Deceased Illinois former Senator Paul Simon regularly wore bow ties and was quite liberal.
George Will and Tucker Carlson aren’t asses because they wear bow ties. George Will is an ass because he has made a lifetime career of putting a respectable genteelness on professional bigotry.
They can. Still, veterans are a protected class - whether it’s because there was significant discrimination against them or because people decided it would be wrong if people were rejected from jobs and houses because they decided to enlist. And this also doesn’t work for women, the elderly, people born in foreign countries, or people who are disabled. You also can’t discriminate based on marital status (for example refusing to hire a married woman because she might get pregnant) even though that’s a choice, and even though people can change their religion, religion is also a protected class.
I should’ve just linked to a list of protected classes already. In case it wasn’t clear, throughout this thread I’ve been citing the actual classes - not guessing at what kind of discrimination is OK and what kind isn’t.
I understand.
What if the customer was a Satanist, and wanted a cake for a religious celebration? The baker couldn’t discriminate against him because of his religion, but would anybody argue that he has to bake the cake?
What if the customer was a satanist and needed gas to drive to his religious celebration? What if he needed food to give him the strength needed to perform his bizarre rights, should I be forced to process his Big Mac order?
What if the customer was a Jew, and needed the cake for a Bar Mitzvah? Should I be forced to draw a Star of David?
I think the envelope pushing questions are valid attempts to define boundaries and test the general validity of this approach to the law. I wonder if one way this could be worked out is if a strongly religious person could be allowed to open a bakery which clearly stated in its signage that it is a “Baptist bakery” or a “Catholic bakery”. Then customers would know up front who they were dealing with; some who were aligned with the church in question might be more likely to patronize it, while people like me would be less likely to. But the bakery would not be legally required to provide any cake which went against church teachings.
How about a sign that says “Church of Jesus Christ (Christian Identity): Whites Only”.
Comfortable with that?
Sure. There are all kinds of ‘black-only’ institutions.
The analogy I was trying to make was that the argument from the “religious freedom” side is that because they find same sex weddings immoral and in contradiction to their religious beliefs that they shouldn’t be forced to have any involvement with them. I was trying to come up with a scenario that more people could see from their side, and involved a more clearly established protected class, i.e., religion.
But they’re not ‘immoral’. It has nothing to do with morality, and that is not a good argument against them. They are not marriages at all and cannot be considered legitimate. Those who oppose them on religious grounds are all wet and hurting the cause. Same-sex ‘marriages’ are not customary (in the strong sense of ‘custom’) just as polygamy or marrying your sister is uncustomary. The ultimate basis of law is custom. If you throw that out, you throw out law altogether.
What a bewildering scenario. I’ve been to some gas stations and McDonald’s in my time, and I’ve never seen anyone announce what they’re doing and why they need food and gas. How is this supposed to work? In any case, do you think there’s any reason short of being broke that McDonald’s would turn down a customer?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Bar Mitzvah cake with a Star of David on it and I’m not sure whose religion this would be against, but putting both of those aside, why wouldn’t you fill the order, and would you also refuse to draw a symbol of another religion? If so, yes, it sounds to me like you’re discriminating based on religion.
Worth mentioning again: historically black colleges are not black-only.
There are other institutions that are.
False last time. Still false.
Try again.
No need! That thread lays out how and why you were so completely wrong, so we don’t need to waste several pages doing it again in this thread. And I won’t be doing it again.
Read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custom_(law)
Thee are different kinds of law (treaty law, for example, as the article states), to be sure, but the area of law governing marriage stems from custom.
You don’t think they’re immoral. I don’t think they’re immoral. But some Christians do think they’re immoral, and that’s why they don’t want to be forced to have any involvement. Legitimacy and custom is irrelevant to my argument. And if we say they can’t use the “my religion says that’s immoral” card to get out of a business situation with a member of one protected class, then does that mean they never can, even in a situation where the majority is more likely to sympathize with their viewpoint?
There are two problems with this use of “religious freedom:” it’s a bullshit interpretation of the concept as well as the religion in question, and it undermines everybody’s freedom significantly at the expense of expanding one group’s liberty in a trivial way.
Yes, but that is a weaker argument than ‘it flies in the face of custom’. There can be disagreements about what is ‘immoral’ (or is what is ‘immoral’ really what violates custom?). The point is that custom is a matter of history. You can appeal to that history. You cannot appeal to ‘opinion’.
The problem with the “it’s not ‘discrimination’, it’s ‘religious freedom’” argument is that, as far as I can tell, the only religious freedom they’re after is the freedom to discriminate.
I agree. It is not a good argument. The appeal to custom is a good argument.