If I were a devout Christian, I'd be against the Indiana Law for this reason

Great Debates
221

I suspect once you saw the enormous amount of time and expense required to secure the basic assumptions baked into marriage law, you’d change your tune on that pretty quick. But that aside, regardless how lightly you value government recognition of marriage, it doesn’t change the fact that you support a situation that gives benefits to one group of people, and withholds them from another, based on nothing more than an accident of birth.

I didn’t say “personal feelings.” I said “bigotries.” Can you answer my question without changing the fundamental terms of my question?

There are quite a few Christian denominations which disagree with you there, these days. And more are coming around every day. Might even be your denomination that changes next, and then what are you going to do?

222

Why do you think the basis of marriage is “mutual sacrifice”? I believe that the pluses that come with marriage exceed the negatives, otherwise the institution would have died out from natural selection. I’ll be getting married soon, and you betcha I’m not doing so purely out of self-sacrificial duty. Do you feel like you can judge my future marriage as unstable because I’m motivated by feelings?

Even if we posit, though, that marriage is based on mutual sacrifice, you still need to explain why SSM doesn’t meet that qualification. Having genitalia in common doesn’t preclude starting and raising families.

223

That’s closer, but Jesus is still calling on entire cities to repent - not any specific class of people or person.

That’s a strained interpretation of that passage. For readers who don’t care to click on the link, here’s Mark 6:10-13.

So the instruction there is not to waste your time preaching to people who won’t listen, and certainly nothing about being “contaminated by their sin.” What does that even me? How can you be contaminated by something that you are already covered in? And note the stinger - “they preached that men should repent.” Not gays, not liars, not drunkards, not murderers. All men.

Relevant to the topic, we’re talking about sins against God, not against us personally, right? It’s not up to us to forgive sins against god. As for sins against us personally, he said to forgive others, with no qualifications.
Matthew 6:14-15
Matthew 18:21-22
Mark 11:25
Luke 6:37-38

Now in fairness I did find one counter-example. In Luke 17:3 Jesus says, "If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him; and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” But most of the time when Jesus talks about forgiving others, he adds no caveats.

This is all a red herring though. Gay couples getting married are not sinning against the cake maker or the pizza man. They’ve done nothing to require forgiveness from those people, whether the couple is repentant or not.

My argument is that the gay couple wanting to buy a cake are no worse sinners than you or me or any random heterosexual couple that walks in the door, and refusing service to them is like the rich man in the temple beating his chest saying “Praise God I am not like those other sinners!”

224

:shrugs:

You said -

Cities are certainly a specific group of people. You asked for a cite, got it, and are now moving the goalposts.

Correct - all should repent of their sins. They should repent of lying, murder, and all other sins, including (according to some Christians) homosexual acts.

Correct - just like the cities did not sin against the apostles by refusing to repent of their sins against God and other people. Yet the apostles were told to shake off the dust, as a sign that they were due to be condemned.

Likewise, a Christian baker who is persuaded that gay sexual acts are sinful refuses to participate in the celebration of those acts.

The difference between the Pharisee in the parable and the tax collector was that the tax collector repented, and the Pharisee did not think he needed to repent.

A Christian baker refusing to bake a gay wedding cake is like a priest refusing absolution to someone who intends to continue stealing from the cash register at work. The thief is not sinning against the priest, but the priest cannot absolve him until he repents.

Regards,
Shodan

225

And a baker is not a priest.

226

Sure, in some traditions, he most certainly is.

Exodus 19:6.

227

What does

have to do with baking?

228

I should have provided attribution, since I stole it too. I got it from Fred “Slactivist” Clark, who got it from Jessica Kantrowitz.

229

Everyone (male) is a priest. It’s a kingdom of priests. Butchers, bakers, candlestick makers.

In traditions that follow this view, there is no reservation of a priestly function to a single group. In a sense, this was core Judaism. Jews don’t ordain rabbis in the same sense of the word that Catholics ordain priests. A Catholic priest has sacramental powers that I, a faithful lay Catholic, do not. But a rabbi has no such powers. He is learned in the Law, to be sure, but has no more authority to perform rituals than any other adult male member of the community.

Mormons also fit this model. The priesthood in Mormon belief is shared by all adult Mormon men.

230

Every time I read someone here suggesting that conservative Christians are engaging in “fear mongering,” “scare tactics” or “phony martyrdom,” I’m reminded of Christian blogger Rod Dreher who long ago came up with (drum roll)…

The Law of Merited Impossibility.

What is this law, you ask (well, I’ll tell you, even if you HAVEN’T asked). The Law of Merited Impossibility states that, whenever a conservative predicts that a liberal proposal will have dire consequences for many ordinary Americans…

  1. Liberals will scoff “Don’t be ridiculous- there is absolutely no way that will ever happen! You’re just being paranoid!”

  2. When it actually happens, liberals will sneer, “Damn right it happened, and those bastards DESERVED it.”

Rest assured, ANY time a conservative predicts that unwanted change will have drastic, negative results, you can count on SDMB regulars to say (in effect) “That’s a paranoid fantasy, and boy, I can’t wait til it happens!”

Five years ago, liberals invariably said (with straight faces, mind you), “Gay marriage can’t possibly affect YOU!” But that was a pretty big fib, wasn’t it? If I had said at the time, “If gay marriage is allowed, Christian entrepreneurs will be FORCED by the government to take part in gay weddings,” every SDMB lefty would have said, “Sheesh, Astorian, you really have drunk the Fox Network Kool-Aid, haven’t you? That is insane! There is absolutely no way that could ever happen.”

Now that it IS happening, of course, every SDMB lefty is sneering, “Hell yeah, Christian entrepreneurs have to take part in gay weddings, and those homophobic fundies had it coming!”

We have to remember this when liberals say, “Come on, at least we aren’t forcing churches to changes their doctrines. Christians can BELIEVE whatever they want.” They don’t mean it. They DOI intend to use governmental force to get church doctrines changes. Some will deny oit now, but in a few years, they’ll feel no need even to pretend they give a rat’s behind about religious freedom.

In less than a decade, I’m stating categorically that governments will start applying the Bob Jones University standard and will start removing tax exemptions and accreditations for churches and church-related schools that don’t toe the gay line.

In a few moments, some SDMB liberals will tell me, “Don’t be absurd- that will NEVER happen. And woohoo, is it gonna be great when it does!!!”

231

And that’s still true. Nobody is being forced to participate in a gay wedding. Anywhere. The mistake liberals made was not realizing the absurd lengths conservatives would go to claim victimhood, or the extent to which they would torture the English language and common sense to turn “baking a cake” into “participating in a wedding.”

232

Eh. I’m already in trouble for responding to the haters in this thread, so I’ll just leave your self-righteous hysteria alone for now.

233

Was the baker that refused to bake the cake Jewish, and/or raised in that referenced society thousands of years ago? In this time, and in our society, bakers are(for the most part) not generally considered members of clergy.

234

So when the Old Testament fits with your arguments, you don’t hesitate to cite it and harken back to the traditions it speaks to. But when your opponents pull cites from it to showcase Christian two-facedness, they are misunderstanding what the faith is all about?

I can pull a great many things out of those early books of the Bible that God approved of, that Christians would agree were crazy. Can you explain why we should believe we are a kingdom of priests, but we aren’t supposed to raze entire cities for not offering hospitality to strangers?

235

No true Scotsman has to participate in a gay wedding.

Regards,
Shodan

236

Snipped, obviously. Perhaps my standards are different to yours, but I don’t consider having to cater for gay weddings when you offer that service to everyone else to be “dire consequence”, nor a “drastic, negative result”.

On the other hand, not having your marriage recognised legally seems like it would fit in those particular boxes. And we don’t have to predict that.

All that said, the point you’re making would probably work better if you could link particular people to the sentiments you’re discussing. After all, “liberal” is a very wide mark. It seems unreasonable to take the positions of “liberals” in general, apply to them to the positions of other “liberals” in general, and declare knowing, maclicious lying. Do you have any particular people in mind?

237

I know, that’s the trouble with you left-wingers. You’re just TOO kind, reasonable and perfect! The ONLY fault you have is your excessive rationality.

True or false: five years ago, if I’d stated on this board "Before long, state governments will be threatening and fining Christian entrepreneurs who didn’t want host or cater gay weddings, " most SDMB regulars (including Miller) would have called me a paranoid fear-monger?

It’s TRUE! You KNOW it’s true! Now that your side is in the driver’s seat, you’re pretending differently, and moving the goal posts.

But the Law of Merited Impossibility stands.

238

Every Christian has their own relationship with God and so must answer for the decisions they make. God knows our hearts and minds, there is no such thing as plausible deniability. God tells us to obey him and not man so the just following the law defense would not work. He tells us to love other people and helping people celebrate their sin is the opposite of loving.
I would not bake a cake for a gay marriage but if some other Christian would that decision is between them and their conscience. I would not try to impose my religious obligations on them. It is just a shame we live in a country where people do try to force people to violate their conscience in order to make a living.

239

That’s true.

For the most part.

But you said:

I replied:

In some traditions, he is. I assume you now agree, since you’ve added the appropriate disclaimer. A Mormon baker is most certainly a priest, and this statement’s truth does not require a reference to thousands of years ago.

240

Bricker, your main example was not an “is”. It was a “was”.
edited to add: Was the baker in question a Mormon?