What!!!:eek::eek::eek:
The post I was responding to was much broader than what you are saying here. it basically amounted to: if you are going to sell cakes, how can you object to selling cakes.
It seems like you agree that you have at some control over what you offer for sale to the public based on content and perhaps even context.
In those states where it is a protected class, your religious objections do not overcome the rights of the gay couple. Everywhere else, it does (at least for now).
The word religion is in the constitution. Its in the first sentence of the bill of rights. It is the first right that is protected in the bill of rights.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, there is so much ignorance in this thread, starting with this flaming turd
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Gay people already cost straight people about 100K (per gay person) in lifetime HIV costs.
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Not only is this ridiculous, it is not even logical. There is no clear indicator for how many people in this country are gay, so how could there be a per person metric? Nor is there any thing except blatant bigotry that would indicate that each gay person in the country has HIV. But go ahead and try to justify this with a cite. I dare you.
You really have no clue how the ACA operates, do you?
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I think…how much longer before society decides to make me do something that I don’t want to do? If you think it’s just bakers, hang on. It will be you tomorrow.
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You mean, like pay taxes? Welcome to the U.S.A. We have laws to compel people to act, or not act, because asking nicely doesn’t work so well. You, as a (nominal) Christian, should respect that, given the precept of Romans 13:1, which says “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities…”
[QUOTE=ITR Champion]
Within living memory, businesses were required by law to discriminate against Blacks in many places. (And against Hispanics too, though that’s not as widely remembered.) Even in places where racial segregation was not required by law, the police often lead or encouraged violence against any integrated business. The moral of the Jim Crow era is “government sucks”. The Jim Crow era cannot return unless government re-institutes it.
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Do you have a cite for this canard that businesses tried to legally integrate in the Jim Crow era and were forcibly denied that opportunity by the police?
[QUOTE=John Mace]
I don’t think that “systemic discrimination practiced in this country within living memory” would be sustainable given the internet.
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Are you of the opinion that systematic racial discrimination was practiced in secret?
I am assuming that you are talking about the store Sweet Cakes by Melissa, which had been opened in Oregon (and has now moved online). Somehow, you googled it, but you remain ignorant of what happened.
First, the gay couple didn’t sue the bakery. They filed a complaint with the Oregon department of Justice, since this was a violation of a law on Oregon’s books.
In response, the DOJ sent a letter to the bakers, asking for a response. Rather than do so, the bakers took to the internet to complain, including by posting the letter. They did not redact the complainant’s names or home address, and the complainants became victims of death threats and harassment.
This is what the gay couple suffered - extreme harassment, which the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industry cited as foreseeable results of the baker’s conduct.
As a result, the couple were awarded damages totaling $135,000.00. While that might seem like a lot, the same Bureau noted that it was in line with its other fines, such as the award of $325,000.00 to a Christian employee for suffering incurred due to religious harassment.
From the ruling: “The Agency’s theory of liability is that since Respondents brought the case to the media’s attention and kept it there by repeatedly appearing in public to make statements deriding Complainants, it was foreseeable that this attention would negatively impact Complainants, making Respondents liable for any resultant emotional suffering experienced by Complainants. The Agency also argues that Respondents are liable for negative third party social media directed at Complainants because it was a foreseeable consequence of media attention.”
…
In response to the OP, in general businesses do have the right to discriminate. They can refuse service to someone who won’t pay their prices. If someone comes into the store screaming, yelling, and being belligerent, they can tell them to leave. If someone seeks to do business who reeks because he hasn’t showered in three weeks, they don’t need to accommodate him.
What the business can’t do is discriminate on the basis of a classification that is protected by law. Historically, the protected class has been race; gender, national origin, religion, and physical handicap have also been added. But some jurisdictions have gone even further to include sexual orientation. The rationale is because - like these other categories - these characteristics are immutable or (as with religion, or, perhaps, sexual preference) a choice that is indispensable to one’s identity. In other words, these things don’t change, and these places have decided that it is unfair and wrong to allow people to be refused service because of who they are (as opposed to what they do).
But what about when religion and sexual orientation clash, you ask? Well, in the case of Oregon, there is an exception in the public accommodations law for religious institutions (i.e. churches).
But, more generally, it’s simply a fallacy that Christianity prohibits a person from refusing service to someone because they are gay. Even if you accept the Christian belief that being gay is a sin (just like eating lobster, or shaving your beard, or wearing polyester), there is no prohibition against interacting with a sinner. If anything, it’s the opposite - you are supposed to leave the judgment to God and embrace them as being like family.
So, there is no challenging choice here. If you open a business, you are required to follow the laws of where the business operates. And if you want to claim that your religion prevents you from following those laws, it seems to me that you need to 1) identify where in your religion it says that (it’s certainly not in anything that Jesus said, and it’s not referenced in the 10 commandments), and 2) demonstrate that you are not cherry-picking religious tenets to justify some other reason for your discrimination (i.e. you’re a bigot).
These “persecuted” Christians can do neither.
But why should your religious objections matter? We live in a a country that supposedly has separation of church and state. And now you are saying religious thought should influence public policy. How is that possible if we have separation of church and state?
Yes, for you to practice your religion the way you want. That does not give you the right to tell other people what to do or to discriminate against them.
Why would I be unhappy?
Unfortunately it does. As long as it does not contradict more fundamental rights, I am free to exercise my religion and the government cannot tell me otherwise. Freedom of religion is NOT freedom FROM religion at least not from private parties.
A business is not a private party. If you won’t let a gay person come in your home, fine, you don’t have to. But if you have a business you can’t refuse to serve them.
Who defines your “religion”? If you claim to be a Christian, does your religion mean what your local church leader tells you, even if the bible says otherwise? If you are Catholic, is your religion whatever the Pope commands? Can me and my friends, when we get together on a Saturday night and imbibe while solving the world’s problems, consider ourselves a religion, and thereby become exempt from most laws that we disagree with? Or do we need to apply for, and obtain, tax exempt status? Do you draw lines between a religion and a cult, and if so, how?
I ask sincerely, because I think that this effort to protect “religious liberty” leads to all sorts of questions that I can’t answer for myself.
You really want the government to make theological rulings in court, about how to correctly interpret the Bible (or other religious text, creed, or tradition)? That sounds like a cure far worse than the disease.
Nope. But they also can’t refuse to sell one of their “Sermon on the Mount” cakes to a Satanist.
Nationally, no. But in some states, it is.
As a carpenter, He instead built all their chairs with one leg shorter than the others.
It’s an ugly issue both ways. Take military cemetery headstones, with religious symbols. The military must have a list of “permitted” symbols, and that puts the government in the nasty position of saying to some, “No, that isn’t a real religion.” It’s going to be a while, I think, before military cemetery headstones will have symbols for Jedi Knights, Pastafarians, followers of the IPU, or the Church of Red Sonja (Topless Moiety.)
Similarly, I think, if people are going to be foolish enough to file lawsuits demanding relief on religious grounds, we need to know: what is a legitimate religious ground? This is why Moriarty suggests it leads to all kinds of unanswerable questions. If the baker can discriminate against gays, why not against blacks, Jews, women, Catholics, Russians, or people in wheelchairs?
If we open the door to allowing “religion” to be a basis to act differently than what the law generally compels, we need some metric to determine when religion applies. Otherwise, couldn’t anybody claim that they act according to their “religion” whenever they don’t want to do something? (Pay property taxes? My religion forbids making tribute to anybody but God).
I was trying to think of the most non-invasive way to make this determination. I freely admit that it is not easy. I thought of a two-part test: 1) does a religion actually say what you are claiming? 2) Are you authentically practicing that religion?
But even that is fraught with peril, as my later questions demonstrate. How do we determine what the religion says (the religious text? Any religious leader? Whatever the practitioner sincerely believes?)? And how do we determine if a person is an adherent? How do we even determine what constitutes a religion?
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Similarly, I think, if people are going to be foolish enough to file lawsuits demanding relief on religious grounds, we need to know: what is a legitimate religious ground? This is why Moriarty suggests it leads to all kinds of unanswerable questions.
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Exactly.
In many places I can in fact refuse to serve them. They are not a protected class.
I don’t know. There are all sorts of areas where the law is fuzzy and how to determine “sincerely held religious beliefs” is one of those areas.
well, that was a bad example because religion is a protected class.