Could you link the post this applies to? I’m having a hard time sorting through all of the posts from today to find it.
ETA: Never mind, I tracked it down. He actually said
What you posted is edited to make it sound like he said something completely different, and I think that’s pretty crappy behavior. You and I are on the same side in this issue, but I don’t agree with this kind of tactic.
Every proper quote box on the Dope has a link built in. It’s the blue arrow to the right of the poster’s name.
Yeah, as I mentioned above, I found it. Now care to explain that creative editing you did?
Moderating
Not sufficient excuse for your action. You truncated a specific sentence with no ellipsis, explicitly changing the meaning of that sentence.
Do not do this again.
[ /Moderating ]
emphasis mine.
I’ve never seen a tax form in the US that asks for sexual orientation to determine the tax owed.
Be clear and honest. Tax rates discriminate based upon marital status, whether gay or straight is not the distinguishing factor.
That gays are disproportinately caught up in that tax rate policy and end up paying more because their marriages are not recognized by the Feds wasn’t necessarily the goal when that policy was implemented. But it certainly demonstrates the inherent inequity faced by gay couples.
So am I. These folks are free to not enter contracts. What they can’t do is open up a business to service the general public, and exclude certain members of the public due to their inclusion in a protected class.
Let’s say you want to open a restaurant. You also feel that the Food Safety Danger Zone is a crock of shit. You are free to open a restaurant. You are free to ignore the Danger Zone. What you can’t do is merge the two.
You don’t have the right to open a business to the general public, AND run that business as though no laws govern your industry. Once you open that business, your choices affect other people directly, so your rights have to be balanced with their rights.
True, I probably should’ve added another ellipsis but I figured that quoting another poster accusing me of lying in GD wouldn’t be necessary and that the context of my response made it clear that his claim was that I was “dishonestly” pointing out that his argument is pro-discrimination and that is was gainsaid by the fact that, yet again, he immediately went on to support discrimination while calling it [del]states’ rights[/del] personal freedom.
Ah well, I won’t do it again.
There was absolutely no creative editing, at all.
I simply didn’t include his claim that I was lying, as I didn’t feel I had to focus on that in GD and I assumed that a mod would slap that sort of “behavior” down.
~shrugs~
Not all taxes are based on brackets. The Reagan Tax increases werent by brackets, but by eliminating write offs that exposed more money to taxes. This increased the percentage of income to the bracket resulting in a higher percentage of income to be taxed
The Domestic Partner definition for health insurance was created to recognize same sex partnerships. The definition is written homogeneously to include opposite sex partnerships. Since homosexual partnerships are not recognized as a Civil Union, their only choice is to cover their partner under domestic partnership. That means any benefits provided by the employer are taxable.
Example:
I cover my wife on my health plan. My employer pays $350 towards that coverage. That is not taxed to me. My buddy covers his partner, the employer pays $350 towards his partners coverage, he is taxed on that benefit.
When determining taxes, the rate you pay is based on income exposed.
If my return grosses 100k, and I can write off 40k, that leaves 60K to tax. If that puts me in the 28% bracket, that is 16,800. That means my effective rate is 16.8%
If a gay person earned the same 100K, but they arent allowed the same write offs, and say have 70k taxable at 28%, that is 20,300. An effective rate of 20.3%
When tax planners deal with rates, many deal with the effective rate.
Oh, and: as you didn’t include a note, I assume that it’s now legal in this thread to use the same exact verbiage that as our champion of Personal Freedom and Non-Special Rights and point out that he’s “dishonestly” claiming that his argument isn’t a series of rationalizations in support of trying to make it legal to discriminate against gays? Or was that accusation acceptable because it was specific but cast as general? So I’d be fine if I said “Some people in this thread are dishonestly claiming that they aren’t in favor of discrimination against gays when they keep bending over backwards to try to argue for why it should be legal to discriminate against gays?”
You need to re-read the segment of the opinion you quote, and other portions of it, because the NM Appellate Court does not deny there is expressive conduct and speech in those pictures. Rather, they claim the speech or expressive conduct is not Elane’s but someone else’s. However, I have a hard time believing this because photography for hire does not negate the expressive elements Elane Photography adds to the pictures. In other words, like with paintings, although someone is the owner of her expressive conduct, it is still her expressive conduct, and under copyright law she does retain some copyrights to those pictures even though someone else has paid for them.
Now, it may be true the speech and expressive conduct belongs to her by virtue of the copyright statute but for the Free Speech Clause the speech and expressive conduct belongs to someone else. As I explained previously, this would be an odd conclusion because the Court, admittedly in a very old decision, has given the factors of when the pictures constitute as speech and expressive conduct of the photographer. I question whether it ceases to be the speech or expressive conduct of the photographer on the mere basis someone buys the speech and expressive conduct.
I do not regret anything I have said in this thread. You can add mind reading to the list of things you shouldn’t do in this thread, along with the gallant attempts of strawmanning my position.
We are discussing photographs and expressive conduct in regards to photography. We do not need to examine “what other products might be considered” expressive conduct to answer the question or issue of photography, especially when your examples are non-parallel to what we are discussing. In other words, other examples are perhaps helpful but you have been relying upon non-parallel examples.
Here, I bolded the relevant portion of my statement for you so you can follow along: “They have clearly expressed their opinion that photographs taken under the circumstances relevant to this case are not instruments of speech as claimed by Elane Photography and thus are not protected under the First Amendment.” As for the remainder of your response, it might be, in your opinion, an “odd conclusion,” but it is their conclusion nonetheless.
Have you ever recognized a joke? I included the smiley just to make it more clear. Ah well.
If it makes you feel better to attribute my comments to strawmanning or mind reading or the phases of the moon, have at it. However, you aren’t in a position to dictate what I can discuss or what examples I can use in that discussion. I already wore out a full set of parents. Thanks, though, for that gallant attempt to guide me down the proper path. 
I agree, and I’d also point out that the tax code is something like nine million words long. Nine million words all dedicated to telling us that some groups will pay more taxes and others will pay less. I’m sure that anyone could look in there and find a basis for countless claims of discrimination if they wanted to. For starters, the rich pay the highest tax rates, but no one outside of Ayn Rand followers thinks the rich need special protection.
The real point I’m trying to make here is just that the premise that gays are an oppressed group needing special protection seems shaky to me. Sudden Kestrel has mentioned “the emotional toll of discrimination” as the basis for those protections. I’m personally not aware of any common theory of governance that views avoidance of emotional pain as a reason for the government to step in and regulate private sector business. There’s a possibility for emotional pain whenever people interact, and the government can’t manage it out of existence.
That falsely presumes that all emotional pain is equal. When it is caused by bigotry, it is the function of government to prevent it.
The premise that gays don’t need legal protection because they’re not being murdered and repressed the way black people were in the '50s and '60s (or earlier) doesn’t hold much water, though. If you’re being denied legal protections and can be fired from your job based on your sexuality, you’ve got a good claim to being discriminated against. The fact that Klan-style terroristic murder campaigns have gone out of fashion doesn’t mean the discrimination is insignificant. “Did someone in the past have it worse?” is not the only relevant criterion in addressing a legal wrong.
Yes, and you failed completely at making an argument to that effect, and now have failed to respond to what people said in reply. Which is a pretty solid hint at your actual motives.
I know it’s too late but I found this pretty entertaining.
How about having gay sex with Lions?
Only in Detroit.
Economic status isn’t an immutable characteristic. Sexual orientation is. Thus, including sexual orientation as a suspect classification makes sense.
I did? Where? Not being snarky, just hoping I haven’t been sleep-posting again.