I have already told you that you are free to engage in whatever name-calling you deem will make you happy.
Creating straw men and attacking positions I have not stated is silly.
Oddly enough, saying “you are free to call people all the bad names you want” does not indicate that you really “don’t care” about what I say. In other words, don’t correct or condemn my response to bigotry and then try to pretend like “you don’t” care what I do. If you really didn’t care you wouldn’t be in the discussion.
I don’t know.
What I can’t believe is that I’m engaged with what I consider to be one of the more intelligent posters on this MB who seems to think that name-calling is an effective strategy to win someone over to his side. There are so many obvious contributors to the change in perspective that Americans have had, but it’s hard to imagine being called a bigot was a significant factor, as opposed to:
- Knowing someone who actually is gay (friend, relative, etc).
- Increasing exposure to gays in the media
- Political leaders (mostly on the left, but some on the right) who urge acceptance
- A critical mass of gays coming out of the closet so they are not some abstraction
Let me ask you straight up (no pun intended): Do you honestly believe that calling people bigots was a significant factor in their changing their minds?
“Bigot” is not a slur. “Bigot” is not a slur. “Bigot” is not a slur. Can we acknowledge this, please? “Bigot” is not a slur. It is an actual thing, that some people are.
This is why I’m completely unsympathetic. I also don’t think letter carriers get to throw Playboy or lingerie catalogs (or The Advocate, if that’s a stronger analogy) in the trash if they have a moral objection to people reading them.
What an apt analogy!!!
Bigot is not a slur. I agree. It’s a pejorative. People don’t like to be called names, whether the name is a slur or not. Do you disagree?
What a stupid analogy. Clerks are not throwing marriage licenses in the trash. Besides, how many mail carries signed up before Playboy was being delivered in the mail?
I, at least, am not arguing that clerks should be allowed to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses long term. I’m only arguing for a grace period, to let them find other jobs. Months, not years. Any new hires know exactly what the are getting into, so no exemption for them. I’m not even arguing that we are legally or moraliy bound to do so. Only that out society would be better off if we didn’t vilify the other side all the time.
Is calling someone racist who says “blacks use too much welfare” pejorative?
This feels quite like the argument advanced by **S. Artist **, which I dubbed “the bends.” He asserted that black people were afforded civil rights too rapidly, leading to all manner of negative outcomes.
Pace yourselves, gay friends, or you will end up struggling indeed.
Sure does, this is probably John Mace’s worst debate yet.
Months? Why make any time limit at all? Why not just have them fulfill their sworn duties when they are god damned good and ready? (bolding added, if that wasn’t clear)
Let’s be clear about this. It is not about vilification. It is not about calling names. It is about government employees disobeying the law. If they don’t want to perform their duties, they can resign and look for other work, but that is on them, it should not be on the citizens to go on paying them for dereliction, and it should not be on the citizens whom those employees are refusing to serve. Quit or get fired, those should be the only options.
Actually, letting a clerk take their 2 week paid vacation and 2 weeks of sick leave to take 30 days to look for another job would not bother me
You can’t judge! What if the person is just ignorant?
Oh wait, ignorance causes racism rather than excusing it.
If it feels like that, then you can blame your imagination. Because I never said any such thing. But if you really think you’re right, you should be able to quote where I said that.
actually, a more apt example would of been, does a man who tells his wife to stay home and raise the kids, is that sexist? Because the bible clearly says the the man is the head of the household…
What?
You are hired to do a job. If you cannot or will not do the job you get fired. What is the mystery here?
The person providing the marriage license is a functionary. He/she is not making a judgement on the appropriateness of a given union. They are not giving their personal approval by issuing the license.
Where’s the problem?
I hope I’m not being naive, but doesn’t making a distinction between legal marriage and religious marriage (however each person’s religion or lack thereof defines it) turn down the heat on this issue significantly? For example, I’m sure there have been millions of Catholic clerks who have signed marriage licenses for divorced Catholics whose second (or third or whatever) marriages were not considered valid by the Catholic Church. How is signing a marriage license for a same sex couple any different from signing a license for any other couple your church deems illicit?
The clerk has no role in solemnizing any marriages in any religion as far as I know. Their job is to check the paperwork, collect the fee, make sure as far as they can tell that neither party is currently married to anybody else, and to ensure that any required medical tests have been performed.
Many religions may require a valid marriage license before they will perform a marriage, but they don’t have to. My understanding from when I’ve gotten married (2x) was that I was legally married the moment the ink was dry on the marriage license at the county court house, but I wasn’t considered married by the Church until the priest at the second marriage said the magic words. Likewise, I was legally married to spouse #1 until the divorce decree, but still considered (technically) married by the Church until the annulment. The clerk who signed my second marriage license didn’t need to see the annulment paperwork.
I don’t think that allowing religious people to make a distinction between marriages that are equally legally valid as their own marriages, but that do not meet the criteria for marriage in their own religion constitutes “bigotry.” But government functionaries involved in the legal marriage process should be constantly aware of the distinction between legal and religious marriages and of their specific and limited role in the process.
Do you object to calling people saying objectively bigoted things out loud in the public forum bigots?
I haven’t read this thread but I did notice that Republican candidate for President Bobby Jindal’s name didn’t come up which is odd because I think what he had to say was a salient point on the issue:
And before anyone says that Bardwell didn’t use his religious freedom as a rationale for his decision to refuse to issue marriage licences to interracial couples, let me ask if it would have made a difference?
In the trial that led to Loving v. Virginia, judge Leon M. Bazile wrote:
Bob Jones University didn’t change their ban on interracial dating until 2000. And they only did so because of the negative publicity when Republican presidential candidates such as George Bush wanted to drop by.
And as recently as 2011,
So there have been people making the religious argument against interracial marriage for as long as the miscegenation laws that Loving v. Virginia ended were being made and Christians, specifically Evangelicals, are a lot more likely to be against it even today.
So the religious freedom argument didn’t work even when a “1968 Gallup poll found three-quarters of whites disapproved of a whites and blacks marrying;” why should it work now? It doesn’t work now with interracial marriage (because despite Christians being the most intolerant towards it, it’s still something that most people tolerate at this point) so why should it work with same-gender marriage?
It shouldn’t. Ask Bobby Jindal. He had the right idea. That clerk wouldn’t do the job? Hire someone else who will.
Or ask former Mississippi Circuit Clerk Linda Barnette who resigned her position rather than try and force her religious beliefs on others.
She had the right idea. Can’t do the job anymore? Have someone else hired who can.
The right to swing your fist ends at my nose and the right to practice your religion ends when you infringe on my rights to live my life without your religion especially if you are being paid with my tax dollars to do a job.
So STFU and GBTW or go here to find your new rewarding career away far away from a government agency doing things you think your God would find icky.
I have not “objected” to your actions, at all, while you have persistently twisted my words and accused me of statements I have not made. I have simply pointed out logical flaws in your claims. And, as you are one of 300 million people in this country with an opinion on the topic, and as you do not appear to be in a position to actually affect the situation one way or another, I really don’t care what you do.
I don’t object, per se, to calling bigots “bigots.” Do it where ever you would like.
Of course, name calling is prohibited in this forum, so if you direct your insults toward another poster, you will be Modded.
Are you addressing another poster, or have you not actually read my post? The claim to which I was responding was that there could not be a problem where religion and employment were in conflict. I pointed out two hypothetical cases where they could be, while acknowledging that such cases would be extremely rare.
Your response seems to address a different issue.