For the purposes of this, “I don’t care about them” is the same thing as ignoring them: you’re treating them as a part of the story that doesn’t merit concern. That is inappropriate. It is entirely appropriate to object to the rightwing narrative about the law’s effect that liberals believed, to correct the record on this account, as long as you ALSO acknowledge the motives as a significant part of the story.
First of all, I contend that you have not proven that opponents of this bill have lied. They have not supported your legal interpretation of the issue. That’s not Yhe same thing as lying.
But honor? Honor doesn’t protect me from homophobes like Mike Pence. What good does honor do me, except tie my hands against the dishonorable who actively and knowingly lie on a regular basis about gays and the gay rights movement? Is honor going to stop the Mormon church from lying about me? Will it stop the deceits of Pat Robertson? Will honor keep NOM at bay?
Honor. Feh. I’ll gladly sell my honor if it gets me something useful, like legal protections from troglodyte assholes like Rand Paul or Mike Huckabee.
Because the active verbs conveyed an accurate picture of colonial-era attitudes towards the concept of same-sex marriage.
That would address the Dillon Rule dispute, perhaps. But simply failing to disclose that federal law ALSO protected corporations? That’s not some difference of opinion. That’s a lie. And choosing the ultra-careful phrasing that says, “…the language isn’t in the federal RFRA,” while failing to reveal it is in another federal law that is of equal force and effect, is deliberate deception. There’s not another reasonable conclusion – the parsing is so careful.
I get it. You’re right: the willingness to be deceptive is a powerful tool. It does seem foolish sometimes to concede the lying game to your opponent.
Still, I contend that ultimately, the truth will out. And if your debate is on a website that claims interest in fighting ignorance, I believe that you have to agree to that disadvantage.
I agree it’s appropriate; I don’t agree it’s mandatory.
I’m confused by what you seem to be saying. On the one hand, you claim that the founding fathers were “not willing” to legalize same-sex marriage, implying that it was considered and rejected. Later, you claim that it was something that was not even discussed, implying that there was no consideration or rejection. Now, you claim to have some insight into “colonial-era attitudes towards the concept of same-sex marriage”, which would again imply that it was something that was discussed and/or considered.
Do you have a cite for what you know of “colonial-era attitudes towards the concept of same-sex marriage”?
Then we’re right back where we started, in which I said that ignoring the motives of the people involved comprises willful naivete. You haven’t explained why deliberately ignoring that aspect of the story is acceptable.
Assuming you are serious in asking for a cite. Marriage isn’t discussed, so you are free to argue that they would have been allowed to get married before they were executed.
And if you can find a cite where I, personally, have lied about an issue that touches on gay rights, this could be a reasonable critique. But you can’t, so it isn’t.
No, because the colonial attitudes were so far away from recognizing same-sex sexual practices that it is an extremely strongly supported conclusion that marriage was not a possible concession for the time.
This is getting absurd. You’re asking for a cite that falls into the category of “everyone knows.”
But, fine. If everyone knows it, except you, then I suppose it should not be too difficult to find some citation that supports the proposition.
The American colonies/first states were all adopters of the English common law. See, e.g., Part II, c. 6, art. 6, of the Massachusetts Constitution; Maryland Constitution, Bill of Rights, Art 5; New York Constitution Art 1 ss 16; and if you wish cites for any other specific original state let me know.
At English common law, and adopted as criminal offenses by each and every one of the original thirteen states, sodomy – sexual union between two men – was a criminal offense, either at common law or by statute:
Cites:
[ul]
[li]Connecticut: 1 Public Statute Laws of the State of Connecticut, 1808, Title LXVI, ch. 1, 2 (rev. 1672)[/li][li]Delaware: 1 Laws of the State of Delaware, 1797, ch. 22, 5 (passed 1719)[/li][li]Georgia: crime at common law; the Georgia General Assembly adopted the common law of England as the law of Georgia in 1784[/li][li]Maryland: crime at common law; the Maryland Declaration of Rights (1776) says that “the inhabitants of Maryland are entitled to the common law of England.”[/li][li]Massachusetts: Acts and Laws passed by the General Court of Massachusetts, ch. 14, Act of Mar. 3, 1785[/li][li]New Hampshire: passed its first sodomy statute in 1718. Acts and Laws of New Hampshire 1680-1726, p. 141 (1978).[/li][li]New Jersey: crime at common law; and first passage of a sodomy statue in 1796: Acts of the Twentieth General Assembly, Mar. 18, 1796, ch. DC, 7[/li][li]New York: Laws of New York, ch. 21 (passed 1787).[/li][li]North Carolina: crime: See Collection of the Statutes of the Parliament of England in Force in the State of North-Carolina, ch. 17, p. 314 (Martin ed. 1792).[/li][li]Pennsylvania: Laws of the Fourteenth General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, ch. CLIV, 2 (passed 1790). [/li][li]Rhode Island: passed its first sodomy law in 1662. The Earliest Acts and Laws of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations 1647-1719, p. 142 (1977).[/li][li]South Carolina: Public Laws of the State of South Carolina, p. 49 (1790). [/li][li]Virginia: crime at English common law. 9 Hening’s Laws of Virginia, ch. 5, 6, p. 127 [/li][/ul]
Now, what’s left that you need a cite for?
How long does it take you type four letters and a question mark, as opposed to how long it takes me to find the specific responses to your ungrounded suppositions? This is a tactic, pure and simple: you know just as well as anyone on this board that the founding fathers of the United States would not have been amenable to same-sex marriage. Each and every one of their colonies criminalized same-sex conduct. Some were lenient about it; others permitted the death penalty for it. Against that backdrop, we can be certain that they weren’t musing about how, after putting the sodomites to death, they would permit posthumous weddings.
So, let’s go: what else do you need cites for?
I agree: this is a bullshit cite request. Cite requests should be used carefully, when you genuinely think someone is making an incorrect claim that betrays a real flaw in their argument. Even if the founding fathers had supported same-sex marriage, that wouldn’t really have much impact on the current discussion, so the whole thing is a tangent–but it’s overwhelmingly clear that they didn’t discuss same-sex marriage for the same reason that we don’t spend time discussing marriages between an aborted fetus and a rabid dog–they would have found the very idea repellently ludicrous and nonsensical.
That’s certainly close to the opinion of some of the groups that wanted to use it as a means to discriminate against LBGT. IMO they are wrong. The law as it now stands, still provides protections for religious practices where those practices are restricted without a compelling government interest or where that compelling interest can be met in a less restrictive way. The changes just built in some automatic protection for certain compelling interests regarding discrimination. It probably has less benefit for Christians, since as a majority religion their practices are well known and represented. It’s a bigger deal for minority religions where many may not even realize there’s a practice that’s being limited.
Northern Indiana has a significant Amish population. In Minnesota, their RFRA got used in this way (Cite):
That’s a pretty good result. IMO. The end result in Indiana would still allow similar protection to religious Hoosiers. Amish Hoosiers could seek redress if a law passed requiring battery powered hazard warning lights be installed on horse drawn carriages - Awesome! I’m not religious but I support religious people being able to practice with a minimum of outside interference. I’m not gay, but I support people being able to express their sexuality with a minimum of outside interference (things like laws against public sex, regardless of orientation, being an example of reasonable interference in my mind.)
Unfortunately things are rarely simple in reality. There are frequently places where conflict exists between freedoms. As a society, I believe it’s useful to take a hard look at how to navigate the minefield of conflicting freedoms. I expect those discussions to get messy, take lots of time, cost money, and consume huge amounts of bandwidth. Would we be better as a society if we never discussed the hard, divisive issues openly and frankly? As frustrated as I can get during those discussions, my answer is no.
And here’s a florist who won’t serve gays but will serve adulterers, “because it’s a different kind of sin.”
And she doesn’t believe in it, but that’s not a problem. But being gay is. But…the Bible says everyone is a sinner. So why does she serve anyone at all?
I have to step away from the computer now. My head is spinning.
If I had to guess, I’d say that she probably draws a distinction in this way: a same-sex wedding is a public announcement, celebration, and affirmation of what she regards as a sinful act (or an affirmation of what almost certainly includes sinful acts). Indeed, a wedding is typically a promise to remain together forever, so the wedding celebration is the public announcement of a commitment to continue in sin forever.
She may send flowers to a thief, or a liar, but not as a means to publicly celebrate their theft or lies. Even an adulterer generally wishes to keep his adulterous conduct private, and doesn’t (generally) affirm his intent to continue in such conduct until he dies. So if I had to guess, I would suppose she sees an obstinacy in sin in the same-sex wedding that’s not evident in other examples.
That is how I’ve heard bigots defend themselves on this issue.
Well, then, going forward, it seems at least workable as a first cut theory – rather than expressing a lack of understanding at what such people might be thinking, that rationale can be used to explain it!
Here’s my theory: she wants some of that sweet, sweet GoFundMe money.
The true purpose of the bill isn’t to allow discrimination – Governor Prence tells us that anyone who’s been in Indiana 5 minutes knows that Hoosiers are the kindest, most loving people in the universe – but just to attract votes from the bigots and homophobes of Indiana (despite that they don’t exist).
So Blacks have the right to dine at McDonalds, but not the right to dine at a classier sit-down restaurant where artistic chefs arrange parsley creatively on the plate. Got it.
Sure you can’t deny them service, but you don’t have to make food the way they necessarily want it. If that has a discriminatory effect, tough.
Likewise, I’m sure you can make a case that workers HAVE to service a gay wedding, but they don’t have to change things at the demand of the bride and, er, bride.
To best illustrate this, let me refer to that famous SNL skit with Patrick Stewart, a cake maker who had a thing about making cakes of women on toilets. That was his passion and his art. A guy came in wanting something other than that. Not going to happen, although the cake maker did reluctantly try to compromise that he would do a man AND a woman on a toilet. When asked if the toilet could be left off the cake, he was told that he had to leave.
To force a cake maker who does cakes of a woman on the toilet to do anything else would be to force expression, a violation of the 1st amendment.
The inspiration for this bill came from the Hobby Lobby ruling that businesses can have religious beliefs, and that those can override federal law. Gotta wonder how badly Kennedy regrets agreeing to a special-pleading exception there - did he really not foresee that it would be used as the basis for allowing businesses to discriminate in the name of religion?
It has to be frustrating for the Indiana (and Arkansas) legislators to have to delete the main purpose of the bill in order to get it enacted. But t’ellwiddem.