Tennant: A doctor.
How does baking a cake for someone else violate their religion? Do they think that they are somehow “enabling” homosexuality by providing a cake? Or do they think that by denying a cake the homosexuality will somehow be nullified? There is no comparison with making a Muslim or Kosher keeping Jew eat pork. That act would be the “believer” violating a rule himself. No one is asking the bakers to become homosexual.
As I understand it, the argument that the bakery owners have made is that, by making a cake for a same-sex wedding, they would be explicitly endorsing the marriage itself, and that being forced to “make” such an endorsement would be forcing them to violate their religious beliefs.
Lieutenant
Someone who holds a position in lieu of another.
I have a confession to make-I asked them to become homosexual in a politely worded handwritten letter with a Rainbow Brite drawing on the back and a nice stamp featuring daffodils and a cute little bumblebee. I made an offer to meet them half-way: If they would be willing to try homosexuality for a night or two, I would be willing to bake a nice five-layered cake at no cost to them for the next wedding they catered(even if it was a straight wedding!). Unfortunately I never received a reply.
And I was so looking forward to making that cake. 
Yes.
Some men, especially those with a macho issue, take the “Wives, submit to your husbands” thing as open season, without recalling the rest of the surrounding passages. :dubious:
This whole thread is heartbreaking. Many don’t see that they are judging entire groups based on the behaviors of a few.
I have responses to numerous posts, but don’t want to get into arguments with true believers.
Just stop talking about groups, and get to know individuals before calling them out.
The problem with that is that some christians wear their religion as a symbol, a form of virtue signalling. They make sure that everyone knows that they are christian.
Now, many (probably most, but I haven’t done a survey) christians consider their religion to be their personal relationship with god and jesus, and other than talking about it with like minded or interested parties, they keep it to themselves. They don’t force their views on others, don’t expect others to follow the teachings and beliefs that they have chosen to follow. That’s great.
Other christians announce their christianity as the reason that they are choosing to be intolerant of others, and that tends to paint the ones that keep their beliefs to themselves with the same brush. They have little difficulty in judging other groups with a broad brush, whether they be atheists, muslims, or just another branch of christianity that they choose to disavow, as they don’t have the same precise beliefs.
I know many christians that are wonderful people who I enjoy quite a bit. But I know others people who make sure that I know are christians that are utter assholes.
I know atheists who are big jerks, too. Does that mean all atheists are jerks? I don’t know; I haven’t met them all. But why is that Christians who let the world know their beliefs are offensive, but atheists who do aren’t? Or others who let the world know their beliefs or worldview? Why isn’t it a 2-way street?
It’s not virtue signaling to follow the commands of our faith. It’s obedience. And we know that the world will hate us for following Christ. He told us so. But we love Him more than the world.
Some who claim to be Christians don’t follow Christ as He taught, and God will judge them when He judges everybody. No human is or will ever be the judge. Others are just trying to tell the world about their need for a Savior and show the way to the Savior. If that’s hate to someone, it’s because they don’t want to heed the warning.
Truth is hate to those who hate the truth.
A real problem with using same-sex weddings as an example of hate is that art was redefined in the 20th century, and now nobody agrees on the definition. Bakers, florists, videographers, and photographers see much of what they do as art, not a product or a service. So asking them to produce art for a ceremony they believe is wrong is the problem. Especially when the persons doing the asking have singled that Christian out, refusing to go to others who will gladly create art for them.
No one thought the artists fleeing Europe in the 1930’s were wrong to refuse to make art for a political system they saw as evil; no one claimed they were bigoted or discriminatory.
Since the post-modern world tells us that truth is relative, and what is true for one person might not be truth for others, why can’t Christians follow the truth they believe? Refusing to endorse your truth isn’t imposing my belief on you; it’s refusing to let you impose your truth on me.
Do you actually believe that truth is relative, and that other religions(or no religion at all) are valid for those that follow a path other than your own, or are you throwing out arguments to see what sticks? You claim that others who say they are Christian don’t follow Christ as he taught, but since they tend to use the same Bible you do(more or less), can you at least entertain the notion that it might not be a case of “we follow what he says and they do not”, but more a case of “the people that lead our group may interpret the Bible’s teachings different that the people that lead other groups”? If not, then I may have to assume that your above statement is merely an attempt to dismiss the arguments of others without actually attempting to understand them.
Maybe they heard that there’s no hate in Hebbin, so they feel they need to get their hate on down here, so they don’t miss out…
Did I say otherwise? In the post you responded to, I specifically said that there are many christians that are wonderful people. Yes, it is the most vocal ones that tend to be the assholes and the most noticed and the ones who put others into a bad light.
It is virtue signalling to publicly declare that you are a christian, in that people will assume that you abide by christian principles and Jesus’s teachings. That many self declared christians then turn around and refuse to follow Jesus’s teachings is what makes it a false statement. They want people to think better of them because they are religious, but they do not actually reflect the values that they are supposed to.
BTW, “the world will hate us for following Christ.”? Please. The world gets annoyed with you when you demand that we live our lives according to your beliefs, but your need to feel a martyr is the reason that you take any slight criticism of anything religious as hate.
So you think that when the phelps clan shows up and protests military funerals, they are just showing the truth? There is not hate there? When christians bomb an abortion clinic, killing people they are just demonstrating god’s love? When a christian beats a homosexual to death, they are just spreading Jesus’s teachings?
Christians don’t even agree with each other as to what the “truth” is.
Do you deny that there are people that use their claim of religion to justify their hateful actions, or do you think that anything anyone does that they declare was done in the name of religion is just truth?
They singled that christian out because that christian decided to open a business open to the public. They went to a business that advertises itself as being open to the public, but they also want to discriminate against members of the public for their own personal reasons. Subway sandwich artists see what they do as art as well, do they get to discriminate against members of the public?
They were being killed by the regime. Are florists being hunted and killed by the govt? No, they are just being asked to bake a cake. To compare the experiences of those who were the targets of attempted genocide to those who just don’t want to make a cake for someone that they think is icky is more than a bit of a stretch.
Where did you hear that truth is relative? That is an untrue statement. Truth is. We may not know the truth, and we may be struggling to come to a better understanding of truth, but that does not mean that anything thing that you read in a book that was based on oral traditions of stone and bronze age communities, transferred for generations, transcribed and translated by humans who were not just imperfect, but also had their own motivations, and finally compiled by a group of scholars trying to curry the king’s favor is any more true than the things I can see with my own two eyes.
There’s so much judgmental BS in this. And remember - you can’t BS a BS’er.
I was a born-again, young-earther, creationist fundy. I went to their churches twice on Sunday, bible studys on Wednesday, I went to their religious schools from grade 1 - 6. I went to their vacation bible schools, summer camps, youth groups, baptisms, choir recitals…
All us good christians, sitting in our pews in our Sunday best feeling so holy. And then, after the service the pastor would go see his mistress, dads would abuse their children and spouses, old people would go out for lunch and then stiff the waitress.
And then one day, when I was about 18, I found out I was pregnant. I was kicked out of the church and every single one of my christian friends cut me off. But you know what? The guy who got me pregnant was still welcomed there.
I wonder what Christ would have thought about that? All the elders and congregation turning their backs on a young girl at the worst time in her life. You can’t say it’s just a few. It was every, single person in a large church. Not even one person talked to me, ever again.
No Good Samaritans in my church, that’s for sure!
This would be fine except for the fact that many Christians would love to see their beliefs become law - no gay marriage, only traditional families and definitely no gay adoptions.
Go ahead and be a “good Christian”. Just leave the rest of us alone.
I can accept that as soon as these bakers refuse wedding cakes for the remarrying divorced. Or birthday cakes for illegitimate children. How about cakes for the disabled or disfigured? God so hates them He refused them entry into the Temple.
Still sad. We hate Christians so much we will attribute all kind of evil to them with no evidence (because these is none).
What evil groups do in the name of God is a direct violation of the 2nd Commandment. You can’t blame all Christians for the evil of a few. Do you blame all Muslims for the actions of terrorists?
I didn’t “attribute” anything. I want to know why those other sins aren’t being treated the same as being gay. Wanting to remarry after divorce is more voluntary than being gay and far more common. Why does that get a pass?
Illegitimate children are forbidden entry into the Assembly of the Lord. Ten generations beyond are also forbidden entry.
The disfigured and crippled are forbidden entry into the Temple.
This is all stated quite clearly in the Bible.
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You keep calling it hate. You only do that because you want to be persecuted, it is the only way you can find that defines you. You want to believe that people hate you for your beliefs, because that lets you think that when they criticize you for your actions, it is just out of hate, and you give yourself a pass.
It may be enough to fool yourself, and to make you feel better about discriminating against people that you have don’t like, but it doesn’t really fool anyone else at all.
Of course I don’t blame all Muslims for the actions of terrorists, but I also don’t give terrorists a pass if they claim that they are just following their religion.
I don’t hate any christians, but I also don’t give them a pass because they justify their intolerance by claiming that they are following their religion.
It is not what you believe that people take offense to, it is what you do. Why is it so hard for you to understand this?
If we allow bakers and other “artists” to discriminate because of their religious beliefs, are you okay with hotels, banks, and pharmacists doing the same thing? And why limit this to refusing to serve homosexuals? I’m sure plenty of people consider black people the cursed descendants of Ham. Should we give restaurant owners the right to exclude black customers to keep their cursedness from tainting the premises? Should we permit doctors to withhold emergency care from black people? I mean, they sincerely believe these people are cursed and who are we to tell them they have to violate their moral system by saving them? If blacks thave a problem with this discrimination, they could always go elsewhere, right?
Christians need to ask themselves at what point does catering to religious attitudes look awfully like catering to outright bigotry. If you think these things are miles apart from each other, it is only because you are not the one being treated like a second class citizen.