I’ve been consistent in my posts. I think that the social attitudes which led to the public accommodations provisions in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are no longer present. I don’t see the need to expand it. I think that public pressure would harm any business that refused to serve an interracial couple. It would be a banner headline in the newspaper and likely put the place out of business.
Those market forces would discourage such activity and at the same time allow a business owner the freedom to choose those which he does business.
Hospitals? No. That is something which could cause death or serious harm. The need for immediate medical treatment far outweighs the beliefs of a hospital director.
Wedding cakes? Go to the next guy. Spend your money where it is wanted.
we hook electrodes to your brain and whenever you think a thought on the unapproved thought list, ZAP!!!
I tend to agree. My only problem with this is that you are picking and choosing which liberties you are going to extend to people. I don’t trust any govt with this power. that’s why I take the admittedly rather reckless idea of extending complete liberty to do whatever doesn’t compromise someone else’s liberty.
And who determines that point?
In what way am I picking and choosing? I am, in a sense that there must always be a balancing test between competing liberties. I have a liberty interest in playing my stereo at 3am. You have a liberty interest in sleeping at 3am. Society has determined that your liberty interest trumps mine.
Likewise, I would say that the baker’s liberty interest trumps a customer’s interest in seeking a wedding cake because the customer can go elsewhere. A patient’s interest in not dying trumps a hospital director’s prejudices.
Or are you suggesting I am inconsistent for not advocating full repeal of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?
Unless he can’t.
Can you give me a cite where SSMs are performed without cake because the participants were unable to find a baker to bake one for them?
And even assuming that you can come up with a cite from Wyoming where two guys live in a unabomber shack and the only baker within 100 miles refuses to bake the cake, can’t they get a heterosexual wedding cake and replace the bride figure with a groom figure ordered from Amazon? Does a wedding without cake make it not valid?
IOW, this isn’t a serious, life or death problem that needs the strong arm of the state to go into rural bakeries. I fear that there is no problem here in need of solution and that the only purpose for enacting or enforcing said laws against a bakery are to say: We won, you lost, bake the fucking cake whether you like it or not. As much as I enjoy political victories when my side wins them, that’s not a proper purpose of government.
Yeah, sorry, that doesn’t work. Why do you think we have a government in the first place? If life were that simple, then we wouldn’t need one! The question of “what liberty is more important” is all but quintessential in every interaction in our lives. Why do you think we have governments and laws? In this case, we’re talking about civil rights regulations which prevent businesses from refusing to do business with protected minorities. Do you understand the historic context of these laws? It was to prevent racists from ganging up and essentially running minorities out of town by ensuring that nobody would do business with them. In this case, it was decided that the liberty of african-americans to take part in society trumps the liberty of bigots to act like bigots. Now, the analogue is not perfect for homosexuals. You could, in theory, find another cake shop. At least, now you could - a few decades ago I seriously doubt you could have. But the point is, this isn’t some bizarre overstep of government. This is the government weighing two people’s liberties against each other, and deciding that one is more important.
I guess I am going to have to grant that the govt is going to have to insert itself at some point here to decide when someone else’s liberties are being compromised. I see that point. and, no doubt, whoever is in power is going to use that power to shut down people they deem unacceptable. I guess its just hopeless then. Unless you have people in power whose #1 priority is the protection of personal liberties, there really is no hope for a govt that won’t try to silence voices they don’t like. and today, with the odd exception of some libertarians, there don’t appear to be any politicians left who have this value set.
I think another important part of this discussion is state’s rights. If the US govt would do nothing except negotiate with foreign govts and keep the military strong, then the states could do everything else. Then we could have states where these competing interests could triumph. South Dakota could be the state where you don’t have to bake a cake for a gay wedding and Illinois could be the state where you do. Then people could simply vote with their feet. If you want to live in a state where the govt provides all kinds of protections, then you could do so. If not, you could do that too.
One of the nice things about being a citizen of the US is that you have the same rights as everyone else no matter where you go in the country.
The idea that Americans ought to move hundreds of thousands of miles from their home to be treated like some other American is disgusting g.
Speaking as a white man, white men ought to shut the hell up with telling people why racist/sexist/homophobic behavior ought to be given a little more slack.
And the idea that every American is capable of pulling up stakes and moving thousands of miles away is delusional.
Can you give me a cite that says every town has more than one bakery that makes wedding cakes? You’re the one claiming there’s always an alternative if one place refuses to accept patronage.
Why do gay people have to have ‘weddings’, anyway? Why can’t the just have civil union parties? Why should they get to use the word ‘married’ to describe their unions? Isn’t separate but equal good enough?
Throughout the nation’s history, “state’s rights” has been a code word for oppression, right back to when the slavers used it to defend their “right” to own slaves.
And America would collapse. That’s not a nation at all. That’s not even an alliance, you’d end up with states literally going to war against each other sooner or later.
And how would that “Federal government” negotiate with anyone when it had no authority? No one would bother.
Except that the people who tried to leave the more oppressive states - if they could leave at all - would be stopped at the border or killed, while the Federal “government” did nothing. It would be perfectly fine under your system for a state to re-instate slavery and start rounding people up, while the Federal “government” let it all happen.
Why should the bigots and tyrants have all the rights, but not their victims? Why should we shape our entire society into a machine to protect bigots and slavers?
You are apparently sadly ignorant of the actual early history of the USA. We HAD that. It sucked. It’s why they made the Constitution in the first place.
We tried that. The result was 4 years of war and 600,000 people dead. Not to mention all the maimed people. Also the invention of the machine gun, the landmine, and the concentration camp.
Seems like “states’ rights” is another one of those concepts that sounds great in theory but aren’t so wonderful in actual practice.
The states are, of course, still bound to the Constitution via the Compact Theory. So “states’ rights” in and of itself does not preclude the Federalist system, nor the protections enshrined in the Constitution. In fact, requiring such large majorities to pass amendments ensures that the relative sovereignty of the states is not bypassed.
In other words, the mere mention of states’ rights cannot be washed away by uttering the word “slavery.” I would hope for a slightly more substantive rebuttal if we’re on that train now.
You know what the funny thing about this is? Despite your incessant doom and gloom about the government, I think it’s worth noting how well we’ve been doing with that. Most modern democracies have had to struggle with this issue for literally centuries, and for the most part, they’ve done a bang-up job at it. Certainly better than the alternative. And what’s more, the trend is nothing but promising - in the past, we had discrimination against “unacceptable groups”* - legally, and condoned by the law. Now, we’re doing everything in our power to end that without infringing on the liberties of others. Yay, democracy!
*Time for a bit of a gripe. Your major issue here seems to be the potential of the government oppressing the religious and the right-wing - primarily white, heterosexual, cisgender christians. Let me be perfectly clear here. These people have never been and probably will never be considered “unacceptable groups” in America. They are rich, politically powerful, make up a supermajority of Americans, and have never ever ever had to deal with anything even remotely resembling oppression. This context is perhaps useful to understanding why some people, such as myself, find your schtick in exceedingly poor taste.
Why would this be advantageous for anyone?
First of all, not everyone can “vote with their feet”. Why do you think there are still gay people or atheists who live in, I dunno, Alabama? Why do you think GrapplingIgnorance still lives where he does when the people there hate him simply for not believing in their god? Moving is expensive, and unless you have a job lined up in the place you’re moving to, it may be extremely risky. It’s just often not a realistic option.
Secondly, these “competing interests” you’re referring to usually aren’t. They’re usually straightforward cases of “the bigot’s right to lord his power over a minority” vs. “the minority’s right to live life without that kind of shit”. Der Trihs is, as usual, hyperbolic and vitriolic, but he does have at least one point - “State’s rights” has virtually always been invoked as an argument by the wrong side of history. The slave-owners. The Jim-Crow supporters. The homophobes. It’s almost never the people who want to make the world a better place who say “let’s just split things up between the states”.
Thirdly, what you’re describing isn’t a nation. It’s an assortment of disparate states, more akin to the EU than anything else. What’s wrong with universality in such laws? People who don’t like it can, after all, just uproot and move somewhere with better laws. :rolleyes: Meanwhile, having different laws in different areas serves to divide the country, confuse the public (a classic example: check out the differences in traffic laws in New England and the problems this can create for shipping), and in your example serve the sole purpose of ensuring that bigots have a place to run to without needing to join the 21st century.