No since we have protected classes in this country. Admittedly LGBT isn't one of them right now on a federal level but the idea that private entities that run public establishments can discriminate is not accurate.
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NYT: Anticipating Nationwide Gay Marriage, States Weigh Religious Exemption Bills
- Thread starter ivysaur12
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No since we have protected classes in this country. Admittedly LGBT isn't one of them right now on a federal level but the idea that private entities that run public establishments can discriminate is not accurate.
That's what some would argue. The alternative is the argument that if you decide to have a business open to the public, you shouldn't be allowed to discriminate service based on skin color or gender or sexual orientation. Lots of these business get government tax breaks, many of them utilize publicly funded services. It's just not right to let them take that money and live in this country with taxes paid for by all and then allow them to simultaneously deny service to some of those tax payers.
Why won't they stop serving people who work on Saturdays? People who wear clothes made of two different kind of materials? Man who shave their beard or women who get their hair cut? People that had pre-marital sex? People who eat pork? People who eat shrimps? Will they stop serving all of those people?
Also: WHY ON EARTH WOULD A BUSINESS DECLINE SERVICE TO SOMEONE? Aren't business meant to sell stuff? "Ooh, but you like buttsex, we can't sell stuff to you"
SMH at the mental gymnastics.
Also: WHY ON EARTH WOULD A BUSINESS DECLINE SERVICE TO SOMEONE? Aren't business meant to sell stuff? "Ooh, but you like buttsex, we can't sell stuff to you"
SMH at the mental gymnastics.
Random Painted HIghway
Member
These guys are just begging for Scotus to declare orientation laws to require intermediate scrutiny, aren't they.
That makes sense. I was thinking of it from the perspective of if I'm a craigslist seller I can sell to whoever I want. At what point do I cross the line to something large enough where I must sell to anyone, and being registered in any way with the government would definitely make sense as that line.
HiredN00bs
Member
I always had a thirst for knowledge. The more I learned about the Bible and the real world, the more contradiction I encountered. I had uplifting spiritual experiences, but I couldn't honestly attribute them to my faith because I didn't actually knowno sane person does. It was a very slow process, probably about 10 years, but leaving faith is an extremely liberating experience.
Mango Positive
Member
I can't believe what my state (Jawja) is doing. Going all-in on being on the wrong side of history. I've contacted my congressman, but a fat lot of good it will do. I basically pleaded not only for common decency, but for the very reputation of our state and southerners in general. I am sick and fucking tired of being embarrassed to be a southerner.
Brawly Likes to Brawl
Member
Yeah, anybody who's trying to argue that this is anything other than discrimination needs to get their heads checked. I'm sorry, but being salty that two dudes or chicks can get married shouldn't lead to the law enabling bigotry. I'm sure that anybody who supports this bullshit wouldn't stand for a law allowing business owners to show you the door because you're Christian.
I can't believe you can't believe it. You're talking about the deep south here.
Being on the wrong side of history isn't exactly new territory for them.
CornBurrito
Member
That's hachi for you.
Gentleman Jack
Member
America doesn't need religion for that.
One's religion allows one to deny service based on bigotry? Huh. I wonder if such bills would ever see the light of day if there was a public campaign to point out that religion is being used as a shield for hatred and discrimination. Not cool. Gay people use the same currency as straight people. I got no issue offering my services to anyone willing to pay. Working for someone gay isn't going to make me gay. SMH. PEACE.
CornBurrito
Member
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
My mom would disagree, sadly
It's a real problem with making more and more outrageously 'this is a bad thing' metaphors; it's very difficult to find something that someone, somewhere, doesn't see anything wrong with
Christoff Yurievich
Member
A better question is how do they always have friends.
"You've written several sentences on why anyone who doesn't adhere to your exact orthodoxy of sexual liberation must be inherently bigoted and yet you've managed to come off a lot worse than if you just wrote "I hate religious people." You've infused it further with a simpleton's ideology that refuses to even engage on any points except generic and self-righteous outrage. You've then added a layer of bravado to cover your intense emotional investment."
*shrug* I don't think this kind of exchange gets us anywhere, though it may score you points here if that's what you seek. But I don't really see the need to score points or high-fives when you're in the majority view on this forum.
This is precisely why a careful legal process needs to be involved when a claim of conflict between religion and civic matters crops up: your comments are proving how misinformed the general public often is as to how religious doctrine exists. The difference between old Judaic laws of wearing two fabrics versus holding to sexual moral restrictions is immense, rooted in Christian practice and doctrine since the very first churches emerged, and developed consistently across two thousand years of church practice and theology. A judge can and should compare the claim to the context of the religion, and would be able to fairly and justly say that sexual morality is central to a person's religious community in this case, whereas any claim to something like fabric demonstrably is not.
Um, yes, pretty much. Read Matthew 15:11-20 and then follow this topic through Acts and the epistles. The reversal of the complex food purity regulations of Judaism was of central concern to early Christianity; the gospel was formulated right from the start as a matter of embracing all Gentiles and removing any barriers based in the racial or national purity of Israel, because the gospel's central message was to invite all people to God's table.
You'll balk, from the standpoint of contemporary sexual mores, at the fact that this open welcome was coupled with joining a new human community that held to even more restrained and ascetic doctrines of sexuality than that Judaic heritage, but the two were closely held together as the basis of the faith. You might find it impossible for these to go together, but the early Christians were known for two things: (1) high commitment to very restrictive sexual ethic within the church, and (2) highly visible commitment to helping and caring for others as a central form of worshiping God. These were followers of the crucified man who said both that even looking with lust at a woman who is not your wife (ie not committed to a lifetime self-denying covenant with you) can distort your heart from within, because sexual desire is like anger if left to its own devices of self-fulfillment, and that God is there in every person in need you encounter, so that if you want to imagine standing before God on trial, he'd say to any proud religiously boasting person that "I never knew you" because he wasn't there in the ceremonies, he was there in your fellow man's need. These are in fact tied together. Show a little respect for beliefs that are far outside your own.
Cute, but is displays an astounding ignorance of Christianity. Racial purity was opposed in its central documents from inception; the problems in America had much deeper roots in national identities and secular ideologies of human progress versus "savage" or less evolved groups, which is why you found that the people on the frontline of fighting for racial equality were often deeply religious, including MLK. You don't find that in the same shape at all in this debate, because racial concerns and sexual concerns are entirely different topics with almost no theoretical overlap whatsoever, and certainly no overlap in any theology.
Lawyers defending the gay marriage bans basically used the same language and arguments that Lawyers did defending interracial marriage bans.
Most of the District courts called them out on that fact.
Edit: Btw tradition is probably the weakest argument to use defending gay marriage bans and discrimination.
It was tradtion to ban interracial marriage and tradition to own slaves.
It's extremely hilarious yet sad to see people try it again.
PlayALLtheGames
Banned
Again, you type a lot but say very little.
Yes, business people can oppose the extension of marriage and they can exercise their right never to participate in a gay marriage ceremony for as long as they live. That has nothing to do with serving a customer who will, at some point later in time, be participating in said marriage.
You already sort of exposed the base of your argument with pleading to the sacredness and age of beliefs. You even made a case for someone's interpretation of gay marriage as being a "kind of parody" to become the legal basis for refusing service to a customer. Nobody in their right mind thinks this is a good idea. Your logic is just way off base.
Seth Enosh
Member
What's "lol" about that? This is what I was referring to (Mark 7), which has an explicit statement that all foods are clean:
benjipwns
Banned
Polygamy and Polyandry was tradition for thousands of years but suddenly that's all off limits to go back to!
We could also have a legal system that doesn't try to cast judgment on religious claims to authority.
This is also the first time these laws are being passed as a specific reaction to the inevitable nationwide ruling on gay marriage, instead of, say peyote usage, so I don't necessarily think that holds water.
And, gay marriage is a relatively new legal right in states outside of New England. This has not played out yet.
(Also, anyone who's not an idiot wouldn't discriminate against a couple by openly telling them they're not serving them because they're gay. That's just someone doing a bad job at their bigotry).
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
That isn't how these laws (which are already in effect, in one form or another, in a majority of U.S. states, as well as on the federal level) work. As I said in response to a similarly confused inquiry in an earlier thread on this topic:
The subjective intentions of the legislators won't necessarily (and shouldn't) influence a court's interpretation of the statute. You're complaining that these legislators are shooting at a bumblebee, but they're firing buckshot from sixty yards away. It's possible they'll accomplish their purported objective, but it still does a disservice to a valuable conversation over religious liberties to ignore the breadth of these laws in favor of one (merely) possible application. "I don't care what the law does, the people passing it are meanies!" just isn't good legal analysis.
Prototype Viktor
Member
Fish is so delicious, and that one gay guy made a shirt that feels so good against the skin ams their jealous of that
benjipwns
Banned
I imagine in some cases it's that they want them to know.
I also imagine there's far more anti-gay whoevers doing the kinds of things we named examples of earlier because they're smarter customer service people and know ways to turn away a customer you don't want to deal with for bigoted or religious reasons or because their screaming at you while their kids are screaming at them or they're stealing tips or whatever.
How easy is it to after discussing the project and they say it's for a gay wedding in some manner, you ask for the date and pull out your schedule and say, oh, I'm sorry we wouldn't be able to do that in time because of blah blah blah but I can recommend you try [X], they're very good too.
I mean if you go to get a car repair and they can't do it for whatever reason (no parts, too much backlog, etc.) a good place will recommend even a competitor because that actually builds trust with the customer.
Hell, places do it even when they don't have an actual reason but to avoid work.
Unless the government starts running sting operations I guess.
When you read an argument, attend carefully to how the different appeals in it actually function, and do not merely react to the keywords. When I made reference to history and tradition, it never took the form of "traditionally X was done, therefore X is good." The main topic here is not even what is universally good, so much as what one reasonably has a right to believe in and promote when belonging to a religious community, and to what extent this can or should be protected when it comes into conflict with civic scenarios. The question of tradition concerns whether a judge should compare, in context, the appeals of a religious person to the establishment of their religious affiliation in order to discern whether it is a legitimate case of conscience and belief versus merely a convenient excuse with little established relation to that religious affiliation. Pushing to not serve a gay person dinner could be easily rejected by any judicial process as not being in any way tied to the tenets of existing or historical Christian churches; but refusing to serve a wedding could be argued this way, insofar as the notion of a wedding having overt religious significance is at the center of this religion. The New Testament is framed, after all, by the central analogy of covenant and reunification between God and man as a grand wedding allegory, with Christ as the bridegroom redeeming humanity. That this has a long and still continuous history in theology is indeed relevant to disputes over religious conscience.
Relgion is never a basis for discrimination if you are running a public business. (At the very least)
Flatout, you run a business open to public, you cannot discriminate against protected classes and in Oregon, Gays are a protected class with regard to the Bakery.
No amount of hand waving about 'true belief and tradition' will sway a court.
We already done this song and dance with Loving vs Virginia and Tradition lost.
Seth Enosh
Member
Just because someone is honest doesn't make them an idiot. Some of these cases happened in states where gay marriage wasn't even legal, so it's likely the business owner thought they were OK to politely decline the job (I think that's how the New Mexico case played out for instance. The photographer declined to shoot a non-legal wedding ceremony and then got hauled into court and lost).
Generally these have been cases with persons declining to do specific speech rather than generically ejecting all gays from their business too. It's been mostly stuff like wedding cake bakers and photographers who might find out that it's a gay wedding only after they already agreed to a date, or a baker who agreed to do a cake but is then asked to put specific pro-gay marriage decorations on it. It's considerably harder to hide that sort of thing from a non-idiot customer and legal systems aren't stupid and can see past fake excuses.
CornBurrito
Member
Hachi, why do you want a theocracy so badly?
"I don't care what the law does, the people passing it are meanies!" is not at all what I said, and I don't see us agreeing on this point. You're passing laws with the explicit intention of giving people cover for one they reach a court room, especially in more conservatives states with a more conservative judiciary.
Well, New Mexico has a public accommodations law for sexual orientation. I was referring specifically to the florist in Oregon who specifically mentioned that she wouldn't do a gay wedding after someone asked her for one. Thinking through it, perhaps it's not as easy to necessarily refuse business because "we're busy" (and florists really only do this around Valentine's Day because they'll run out of flowers).
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
Well, I'm not. But how many states have interpreted their religious exemptions laws in the way you fear the bills discussed in your OP will operate?
How long has gay marriage been legal in the majority of states in America?
Escape Goat
Member
You know youve lost when you use "but some of my best friends are..." defense.
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
That's a relevant question only if you recognize a substantive distinction between refusing service to the celebrants of a wedding between persons of the same sex and refusing service to a person on the basis of his or her sexual orientation. Until this point, I thought you denied there was any such distinction. Was I wrong?
Loving vs Virginia had nothing to do with religious traditions. Anti-miscegenation laws were a product of the modern era based on racial purity movements with roots deep in enlightenment-era thinking on human progress. In contrast, ordering practices of marriage around certain sexual restraints is actually at the center of at least one major religion since its inception, and not merely socially associated with it in one ideologically charged context as was done with miscegenation; this is evident if you have even the slightest awareness of history.
Again, there is no distinction between those two ideas. I don't see how you continue to fail to grasp that.
What?
Bans against interracial marriage and the fight against de-segregation most definitely used religion and tradtion to defend themselves.
The sanctity of tradtional marriage, of the tradtional family, the same arguments used against interracial marriage are being used against Gay Marriage.
If you think otherwise you are ignorant of history.
What's next, you are going to tell me that the South didn't try to use the Bible as a reason to continue Slavery?
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
You misunderstand my last post. If there is no distinction, then it is irrelevant how long same-sex marriage has been recognized.
benjipwns
Banned
This is just a minor stickler point, but I don't think gay marriage is illegal in any states. As in I don't know of any in which you'd be arrested for holding a gay wedding and saying you're married.
The question is legal recognition of them on the same status with other marriages by the state.
If gay marriage isn't legal, a few gay couples might have commitment ceremonies, but the vast majority won't, or will go to states where gay marriage is legal -- Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, Iowa
lol
Well, some states did impose a monetary fine on any justice of the peace who tried to sign a marriage license for a gay couple (I think Michigan had this as well). Commitment ceremonies, especially since 2004, just aren't going to be common when there's a viable alternative, or the idea that this will all be taken care of in a few years anyway.
Read my post again, and read a history book or two after that. Of course many supporters couched all their political statements as appeals to God, but it is widely understood in scholarship that the sources of racial purity ideologies and of miscegenation laws came entirely from modern movements in biological understandings of racial separation, eugenics, etcetera. Read even the most landmark and orthodox text on race theory and law (Derrick Bell's Race, Racism, and American Law) and you'll see that he cites eugenics or theories of social evolution (Spencer, etc) as the root of these ideologies. And again, prominent Christian advocates were key in opposing miscegenation, including MLKing, who did so on profoundly orthodox Christian reasoning.
Use Ctrl-F to see that "Christian" was nowhere even mentioned or discussed in that decision, and have a look at the Wikipedia article on the case, which (correctly) sources that very phrase you quoted as "echoing Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's 18th-century [secular] interpretation of race." I'm sorry, but you're deeply "on the wrong side of history" (in this case, the established study of history) if you see the roots of this in Christian rather than secular race ideologies.
Well, there was that case in Northern Ireland. The baker refused to bake a cake with a pro-gay marriage slogan on it. It is unclear as to whether he would have refused them just because they were gay. The pro-gay marriage slogan seemed to be the issue though.
I personally don't think this is a simple issue at all. Regardless of what people may think, the prejudice comes from an extremely and deeply held conviction. Something that would deeply affect their own conscience. Of course a number of people don't really want to explore that, but it is something that really has to be considered.
Consider this analogy: Lets say there was a small bakery run by a homosexual couple, and someone ordered a cake with the slogan "Homosexuality is wrong and should be banned" on it, and the homosexual couple refused to make it. I'm pretty sure a number of people in this thread would understand the reasons why they refused, and would be extremely sympathetic to their cause if they were then forced by law to make the cake.
In both cases it would be an action that would deeply affect the parties involved and go against their own deeply held convictions. The funny thing is, both sides would consider that stance utterly detestable. It is a question of subjective moral values.
In terms of the Northern Ireland case, I feel if there is a compromise that could be made that is acceptable to both sides, then that should be the way forward. If for instance, the main objection is the pro-gay marriage slogan, and not selling them a cake in itself, then perhaps that is the way forward.
It is not just a question of discrimination, it is also a question of moral autonomy. Both issues really need to be explored. And in terms of moral autonomy, that would apply whether the baker is homosexual (as my analogy indicates) or whether the baker is a Christian.
The question is, is it right to force people to do things that go against their own deeply held convictions? I don't think it is a simple yes and no answer, but it is one that needs careful consideration.
speculawyer
Member
Holy shit at that quote! What a GREAT example illustrating why church & state must always be kept separate.
speculawyer
Member
Yeah . . . they just said 'Almighty God' . . . that judge was obviously Hindu . . . or Muslim . . .or something else not Christian. Yeah, right.
Oh I see so now you're going to try and play the semantics card. You don't think his ideas came from Christian background? Where did it come from? Just because you try to invalidate the tradition with some book you read does not mean it wasn't rooted in religious tradition. Religious scripture and attitudes played a huge role in racial biases going all the way to that case and past it. To suggest it was a complete secularist idea is nonsense.
benjipwns
Banned
I thought we had all finally agreed to actually read Herbert Spencer and realize he didn't advocate a proactive form of social "Darwinism" to ensure only the strong survive like others in the era. That he was merely observing what he thought were similar patterns in both how nature and society came to their current states. He was a strong supporter of charity and unions to assist "weaker" individuals believing that humans were distinct for a variety of reasons.
The Social Gospel on the other hand...
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