The Price of Honesty

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court found itself at the center of a cultural firestorm. A Colorado baker had declined to create a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple, citing his religious beliefs. The case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, was watched closely across the nation. In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the baker, concluding that his First Amendment rights protected his religious beliefs and he can’t be penalizing for refusing to bake a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

The issue was hardly new. Americans old enough to remember the 1950s recall a time when businesses openly refused service to Black customers. Restaurants, hotels, barbershops, and countless other establishments displayed signs announcing who was welcome and who was not. The rationale varied, but the result was always the same: exclusion. Entire classes of people found themselves denied access to ordinary aspects of daily life because others had decided they were unworthy. In this case, the constitution went the other way, in favor of the protected class.

But what happens when the merchant isn’t exercising a constitutional right in refusing service? Or what happens when the customer isn’t part of a protected class? Is a business that holds itself out to provide service to the public able to refuse service to people they don’t like?

This week, a story out of Wales illustrated that reality. According to reports, a man entered a tattoo studio in Carmarthen seeking a tattoo. The artist began the work. The process had already started when the conversation somehow turned to the customer’s past. The man was candid. He disclosed that he had previously been convicted of a sex offense. At that moment, everything changed. The artist reportedly ordered him out of the studio. The internet erupted in applause.

Society’s treatment of registrants is unique. There are many categories of offenders, yet none, including murder, carry a stigma so powerful that it follows a person into nearly every aspect of life, long after a sentence has been completed.

You may be asking yourself; ‘who would want to be tattooed by someone who hates them anyhow’? But that’s not the point here… The scenario can be different and it often is. It could be that you’re out for lunch with a bunch of co-workers, your server recognizes your picture from the registry and the manager kicks you out of the restaurant. Or you’re buying something off a retail shelf. These situations come up all the time and here in Brevard County, Florida, there’s an ordinance that allows businesses to declare themselves to be off limits to registrants forcing people on the registry to stay 1000 feet a way!

Can a merchant prevent a customer from shopping in their store? Should people on the registry go through greater lengths to hide their past?

Registrants are told that accountability requires candor. They are instructed to be truthful about their history. They are told that honesty demonstrates responsibility. They are told that rehabilitation begins with acknowledging the past rather than concealing it. But what lesson are we supposed to learn from incidents like this? If honesty results in rejection, what incentive exists to be honest? If disclosure means humiliation, exclusion, and public condemnation, while hiding offers at least the possibility of being treated normally, what message are we sending?

These situations come up all the time. Maybe a tattooist doesn’t need to know your life history, especially when they are holding a needle and drawing a permanent mark on your body, but that’s a rare example. There are plenty of common examples where you’re put in a situation where you have to say, “look, before you hear it from someone else, I want to tell you…” or “before I make this payment, let me just let you know…” or “since it may eventually come up, I want to be honest about why I can’t…”. Or, there’s Brevard, where it’s the County that says you can’t go within 1000 feet of certain businesses and there’s no conversation to even have.

We are told to “tell the truth.” But then society punishes people when they do.