellent telling of a great example. nt

[marym625]

25. Thank you eom

[RiverNoord]

27. Everybody discriminates, in some fashion.

Nobody treats all people exactly alike on the basis of qualities, attributes, or behavior. You're actually bigoted against people you perceive to be bigoted. Most of us probably are. Not every single person, on the subject of the present matter, who considers homosexuality to be some kind of moral wrong and therefore behaves negatively in the presence of a gay person is a bigot.

Here's Mirriam Webster's full online American English definition of a bigot:

A person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

And here's the Cambridge Dictionaries Online definition of a bigot:

A person who has strong, unreasonable ideas, esp. about race or religion, and who thinks anyone who does not have the same beliefs is wrong.

Notice the words 'obstinately,' intolerantly,' and 'unreasonable.' One person's 'obstinate' may be another's 'determined.' 'Intolerant' applies to us all - nobody tolerates everybody, all of the time, regardless of their behavior. And 'unreasonable' is a lawyer's nightmare - standards defining something as illegal or actionable based on behavior that is 'unreasonable' abound, and all it means is that a judge or jury gets to decide what's reasonable or not.

It sounds like your grandmother was a very good person, and it's great that you were exposed to her tolerance for people and circumstances that her church told her she should not be. However, not everyone is capable of taking an opposing position to what they have been taught is right and wrong. Some people (I'll put myself in this group) reach a point where they question anyone's assertion of what 'should' and 'shouldn't' be. Others, through temperament or simply a great deal of comfort with the conditions they associate with their belief system, have their belief system set by what they are told to believe, and will have a very hard time forming the necessary logic structure and pain tolerance necessary to either seriously question or act in a manner directly contrary to their belief system. Not all of these people are bigots - why would it be unreasonable or obstinate to consider a person's sexual behavior (we would say identity or orientation, and only because we have, through one or another means or circumstances, been exposed to education that demonstrates the difference) something to disapprove of when you have been told repeatedly, by people you trust and believe, that it should be?

The only reason I would bother with all of this is that it's my belief that bigotry based on religious beliefs usually gets more insular, and intensifies, when met with 'you're a bigot.' Sometimes that's the only way a situation can be handled, but rarely. Bigotry can stretch out for years, decades, centuries, when people who have been indoctrinated in one way of thinking can't understand why people they see as wrongheaded aggressively oppose them by calling them bigots. It only sends most right back to the people who share their belief system, and together they find ways to explain what is wrong with those who opposed them. And to say that someone isn't decent because they are acting on indoctrinated beliefs is ignorant. There may be something seriously wrong with the belief structure, but it didn't come about in a complete vacuum in which every person is able to critically analyze all of the ramifications of adherence to it. If the opposite was true, religion would die out in a few decades.

[marym625]

29. Sorry, but genuinely decent people don't discriminate and aren't bigots.

You can use every or any excuse you want. It is bigotry no matter what your religious beliefs happen to be. If you believe in the doctrine that gay people are bad, you're a bigot

[cstanleytech]

19. Correction, its "stupid bigoted assholes" because they clearly didnt read the contract

they agreed to and signed.
Sadly though there are alot of them and there are even some bigoted assholes here on the DU though thankfully they are rare and dont last long here usually before they are tombstoned.

[RiverNoord]

7. LOL - nicely done.

[awoke_in_2003]

8. For every haters that doesn't book him...

I bet 10 more will. Screw the haters- they are losing and they just don't know it yet.

[MadDAsHell]

10. :) nt

[Initech]

11. This wins the internet for today!!

[bvf]

12. Perfect!

I hope GLAD sends a thank-you note to the couple in question, provided Lee sent the info along with the donation.

Either way, perfect.

[niyad]

14. I believe the organization is GLAAD.

nicely done, and I do hope he did it in their names!

[intheflow]

17. Thank you.

That was a big, glaring mistake in an otherwise interesting snippet.

[Liberal_in_LA]

15. good response

[marym625]

16. K&R!

Beautiful!

[nightscanner59]

20. The more the "moral" troglodytes do to enforce their values onto everyone

The more they make themselves out to be on the idiotic side of history.

[Catherine Vincent]

21. Love it!

[yellowcanine]

22. So, never mind that he is a good photographer - he supports gay marriage!

What, that taints him somehow? No they should not get their deposit back.

[niyad]

23. the contract they signed said the deposit is non-refundable, period, end of discussion.

[C Moon]

26. They asked how they could get their retainer fee back. :D boneheads!