While respecting the clerk’s opinion, of course. Perhaps next week, they can converse with the clerk and convince her/him.
Or the week after.
Or the week after.
Or the week after.
Respectfully, how many setbacks did same-sex couples have to suffer through, and how long did it take, before the SCOTUS finally ruled in their favor?
I don’t know any public position that requires a person to congratulate another. That’s beyond stupid.
[QUOTE=Aji de Gallina]
John Mace’s post further convince that for too many, tolerance means “wait until I get my turn to ram my ideas down your throat”.
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The idea of tolerance historically sprung up out of the notion that “you can’t just kill every last one of them. You’ve already tried that. At lengths. Let’s switch tacks”.
So, yes. You’re absolutely right. Tolerance is mob rule mitigated by inconvenient facts, just like democracy. But for some reason, it was not such a big deal when the other side’s ideas were being rammed down other peoples’ throats, in the name of tolerance. Don’t ask, don’t tell, it’s fine. IT’S FINE, SHUT UP, WE DID A THING.
John Mace, if you and your Beloved went up to get a marriage license and the clerk openly insulted you, how would you react?
I think it’s interesting that you phrase this as gays saying “wait until I get my turn.” Whose turn was it before? Maybe a more accurate way of phrasing this is “Oh, ramming ideas down throats was okay when I did it, but not when you do it.”
As for what changed your mind? Culture moves, and we move along with it. Part of the movement is labeling things unacceptable that used to be okay, and labeling things acceptable that used to be taboo.
Yup, because denying driver’s license to people becasue of “I personally do not like who you are” has been happening for 2000 years and part of basically every society.
In that case, I’d call the supervisor.
You miss the point. What John Mace was saying was that if a clerk couldn’t find it in him to do it at least give some cockamamie excuse and tell Mike to do it for you. NEVER insult a customer.
Gay people applying for marriage licenses aren’t customers. They’re citizens and they have the same rights and expectations of reasonable service from their public servants that the rest of us do. Those clerks work for the people at the counter, not the other way around.
The reason we don’t torture serial killers has a lot more to do with not wanting to be a torturer than it has to do with being respectful towards serial killers.
In any case, this idea of respectfulness seems entirely non sequitur in this case.
Letting someone continue to refuse to discharge their lawful duties as agents of the state in order to deny fellow citizens their civil rights does not seem to me to have anything at all to do with respect.
In the late 1800s a Supreme Court ruling affirmed the constitutionality of prohibiting interracial marriage, for which the penalties were severe. In the late 60s a modern Supreme Court, reflecting the values of a more enlightened society, reversed that decision and invalidated all such laws.
This is the same thing.
There is both a moral and a legal reason that these public functionaries have no rights or standing to refuse to do their jobs and to issue marriage license to any couple that is legally qualified, regardless of their genders and regardless of what brain-dead bigoted views these public functionaries may happen to hold. The moral reason is the one stated by the majority SCOTUS opinion which echoes the opinions of other courts in states and nations around the world that have reached the same conclusion: that refusing SSM marriages is an affront to human rights and reduces these people to the status of less-than-human second-class citizens; it engenders and promotes a toxic environment that is especially dangerous to young people still struggling with their sexual identities; it promotes a hostile belligerence that has driven many to desperation and even suicide. And it’s all in the name of “sanctity of marriage” being promoted by hypocrites who have so much respect for the sanctity of marriage that they may have gone through half a dozen different marriages and divorces and engaged in serial adultery their entire wretched hypocritical lives, like some of the sanctimonious Republicans weighing in on these issues. And of course they’re against civil unions, too, just because. They don’t need a reason.
So I recognize that the part about “it’s the law” could easily have been applied earlier to refusing to license SSM marriage or interracial marriage or any of the other things that were idiotically prohibited in the past. And when those were the laws, intelligent people worked to have the laws changed or abolished. These bigots can feel free to do the same. In the meantime we’ve made some enlightened progress and the message to the brain-dead bigots is that they’re paid to do a job and are expected to do it or get fired, end of story. If they have genuine moral or religious objections, they’re clearly in the wrong line of work.
I’m not gay but I think I understand what’s at stake here. If I was I might actually feel really strongly about it!
“Boss, I do not find it in me to do my job because I wish to illegally discriminate. Mind if I take a pass on that couple over there?”
Hentor (and Czarcasm), you are both good debaters who have fought your ground well, but this is (as I am sure you recognize) a pure strawman argument, with enough combustibles to support The Burning Man festival for at least three consecutive years.
For reference: Burning Man - Wikipedia
No one that I can see (and certainly not I) is saying that gays should be denied their license; just exercise a little patience and understanding for those clerks that are not as…mature…as many of us, as long as they get their rights that day and know that things are being done to improve the situation–and that those improvements are carried out.
I think John Mace, if I understand him correctly, (and I for sure) are definitely opposed to offices that categorically (and unanimously) refuse to serve gay couples. Those folks should reap the whirlwind; otherwise, if the gay couple gets the license that day, even if two out of three clerks do not wish to service them, isn’t that the most important thing?
Eyes on the Prize. Let the rest get sorted by history.
Bigot is neither a slur nor a perjorative. It is a noun. A person who holds bigoted views is a bigot. It doesn’t matter if they don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t matter if they get angry. It doesn’t matter if being told that they are bigots causes them to refuse to reflect on their positions. If the bigot boots fit, then they get to wear them.
I mean, obviously it’s not going to cause them to reflect. If they had any sort of self-awareness or willingness to reconsider, they wouldn’t be bigots in the first place. Obstenance and ignorance are the hallmarks of bigotry. It is perfectly in character for obstenant and ignorant people to double down on their obstenance and ignorance.
But you seem to be operating under the idea that we must refrain from pointing out when we observe bigots behaving bigotedly because it will cause them to cling more tightly to their bigotry. I disagree. In reality, I don’t think people will stop being bigots due to anything other people say or do. Bigots are going to bigot - and frankly, I don’t care if they bigot. I just want the bigots to bigot quietly in their homes where we, as a society, don’t have to put up with their nastyass world views.
Therefore, I believe that the chief benefit to calling a spade, a spade, in this situation, is that it conveys to the bigot that the rest of us are tired of his bigot breathe and want him to keep his mouth shut in our vicinity. It won’t change the bigot’s worldview but that wasn’t in the cards anyway. The good news is that bigots are ignorant cowards and are unlikely to stand up to a crowd of people honestly telling
Damn, do I so not give a tiny rat’s buttcrack if a bigot gets angry when correctly identified as a bigot.
I think the truly pious marriage clerks should not only be entitled to refuse to perform the marriage, they should also be entitled to an opportunity to berate the happy couple with a sermon of hellfire and damnation, so that they clearly understand that God hates them and they are going straight to hell. Then the happy couple can go off to the bakery, where the baker can refuse to sell them a wedding cake. Then they can go to the church where the preacher, in a timeless expression of God’s love, can set the dog on them. And then we should get back to doing the same thing when a nice white girl wants to marry a darkie. Definitely the kind of world I want to live in!
If the assertion is that gay couples will be afforded their legal rights seemlessly, with the same speed as anyone else, and they will not be subject to expressions of rebuke during the process…
then to whom are they being asked to show patience and grace?
The eyes have been on this particular “Prize” for a damn long time and this particular “Prize” has already been awarded by the SCOTUS. Sorry, but when it comes to same-sex marriage, the “Prize” is claimed.
I think the most important thing is to treat same sex couples identically to mixed sex couples. Not to have the one gay window, but to have full and equal access.
It’s even more effective than that. When I was a kid no one would correct anyone else for saying anti-gay things, more mild than outright bigotry. And people would say them without much thought.
Branding loud homophobes as bigots in public might not do anything to change their minds, but it did help older people like me to wake up to what was going on. We’d first not say anything even slightly homophobic, and start to correct people who did. Very powerful.
I also believe that no baby is born a bigot. If kids don’t hear bigoted things, they don’t catch that disease. My kids didn’t.
Bigots can be role models for what no to do, so long as their bigotry is pointed out.
No, not if their dignity is affronted by the ordeal of having to confront hateful assholes on the most important day of their lives.
If I understand you correctly, it doesn’t matter if your water fountain is down the hall as long as you get something to drink, it doesn’t matter if you have to enter by the side door as long as you get something to eat, and it doesn’t matter if you have to sit in the back of the bus as long as get to where you are going. Right?
Do you and he not realize that what you are suggesting was, and still is, referred to as “Segregation”?
Absolutely. And it can be circular. Point out the bigotry and the kids might hear it labeled such and influence their bigoted parents.
It doesn’t always work. It’s not 100% effective. Nothing is. But when you’re moving a culture, sometimes you push and sometimes you pull.