Bigotry versus genuine religious belief

Great Debates
161

The point is that you don’t want a situation where businesses can say ‘We don’t serve Blacks here’, ‘We don’t serve Jews here’, ‘We don’t serve Mexicans who don’t speak English here’, ‘We don’t serve people with tattoos who dye their hair green here’, whatever.

‘We don’t serve your kind here’.

Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days where that happened. So you make laws that public businesses have to serve everyone. Once you start making exceptions for any religion or ideology, it’s a slippery slope.

162

A disturbing number do.

163

If the baker can refuse service, should a delivery person be able to refuse delivery to a gay couple? To a couple “living in sin?” To Donald Trump, who advertised his adultery?
I’ve never seen any part of the Bible saying that you should refuse to feed a sinner. Kill them, yes, but refuse to feed them?

164

Not that it matters much, but I could give 2 shits what the bible says.
If I didn’t want to deliver, something to someone for a reason known only to me, then I wouldn’t.
If the person that hired me to deliver said item wanted to fire me for not delivering it, I’d be ok with that too.

165

I guess if it was shown that you never agreed to deliver to Jews or Christians or Blacks or <insert protected group>, you’d probably get sued and probably lose. If you just randomly chose not to deliver packages, you’d probably lose some customers. If you chose never to deliver to blondes or left-handed people, or Libertarians, you’d probably be OK, since I don’t think any of those make up a protected class.

166

So, to analogize back to a cake baker.

If they don’t want to bake a cake, for a reason only known to them, then they won’t.

If that means that they are no longer allowed to bake cakes as a public business anymore, then they’d be okay with that.

167

I guess I see this as a problem the market would solve on it’s own. I feel today’s world is much different than when we needed protection for groups of disenfranchised people.
Would there be some people potentially hurt by this type of policy, yes there likely would. So I can understand your stance, but I see these types of things and think that these businesses who do choose to discriminate wouldn’t be in business long if they did so.
But baking a cake is a far cry from being kept out of school, or the bathroom, or a certain part of town.

To keep the analogy, the baker shouldn’t ever be required to do anything he/she doesn’t want to do for any reason whatsoever but if they choose to discriminate then they would be held accountable, but by the clients (or lack thereof).

I think this highlights a big difference in my views vs most of you here. You look to the government to solve these kinds of issues. I do not think it needs to be a role of government.

168

This is utterly off-topic for this thread. Why don’t you start a thread about this, since you keep coming back to this discrimination question?

I probably missed it, but what are your actual thoughts on the topic of this thread? If you’ve already posted about that, just let me know the post number or something.

169

145, 148, 150 …

Hint: They were all responses to you so I can see how you might have missed them.

170

Oh, right, the mind reading one, and then your pivots to the commercial effects again.

Thanks for answering! We’ve probably come to the end of our useful discussion.

171

But we already know that some people (most white Southerners in the early and mid 20th century) are willing to sacrifice economic gain for bigotry and oppression. Why are you so certain no communities now would be willing to make the same tradeoff? Vidor TX is pretty much still doing this, though not quite as openly as it used to.

172

What you say makes a certain sense if a) you’re only considering large cities / suburb, and b) your have a pretty rosy unrealistic view of how much overt discrimination still goes on.

Most of the “public accomodation” demands the Feds have come up with are aimed at less diverse & less tolerant locations. IOW …

The homophobic baker located in/near the big city gay neighborhood will soon be destroyed by the marketplace just as you suggest. Or at least, another gay-friendly baker will appear to fill the vacuum and find enough custom to be successful perhaps alongside some number of other homophobic bakers.

Conversely, out in the rural counties that represent 80% of that state’s land area, 20% of its voters, but 70% of the legislative seats, substantially 100% of gay folks living there can’t buy a cake because substantially 100% of bakers are homophobic. And the few bakers who aren’t are so widely dispersed geographically that the would-be gay customers can’t find them. And they lack the market power in any one location to force a change in baker behavior via the marketplace. Nor enough market power to support a gay-friendly baker; especially not after the outraged straight boycott begins.

Ultimately it’s just another manifestation of the tyranny of a non-diverse and intolerant local majority.

That’s also why these kinds of rulings from the State or Feds rouse such local ire. The non-diverse population of rural county X sees no problem with letting their baker discriminate because there are no gays, or at least no gays who matter, anywhere within their emotional field of view. Even if they’re actually living next door.

But if “equal protection” is to mean anything practical, it means rural gays and straights are equally able to use local commerce to satisfy their needs & wants. Likewise and urban gays and straights.


And of course all the above is using “bakers” and “gays” simply as example placeholders for “any commercial activity” and “any minority however defined”.

173

Yeah I had originally couched it in those same terms ( lack of choice or option to fill that void) so I definitely could be convinced that protections are still needed in remote areas.

174

So, how would that be set up?

You can discriminate in the city, but not in rural areas?

If there are x or greater other people that provide the same service within y miles, you may discriminate?

Keep in mind, that such anti-discrimination measures also protects proprietors.

Say I’m a cake maker, and I have no problem baking a cake for a SSM wedding. However, some of my customers, or my vendors, or my landlord, or my neighbors, or other peers do.

They tell me that I shouldn’t bake this cake. With anti-discrimination laws, I can shrug and say, “I don’t really have a choice.” and go ahead and bake the cake.

Without anti-discrimination laws, making a cake for a SSM wedding is a choice, and I could face social or professional repercussions for doing so.

175

I am not saying it is ok to discriminate at all. What I said was that the government shouldn’t be in the business of enforcing certain discrimination (over others)

In your example, you are still making a choice and you will face social or professional repercussions anyway.

Cake baker: I don’t really want to do that
Customer: You have to
Cake Baker: Ok but it aint gonna be pretty or taste good

Taxes are the same way: Which is why everyone wants to skirt the rules or pay as little as possible (under the rules) I mean who says hey I pay too little, here take some more.

That isn’t really a perfect scenario and I can almost guarantee you that that becomes the mindset with anything people are forced to do.

As for what I would do, I am less sure. I see certain areas or needs for protection but it is far from being a national problem. I suppose people got away with it before for black people because under the law they weren’t really citizens (and in some cases not even people that counted for anything)
So I don’t rightly know, it just feels wrong to be forced to do something you don’t want to do by the government.

To tie it back to this thread: I am espousing that the choice to do or not do something, religious objection or not, is not bigotry on it’s face. It’s a simple, I don’t want to be forced to do that.

176

The thread isn’t about who is getting forced to do what. It’s about the bigotry (or not) itself and the justification (or not) of sincere religious belief. Whether the (possibly) bigoted person is forced to bake a cake, hire someone, rent an apartment to someone, work with someone, have someone in the family, or just live near a gay/Black/Jewish/whatever couple is besides the point.

That is, “given Joe has said/done seemingly bigoted things about gays/Jews/Blacks, does his having a sincere belief that gays/Jews/Blacks are icky/sinful/inferior/whatever matter to your assessment of his bigotry”.

177

I’m not sure who else can.

Right, a choice as to whether or not to break the law, not a choice in whether or not to serve someone.

That would actually be discrimination. If I am a hotel, and I only rent out dirty and disrepair rooms to guests of a protected class, then that is actionable as well.

I don’t pay more than my CPA tells me I need to pay. But I also don’t tell him to create shell corporations to hide my money. I don’t do things with the incentive of decreasing my tax burden. There are those of the mindset that they would be willing to pay their tax attorney $1000 to avoid paying $100 in taxes.

True, certain people. People that want to harm or see harm come to others, and will still try to cause harm to others while trying to pretend to be operating within the rules.

We are forced to wear clothes, pretty much everywhere we go. I don’t see people regularly dressing poorly in order to show their objection to this.

In the case of the baker, he was violating a state law, not a national law. He was found to be in the clear specifically because it was not a national law.

What is “it” here? Discrimination or anti-discrimination policies?

That’s just what laws are. Does it feel wrong to come to a stop at an intersection, just because there is a sign or a light telling you to? To not cruise through school zones at 100 MPH, just because the government is telling you to?

And sure, I’ll do an occasional rolling stop, or maybe 22 in that 20 school zone, but I’m aware that I am breaking the law, and that there may be consequences to it. If I am caught, then whining that it’s not fair that, and that the govt shouldn’t tell me what to do is a poor defense.

Well, no, a choice to do something is not bigotry on its face. However, choosing not to serve someone because of who they are is bigotry, religious objection or no.

And you aren’t forced to do that. No one forces anyone to open a wedding bakery. If I asked you to bake me a cake for my SSM wedding, you could refuse for any reason at all, including the fact that you don’t bake wedding cakes.

But, if someone makes the choice to sell to the public, then they should not be allowed to discriminate on which part of the public that they will serve. Religious objection or not.

178

It seems to me that the act of discrimination is bigotry in and of itself.

~Max

179

Why would anybody need to be “forced” to treat their customers in a non-bigoted fashion, if they’re not bigoted?

180

That’s kind of the point. I guess i am arguing without pre-sight or ESP, that the refusal of service isn’t necessarily bigoted, it is simply a refusal of service.

Unless of course there is evidence otherwise. The premise of this thread is that bigots are bigots prior to justifying it by religion.

I have said many times, that cannot be known. Cake baker , delivery service, are all the same. Without knowing the motivations of people, you simply can’t make a blanket statement like that.