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On March 25 2018 10:56 hunts wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the whole "you're denying me my right to deny others their right so you're the bigot here by not accepting my bigotry" defense is about as mature and nuanced as going "I know you are but what am I?" Denying someone the right to deny other people their rights is not ultimately depriving a person of their rights, it's merely upholding equality.
Yeah. That's basically the paradox of tolerance. In my opinion, the best resolution is that it's okay to not tolerate people who are intolerant. And if you want to get into it, it's not okay to not tolerate people who are intolerant of the intolerant, but it is okay to not tolerate people who are intolerant of those who do not tolerate the intolerant... Basically, intolerance at an even numbered depth is okay, intolerance at an odd numbered depth isn't.
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On March 25 2018 10:56 hunts wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the whole "you're denying me my right to deny others their right so you're the bigot here by not accepting my bigotry" defense is about as mature and nuanced as going "I know you are but what am I?" Denying someone the right to deny other people their rights is not ultimately depriving a person of their rights, it's merely upholding equality.
Yes. But when some people are more deserving of rights than others, as determined by the religion in question, there is no equality. The correct course of action is then not to challenge those aspects of the religion and correct that person's worldview, but to simply let the oppression of these other people go unopposed, in the name of the 1st amendment and ignoring the 14th.
P.S. There's some sarcasm in there.
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On March 25 2018 08:14 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 07:38 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 06:19 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 06:10 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 04:38 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 04:25 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 02:32 Danglars wrote:
It's interesting that you think this way. But you're really treating your own thoughts like your private religion. Iamthedave thinks it's secular enough and it's an obsolete institution, so he's going to restrict your civil rights to comport with his particular interpretation. That's very similar to forcing your religion on others ... you ought to believe what I believe, not whatever your beliefs are, leave me to practice according to my conscience.
See this is the slippery slope. You're also making Muslims unable to follow the tenets of their religion and stay in business. Basically, making art is for one religion that the state approves, and you can't create it based on non-state-approved religious beliefs. Because then your religious conscience might not be as liberal as the state conscience. The state doesn't consider it a religious ceremony, therefore you can't have any religious objections. I'm glad there's still nonprofits defending these civil rights from
No. The people that run a business have to leave all their religious liberties under the first amendment at the door. You can advocate for increased restrictions compared to not operating a business, but all this compelled speech just for seeking to earn a living also in accordance to your religion? Ugh. You operate your business containing custom expressive speech, and I'll operate mine. Sell your regular premade products in a listing to all takers, and save the custom art for messages that jive with your beliefs. This is getting pretty insane. This thread is getting to be a pain to chop up so I'm cutting it down again. How am I restricting anyone's civil rights? You can have any sort of marriage you want. But that doesn't make it an actual religious ceremony. It doesn't mean it ever has been. It's just an unjustified assumption that people have run with and never examined. In almost every culture everywhere in the world, churches need to go to the government and say 'may we perform marriages in our establishment?' And the government has the right to say 'no you may not'. And if the government does that, no 'marriage' performed in that establishment is legitimate. HOW is that a religious ceremony? That is a secular ceremony that people choose to apply religious overtones to. That's not my opinion, that is the objective facts of what actually happens. If it were a genuinely religious ceremony, the government would not be necessary. I'm guessed you're a Christian from some of your comments, apologies if I'm wrong. But I'll assume you're a church goer. Your church does not need anyone's permission to perform Sunday mass, and it sure as hell doesn't need the government to say 'your sunday mass is legitimate'. Because Mass is a religious ceremony and it's validation comes from all the trappings of its performance within the context in which it is performed. A wedding requires none of that. I could literally take my housemate to the registry office and be married tomorrow evening if I wanted, and that marriage would be as legitimate as a £10,000 marriage that takes place in the cathedral down the road. The trappings are entirely irrelevant, the meat and bones of a marriage is the secular, legal structure that supports and legitimises it, and it has always been so. That is why King Henry the 8th was able to say 'Actually... no,' when the church tried to force him to keep his wife. No amount of excommunications or wars were able to change the fact he had a divorce and then had another marriage and the child of one of his later marriages ended up King. It's also - not coincidentally - why the rich and powerful throughout history conveniently find their way into and out of marriages that are supposed to be unbreakable until death. Ain't no wealth getting someone around Mass, though. I don't care how you practice your faith. But you can't redefine reality with it. Marriage is still secular. Now I appreciate Christians believe that there is a spiritual component to marriage, and that is where much of the issue arises re: teh gayz. But that's your trappings. It's not real. And that is not my opinion, that's the state's opinion. The state doesn't care if you think you've married someone. It cares that you married someone in a place that it considers legitimate, and if the state doesn't think your marriage is legitimate you'll very quickly run into problems when you try to assert otherwise. As to your last point, compelled speech is a thing. It just is. Complaints about compelled speech are a far bigger slippery slope than 'let the public know that you're putting certain elements of your religious beliefs ahead of your business'. I mean, why SHOULD I be forced to let the public know all of my sliced ham includes uranium in it? They're trampling my first amendment rights and making me say things I don't wanna! Yes, it's a silly, extreme example, but compelled speech is a standard part of business. If you want to make your religion part of your business, you're damn skippy you should be expected to say up front that you're doing so. Religions do not deserve the special pleading and status they unduly get, not in your culture or mine (not that we're half as bad as your lot are on that front). 'Good' Christians are far too often content to hide behind the sort of Christians who don't give a fig about civil liberties for anyone but themselves, who believe gay people deserve no rights, who think Muslims should be thrown out of their 'Christian' nation, who would gladly outlaw any beliefs but their own and enforce those beliefs on anyone who disagreed and crush any speech that went against them. You know those people exist and so do I, and unfortunately for you, an awful lot of them get voted for by your good honest religious Christians. It is an utter embarrassment that Roy Moore came so close to being elected, even without the allegations that brought him down. Your lot are not content to keep their religion private. Far too many of you want to enforce it on everyone else, and damn the consequences. That is your slippery slope, and it's a far more dangerous, far more deadly one than being forced to tell people you aren't going to serve them if they're gay. I covered the trampling of civil in the unquoted part of my last post. You can read it there and respond to what I wrote if you still don't understand. As you haven't responded to it, I don't know what was less than clear. You're still really deep in the hole with a historically acknowledged religious ceremony. Religions all over the world call the union of a man and woman a central God-purposed event. God ordains this union. You act or don't act in accordance to his will in this union. Et cetera. You're taking a historical revisionist route, and frankly an unsupported assertion, that it should be a secular event because you think some people just happen to choose to put religious undertones on the event. It's a religious event that some people adopt secular attitudes towards, and that's precisely why it's a core feature of this case. None of this wordy mash justifies adopting your attitude. It is a religious ceremony for a huge number of Americans, and just because you think it shouldn't be the case does not diminish that it will involve religious objections if they're making you be part of the service. Will you force a pastor to officiate the event on grounds of discrimination, because after all it's just this secular event to you? The folly just stretches on and on. I understand your perspective in the last three paragraphs. I live in a country that recognizes the role religion plays in life and how government intrusion on core beliefs would destroy a society and cause it to trend authoritarian over time. To re-purpose a sentence of yours, you really don't give a damn about civil liberties for people who you don't think deserve them. You simply don't think they should exist, therefore they don't exist, therefore they should be done away with. Therefore, direct your attention to constitutional amendments because I'm definitely talking about interpreting laws on the books by judges ... the proper realm for judicial battles. Okay. I'd like to get you to directly engage with something you consistently are ignoring, as it seems you don't understand my actual argument. If religion is required for marriage and it is a God-purposed event, why is the marriage a) not legal unless the state recognises it and why b) can the state annul it irrespective of the wishes of religious leaders? I have yet to see you concretely point towards a group I think don't deserve civil liberties. I do think that no group has the liberty to oppress another, and I think that the religious hide behind their religion regularly and use it as a shield to permit them to discriminate. And I think that is wrong. I don't think I'm rocking the boat there. I think I've already answered the post you're directing me towards. I believe marriage is obsolete personally so I do not intend to get married. I have no issues with other people choosing to do so, or the methods and trappings they use to complete that union. But I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular, and that marriage being secular is the only way to reconcile the vast gulf between what people say marriage is and what it actually is, and which part of that union the state - which is required to legitimise the union in the first place - actually cares about. We entered into this when you thought religious objections shouldn't even be here in the first place: it's asserted to be a secular event in your eyes, case closed. History tells a different tale. It supports the side that says it's very likely for such a ceremony to entangle religious people in conscience objections by its own nature. That's why very sympathetic individuals, such as the baker, will be kind and offer all there wares to gays and transgenders ... it's not participation in a religious ceremony. Your first problem is showing why your personal view that it is secular should trump the historical reality that it's intimately religious. Your second problem is showing where I said "religion is required for marriage." I said it very easily raises freedom of conscience objections because of its historical religious nature. I do not imply the reverse is true: all marriages must be religious or it's not a marriage. You haven't engaged with my arguments that you require religious persons to engage in forced speech (forced expression) and require them to violate their religious liberties (participate in ceremonies complying with their religious beliefs). I can't really help you. From what I gather, because you declare it secular, then no civil rights are violated, because they're secular ceremonies, and no religious person could object. ("I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular"). That's the only point you come back to and the only sense I can make of your argument. It's ludicrous. Rights don't cease to exist because you don't acknowledge them. The problem with your argument is that you try to imply that the religious aspect is inseparable from marriage due to the fact that marriage was historically co-opted by religion. What you don't do is acknowledge that marriage has pretty much universally been a legal/cultural institution that shaped the family dynamic, and religion has absolutely no right to uniquely claim it. To strengthen your argument, you would have to make a plausible argument as to why marriage is required to be religious. For example, why did my marriage that was strictly secular (not in a church, no involvement of religious ideas or practices) have some kind of religious component to it? What about the very nature of marriage makes it OK for religious people to discriminate based on it? This also brings up a larger question of why is religious belief ever an acceptable excuse to discriminate, but that's an entire discussion on its own. No requirement, just an extreme likelihood that someone religious would find the ceremony in direct conflict with his or her sincerely held religious views. I only bring it up because someone thought it was secular by nature and nobody’s civil rights were being violated. So really you’re falsely reducing my argument to points I never made.
So then you have to justify why religion is an acceptable excuse to discriminate, because this is precisely what your argument is supporting.
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On March 25 2018 11:19 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 08:14 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 07:38 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 06:19 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 06:10 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 04:38 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 04:25 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 02:32 Danglars wrote:
It's interesting that you think this way. But you're really treating your own thoughts like your private religion. Iamthedave thinks it's secular enough and it's an obsolete institution, so he's going to restrict your civil rights to comport with his particular interpretation. That's very similar to forcing your religion on others ... you ought to believe what I believe, not whatever your beliefs are, leave me to practice according to my conscience.
See this is the slippery slope. You're also making Muslims unable to follow the tenets of their religion and stay in business. Basically, making art is for one religion that the state approves, and you can't create it based on non-state-approved religious beliefs. Because then your religious conscience might not be as liberal as the state conscience. The state doesn't consider it a religious ceremony, therefore you can't have any religious objections. I'm glad there's still nonprofits defending these civil rights from
No. The people that run a business have to leave all their religious liberties under the first amendment at the door. You can advocate for increased restrictions compared to not operating a business, but all this compelled speech just for seeking to earn a living also in accordance to your religion? Ugh. You operate your business containing custom expressive speech, and I'll operate mine. Sell your regular premade products in a listing to all takers, and save the custom art for messages that jive with your beliefs. This is getting pretty insane. This thread is getting to be a pain to chop up so I'm cutting it down again. How am I restricting anyone's civil rights? You can have any sort of marriage you want. But that doesn't make it an actual religious ceremony. It doesn't mean it ever has been. It's just an unjustified assumption that people have run with and never examined. In almost every culture everywhere in the world, churches need to go to the government and say 'may we perform marriages in our establishment?' And the government has the right to say 'no you may not'. And if the government does that, no 'marriage' performed in that establishment is legitimate. HOW is that a religious ceremony? That is a secular ceremony that people choose to apply religious overtones to. That's not my opinion, that is the objective facts of what actually happens. If it were a genuinely religious ceremony, the government would not be necessary. I'm guessed you're a Christian from some of your comments, apologies if I'm wrong. But I'll assume you're a church goer. Your church does not need anyone's permission to perform Sunday mass, and it sure as hell doesn't need the government to say 'your sunday mass is legitimate'. Because Mass is a religious ceremony and it's validation comes from all the trappings of its performance within the context in which it is performed. A wedding requires none of that. I could literally take my housemate to the registry office and be married tomorrow evening if I wanted, and that marriage would be as legitimate as a £10,000 marriage that takes place in the cathedral down the road. The trappings are entirely irrelevant, the meat and bones of a marriage is the secular, legal structure that supports and legitimises it, and it has always been so. That is why King Henry the 8th was able to say 'Actually... no,' when the church tried to force him to keep his wife. No amount of excommunications or wars were able to change the fact he had a divorce and then had another marriage and the child of one of his later marriages ended up King. It's also - not coincidentally - why the rich and powerful throughout history conveniently find their way into and out of marriages that are supposed to be unbreakable until death. Ain't no wealth getting someone around Mass, though. I don't care how you practice your faith. But you can't redefine reality with it. Marriage is still secular. Now I appreciate Christians believe that there is a spiritual component to marriage, and that is where much of the issue arises re: teh gayz. But that's your trappings. It's not real. And that is not my opinion, that's the state's opinion. The state doesn't care if you think you've married someone. It cares that you married someone in a place that it considers legitimate, and if the state doesn't think your marriage is legitimate you'll very quickly run into problems when you try to assert otherwise. As to your last point, compelled speech is a thing. It just is. Complaints about compelled speech are a far bigger slippery slope than 'let the public know that you're putting certain elements of your religious beliefs ahead of your business'. I mean, why SHOULD I be forced to let the public know all of my sliced ham includes uranium in it? They're trampling my first amendment rights and making me say things I don't wanna! Yes, it's a silly, extreme example, but compelled speech is a standard part of business. If you want to make your religion part of your business, you're damn skippy you should be expected to say up front that you're doing so. Religions do not deserve the special pleading and status they unduly get, not in your culture or mine (not that we're half as bad as your lot are on that front). 'Good' Christians are far too often content to hide behind the sort of Christians who don't give a fig about civil liberties for anyone but themselves, who believe gay people deserve no rights, who think Muslims should be thrown out of their 'Christian' nation, who would gladly outlaw any beliefs but their own and enforce those beliefs on anyone who disagreed and crush any speech that went against them. You know those people exist and so do I, and unfortunately for you, an awful lot of them get voted for by your good honest religious Christians. It is an utter embarrassment that Roy Moore came so close to being elected, even without the allegations that brought him down. Your lot are not content to keep their religion private. Far too many of you want to enforce it on everyone else, and damn the consequences. That is your slippery slope, and it's a far more dangerous, far more deadly one than being forced to tell people you aren't going to serve them if they're gay. I covered the trampling of civil in the unquoted part of my last post. You can read it there and respond to what I wrote if you still don't understand. As you haven't responded to it, I don't know what was less than clear. You're still really deep in the hole with a historically acknowledged religious ceremony. Religions all over the world call the union of a man and woman a central God-purposed event. God ordains this union. You act or don't act in accordance to his will in this union. Et cetera. You're taking a historical revisionist route, and frankly an unsupported assertion, that it should be a secular event because you think some people just happen to choose to put religious undertones on the event. It's a religious event that some people adopt secular attitudes towards, and that's precisely why it's a core feature of this case. None of this wordy mash justifies adopting your attitude. It is a religious ceremony for a huge number of Americans, and just because you think it shouldn't be the case does not diminish that it will involve religious objections if they're making you be part of the service. Will you force a pastor to officiate the event on grounds of discrimination, because after all it's just this secular event to you? The folly just stretches on and on. I understand your perspective in the last three paragraphs. I live in a country that recognizes the role religion plays in life and how government intrusion on core beliefs would destroy a society and cause it to trend authoritarian over time. To re-purpose a sentence of yours, you really don't give a damn about civil liberties for people who you don't think deserve them. You simply don't think they should exist, therefore they don't exist, therefore they should be done away with. Therefore, direct your attention to constitutional amendments because I'm definitely talking about interpreting laws on the books by judges ... the proper realm for judicial battles. Okay. I'd like to get you to directly engage with something you consistently are ignoring, as it seems you don't understand my actual argument. If religion is required for marriage and it is a God-purposed event, why is the marriage a) not legal unless the state recognises it and why b) can the state annul it irrespective of the wishes of religious leaders? I have yet to see you concretely point towards a group I think don't deserve civil liberties. I do think that no group has the liberty to oppress another, and I think that the religious hide behind their religion regularly and use it as a shield to permit them to discriminate. And I think that is wrong. I don't think I'm rocking the boat there. I think I've already answered the post you're directing me towards. I believe marriage is obsolete personally so I do not intend to get married. I have no issues with other people choosing to do so, or the methods and trappings they use to complete that union. But I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular, and that marriage being secular is the only way to reconcile the vast gulf between what people say marriage is and what it actually is, and which part of that union the state - which is required to legitimise the union in the first place - actually cares about. We entered into this when you thought religious objections shouldn't even be here in the first place: it's asserted to be a secular event in your eyes, case closed. History tells a different tale. It supports the side that says it's very likely for such a ceremony to entangle religious people in conscience objections by its own nature. That's why very sympathetic individuals, such as the baker, will be kind and offer all there wares to gays and transgenders ... it's not participation in a religious ceremony. Your first problem is showing why your personal view that it is secular should trump the historical reality that it's intimately religious. Your second problem is showing where I said "religion is required for marriage." I said it very easily raises freedom of conscience objections because of its historical religious nature. I do not imply the reverse is true: all marriages must be religious or it's not a marriage. You haven't engaged with my arguments that you require religious persons to engage in forced speech (forced expression) and require them to violate their religious liberties (participate in ceremonies complying with their religious beliefs). I can't really help you. From what I gather, because you declare it secular, then no civil rights are violated, because they're secular ceremonies, and no religious person could object. ("I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular"). That's the only point you come back to and the only sense I can make of your argument. It's ludicrous. Rights don't cease to exist because you don't acknowledge them. The problem with your argument is that you try to imply that the religious aspect is inseparable from marriage due to the fact that marriage was historically co-opted by religion. What you don't do is acknowledge that marriage has pretty much universally been a legal/cultural institution that shaped the family dynamic, and religion has absolutely no right to uniquely claim it. To strengthen your argument, you would have to make a plausible argument as to why marriage is required to be religious. For example, why did my marriage that was strictly secular (not in a church, no involvement of religious ideas or practices) have some kind of religious component to it? What about the very nature of marriage makes it OK for religious people to discriminate based on it? This also brings up a larger question of why is religious belief ever an acceptable excuse to discriminate, but that's an entire discussion on its own. No requirement, just an extreme likelihood that someone religious would find the ceremony in direct conflict with his or her sincerely held religious views. I only bring it up because someone thought it was secular by nature and nobody’s civil rights were being violated. So really you’re falsely reducing my argument to points I never made. So then you have to justify why religion is an acceptable excuse to discriminate, because this is precisely what your argument is supporting.
If he was truly discriminating against gays, he wouldn’t sell premade cakes to them either. The US has a rich history of weighing religious liberty concerns against others ... like unemployment benefits even though jobs were available that didn’t have sabbaths off .. or LGBT groups in a veterans parade.
If we could return to a rational discussion of trade offs compared to the unilateral declaration that it’s discrimination ... that would be a good step one.
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On March 25 2018 12:34 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 11:19 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 08:14 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 07:38 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 06:19 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 06:10 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 04:38 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 04:25 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 02:32 Danglars wrote:
It's interesting that you think this way. But you're really treating your own thoughts like your private religion. Iamthedave thinks it's secular enough and it's an obsolete institution, so he's going to restrict your civil rights to comport with his particular interpretation. That's very similar to forcing your religion on others ... you ought to believe what I believe, not whatever your beliefs are, leave me to practice according to my conscience.
See this is the slippery slope. You're also making Muslims unable to follow the tenets of their religion and stay in business. Basically, making art is for one religion that the state approves, and you can't create it based on non-state-approved religious beliefs. Because then your religious conscience might not be as liberal as the state conscience. The state doesn't consider it a religious ceremony, therefore you can't have any religious objections. I'm glad there's still nonprofits defending these civil rights from
No. The people that run a business have to leave all their religious liberties under the first amendment at the door. You can advocate for increased restrictions compared to not operating a business, but all this compelled speech just for seeking to earn a living also in accordance to your religion? Ugh. You operate your business containing custom expressive speech, and I'll operate mine. Sell your regular premade products in a listing to all takers, and save the custom art for messages that jive with your beliefs. This is getting pretty insane. This thread is getting to be a pain to chop up so I'm cutting it down again. How am I restricting anyone's civil rights? You can have any sort of marriage you want. But that doesn't make it an actual religious ceremony. It doesn't mean it ever has been. It's just an unjustified assumption that people have run with and never examined. In almost every culture everywhere in the world, churches need to go to the government and say 'may we perform marriages in our establishment?' And the government has the right to say 'no you may not'. And if the government does that, no 'marriage' performed in that establishment is legitimate. HOW is that a religious ceremony? That is a secular ceremony that people choose to apply religious overtones to. That's not my opinion, that is the objective facts of what actually happens. If it were a genuinely religious ceremony, the government would not be necessary. I'm guessed you're a Christian from some of your comments, apologies if I'm wrong. But I'll assume you're a church goer. Your church does not need anyone's permission to perform Sunday mass, and it sure as hell doesn't need the government to say 'your sunday mass is legitimate'. Because Mass is a religious ceremony and it's validation comes from all the trappings of its performance within the context in which it is performed. A wedding requires none of that. I could literally take my housemate to the registry office and be married tomorrow evening if I wanted, and that marriage would be as legitimate as a £10,000 marriage that takes place in the cathedral down the road. The trappings are entirely irrelevant, the meat and bones of a marriage is the secular, legal structure that supports and legitimises it, and it has always been so. That is why King Henry the 8th was able to say 'Actually... no,' when the church tried to force him to keep his wife. No amount of excommunications or wars were able to change the fact he had a divorce and then had another marriage and the child of one of his later marriages ended up King. It's also - not coincidentally - why the rich and powerful throughout history conveniently find their way into and out of marriages that are supposed to be unbreakable until death. Ain't no wealth getting someone around Mass, though. I don't care how you practice your faith. But you can't redefine reality with it. Marriage is still secular. Now I appreciate Christians believe that there is a spiritual component to marriage, and that is where much of the issue arises re: teh gayz. But that's your trappings. It's not real. And that is not my opinion, that's the state's opinion. The state doesn't care if you think you've married someone. It cares that you married someone in a place that it considers legitimate, and if the state doesn't think your marriage is legitimate you'll very quickly run into problems when you try to assert otherwise. As to your last point, compelled speech is a thing. It just is. Complaints about compelled speech are a far bigger slippery slope than 'let the public know that you're putting certain elements of your religious beliefs ahead of your business'. I mean, why SHOULD I be forced to let the public know all of my sliced ham includes uranium in it? They're trampling my first amendment rights and making me say things I don't wanna! Yes, it's a silly, extreme example, but compelled speech is a standard part of business. If you want to make your religion part of your business, you're damn skippy you should be expected to say up front that you're doing so. Religions do not deserve the special pleading and status they unduly get, not in your culture or mine (not that we're half as bad as your lot are on that front). 'Good' Christians are far too often content to hide behind the sort of Christians who don't give a fig about civil liberties for anyone but themselves, who believe gay people deserve no rights, who think Muslims should be thrown out of their 'Christian' nation, who would gladly outlaw any beliefs but their own and enforce those beliefs on anyone who disagreed and crush any speech that went against them. You know those people exist and so do I, and unfortunately for you, an awful lot of them get voted for by your good honest religious Christians. It is an utter embarrassment that Roy Moore came so close to being elected, even without the allegations that brought him down. Your lot are not content to keep their religion private. Far too many of you want to enforce it on everyone else, and damn the consequences. That is your slippery slope, and it's a far more dangerous, far more deadly one than being forced to tell people you aren't going to serve them if they're gay. I covered the trampling of civil in the unquoted part of my last post. You can read it there and respond to what I wrote if you still don't understand. As you haven't responded to it, I don't know what was less than clear. You're still really deep in the hole with a historically acknowledged religious ceremony. Religions all over the world call the union of a man and woman a central God-purposed event. God ordains this union. You act or don't act in accordance to his will in this union. Et cetera. You're taking a historical revisionist route, and frankly an unsupported assertion, that it should be a secular event because you think some people just happen to choose to put religious undertones on the event. It's a religious event that some people adopt secular attitudes towards, and that's precisely why it's a core feature of this case. None of this wordy mash justifies adopting your attitude. It is a religious ceremony for a huge number of Americans, and just because you think it shouldn't be the case does not diminish that it will involve religious objections if they're making you be part of the service. Will you force a pastor to officiate the event on grounds of discrimination, because after all it's just this secular event to you? The folly just stretches on and on. I understand your perspective in the last three paragraphs. I live in a country that recognizes the role religion plays in life and how government intrusion on core beliefs would destroy a society and cause it to trend authoritarian over time. To re-purpose a sentence of yours, you really don't give a damn about civil liberties for people who you don't think deserve them. You simply don't think they should exist, therefore they don't exist, therefore they should be done away with. Therefore, direct your attention to constitutional amendments because I'm definitely talking about interpreting laws on the books by judges ... the proper realm for judicial battles. Okay. I'd like to get you to directly engage with something you consistently are ignoring, as it seems you don't understand my actual argument. If religion is required for marriage and it is a God-purposed event, why is the marriage a) not legal unless the state recognises it and why b) can the state annul it irrespective of the wishes of religious leaders? I have yet to see you concretely point towards a group I think don't deserve civil liberties. I do think that no group has the liberty to oppress another, and I think that the religious hide behind their religion regularly and use it as a shield to permit them to discriminate. And I think that is wrong. I don't think I'm rocking the boat there. I think I've already answered the post you're directing me towards. I believe marriage is obsolete personally so I do not intend to get married. I have no issues with other people choosing to do so, or the methods and trappings they use to complete that union. But I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular, and that marriage being secular is the only way to reconcile the vast gulf between what people say marriage is and what it actually is, and which part of that union the state - which is required to legitimise the union in the first place - actually cares about. We entered into this when you thought religious objections shouldn't even be here in the first place: it's asserted to be a secular event in your eyes, case closed. History tells a different tale. It supports the side that says it's very likely for such a ceremony to entangle religious people in conscience objections by its own nature. That's why very sympathetic individuals, such as the baker, will be kind and offer all there wares to gays and transgenders ... it's not participation in a religious ceremony. Your first problem is showing why your personal view that it is secular should trump the historical reality that it's intimately religious. Your second problem is showing where I said "religion is required for marriage." I said it very easily raises freedom of conscience objections because of its historical religious nature. I do not imply the reverse is true: all marriages must be religious or it's not a marriage. You haven't engaged with my arguments that you require religious persons to engage in forced speech (forced expression) and require them to violate their religious liberties (participate in ceremonies complying with their religious beliefs). I can't really help you. From what I gather, because you declare it secular, then no civil rights are violated, because they're secular ceremonies, and no religious person could object. ("I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular"). That's the only point you come back to and the only sense I can make of your argument. It's ludicrous. Rights don't cease to exist because you don't acknowledge them. The problem with your argument is that you try to imply that the religious aspect is inseparable from marriage due to the fact that marriage was historically co-opted by religion. What you don't do is acknowledge that marriage has pretty much universally been a legal/cultural institution that shaped the family dynamic, and religion has absolutely no right to uniquely claim it. To strengthen your argument, you would have to make a plausible argument as to why marriage is required to be religious. For example, why did my marriage that was strictly secular (not in a church, no involvement of religious ideas or practices) have some kind of religious component to it? What about the very nature of marriage makes it OK for religious people to discriminate based on it? This also brings up a larger question of why is religious belief ever an acceptable excuse to discriminate, but that's an entire discussion on its own. No requirement, just an extreme likelihood that someone religious would find the ceremony in direct conflict with his or her sincerely held religious views. I only bring it up because someone thought it was secular by nature and nobody’s civil rights were being violated. So really you’re falsely reducing my argument to points I never made. So then you have to justify why religion is an acceptable excuse to discriminate, because this is precisely what your argument is supporting. If he was truly discriminating against gays, he wouldn’t sell premade cakes to them either. The US has a rich history of weighing religious liberty concerns against others ... like unemployment benefits even though jobs were available that didn’t have sabbaths off .. or LGBT groups in a veterans parade. If we could return to a rational discussion of trade offs compared to the unilateral declaration that it’s discrimination ... that would be a good step one.
It's the definition of discrimination.
You can be triggered by the word "discrimination" since it seems to be a buzz word, but this isn't a debate. It is the very definition of discrimination. He is refusing service to an individual based on a particular trait of that individual. It doesn't matter if it's only a single service, it's still discrimination.
There are different situations in which different institutions are allowed to discriminate. This is easily shown by many examples. However, there is always a reason or justification under the law; as you said, a trade-off. There are two different facets to the discrimination that is in question here; the basis for it (religion) and the reason for it (homosexuality, specifically a perceived endorsement of homosexuality).
If you really want to justify this instance of discrimination, then you have to tell us why religion is an acceptable reason to allow discrimination, because that is the argument that you are constantly throwing your support behind.
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On March 25 2018 12:34 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 11:19 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 08:14 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 07:38 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 06:19 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 06:10 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 04:38 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 04:25 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 02:32 Danglars wrote:
It's interesting that you think this way. But you're really treating your own thoughts like your private religion. Iamthedave thinks it's secular enough and it's an obsolete institution, so he's going to restrict your civil rights to comport with his particular interpretation. That's very similar to forcing your religion on others ... you ought to believe what I believe, not whatever your beliefs are, leave me to practice according to my conscience.
See this is the slippery slope. You're also making Muslims unable to follow the tenets of their religion and stay in business. Basically, making art is for one religion that the state approves, and you can't create it based on non-state-approved religious beliefs. Because then your religious conscience might not be as liberal as the state conscience. The state doesn't consider it a religious ceremony, therefore you can't have any religious objections. I'm glad there's still nonprofits defending these civil rights from
No. The people that run a business have to leave all their religious liberties under the first amendment at the door. You can advocate for increased restrictions compared to not operating a business, but all this compelled speech just for seeking to earn a living also in accordance to your religion? Ugh. You operate your business containing custom expressive speech, and I'll operate mine. Sell your regular premade products in a listing to all takers, and save the custom art for messages that jive with your beliefs. This is getting pretty insane. This thread is getting to be a pain to chop up so I'm cutting it down again. How am I restricting anyone's civil rights? You can have any sort of marriage you want. But that doesn't make it an actual religious ceremony. It doesn't mean it ever has been. It's just an unjustified assumption that people have run with and never examined. In almost every culture everywhere in the world, churches need to go to the government and say 'may we perform marriages in our establishment?' And the government has the right to say 'no you may not'. And if the government does that, no 'marriage' performed in that establishment is legitimate. HOW is that a religious ceremony? That is a secular ceremony that people choose to apply religious overtones to. That's not my opinion, that is the objective facts of what actually happens. If it were a genuinely religious ceremony, the government would not be necessary. I'm guessed you're a Christian from some of your comments, apologies if I'm wrong. But I'll assume you're a church goer. Your church does not need anyone's permission to perform Sunday mass, and it sure as hell doesn't need the government to say 'your sunday mass is legitimate'. Because Mass is a religious ceremony and it's validation comes from all the trappings of its performance within the context in which it is performed. A wedding requires none of that. I could literally take my housemate to the registry office and be married tomorrow evening if I wanted, and that marriage would be as legitimate as a £10,000 marriage that takes place in the cathedral down the road. The trappings are entirely irrelevant, the meat and bones of a marriage is the secular, legal structure that supports and legitimises it, and it has always been so. That is why King Henry the 8th was able to say 'Actually... no,' when the church tried to force him to keep his wife. No amount of excommunications or wars were able to change the fact he had a divorce and then had another marriage and the child of one of his later marriages ended up King. It's also - not coincidentally - why the rich and powerful throughout history conveniently find their way into and out of marriages that are supposed to be unbreakable until death. Ain't no wealth getting someone around Mass, though. I don't care how you practice your faith. But you can't redefine reality with it. Marriage is still secular. Now I appreciate Christians believe that there is a spiritual component to marriage, and that is where much of the issue arises re: teh gayz. But that's your trappings. It's not real. And that is not my opinion, that's the state's opinion. The state doesn't care if you think you've married someone. It cares that you married someone in a place that it considers legitimate, and if the state doesn't think your marriage is legitimate you'll very quickly run into problems when you try to assert otherwise. As to your last point, compelled speech is a thing. It just is. Complaints about compelled speech are a far bigger slippery slope than 'let the public know that you're putting certain elements of your religious beliefs ahead of your business'. I mean, why SHOULD I be forced to let the public know all of my sliced ham includes uranium in it? They're trampling my first amendment rights and making me say things I don't wanna! Yes, it's a silly, extreme example, but compelled speech is a standard part of business. If you want to make your religion part of your business, you're damn skippy you should be expected to say up front that you're doing so. Religions do not deserve the special pleading and status they unduly get, not in your culture or mine (not that we're half as bad as your lot are on that front). 'Good' Christians are far too often content to hide behind the sort of Christians who don't give a fig about civil liberties for anyone but themselves, who believe gay people deserve no rights, who think Muslims should be thrown out of their 'Christian' nation, who would gladly outlaw any beliefs but their own and enforce those beliefs on anyone who disagreed and crush any speech that went against them. You know those people exist and so do I, and unfortunately for you, an awful lot of them get voted for by your good honest religious Christians. It is an utter embarrassment that Roy Moore came so close to being elected, even without the allegations that brought him down. Your lot are not content to keep their religion private. Far too many of you want to enforce it on everyone else, and damn the consequences. That is your slippery slope, and it's a far more dangerous, far more deadly one than being forced to tell people you aren't going to serve them if they're gay. I covered the trampling of civil in the unquoted part of my last post. You can read it there and respond to what I wrote if you still don't understand. As you haven't responded to it, I don't know what was less than clear. You're still really deep in the hole with a historically acknowledged religious ceremony. Religions all over the world call the union of a man and woman a central God-purposed event. God ordains this union. You act or don't act in accordance to his will in this union. Et cetera. You're taking a historical revisionist route, and frankly an unsupported assertion, that it should be a secular event because you think some people just happen to choose to put religious undertones on the event. It's a religious event that some people adopt secular attitudes towards, and that's precisely why it's a core feature of this case. None of this wordy mash justifies adopting your attitude. It is a religious ceremony for a huge number of Americans, and just because you think it shouldn't be the case does not diminish that it will involve religious objections if they're making you be part of the service. Will you force a pastor to officiate the event on grounds of discrimination, because after all it's just this secular event to you? The folly just stretches on and on. I understand your perspective in the last three paragraphs. I live in a country that recognizes the role religion plays in life and how government intrusion on core beliefs would destroy a society and cause it to trend authoritarian over time. To re-purpose a sentence of yours, you really don't give a damn about civil liberties for people who you don't think deserve them. You simply don't think they should exist, therefore they don't exist, therefore they should be done away with. Therefore, direct your attention to constitutional amendments because I'm definitely talking about interpreting laws on the books by judges ... the proper realm for judicial battles. Okay. I'd like to get you to directly engage with something you consistently are ignoring, as it seems you don't understand my actual argument. If religion is required for marriage and it is a God-purposed event, why is the marriage a) not legal unless the state recognises it and why b) can the state annul it irrespective of the wishes of religious leaders? I have yet to see you concretely point towards a group I think don't deserve civil liberties. I do think that no group has the liberty to oppress another, and I think that the religious hide behind their religion regularly and use it as a shield to permit them to discriminate. And I think that is wrong. I don't think I'm rocking the boat there. I think I've already answered the post you're directing me towards. I believe marriage is obsolete personally so I do not intend to get married. I have no issues with other people choosing to do so, or the methods and trappings they use to complete that union. But I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular, and that marriage being secular is the only way to reconcile the vast gulf between what people say marriage is and what it actually is, and which part of that union the state - which is required to legitimise the union in the first place - actually cares about. We entered into this when you thought religious objections shouldn't even be here in the first place: it's asserted to be a secular event in your eyes, case closed. History tells a different tale. It supports the side that says it's very likely for such a ceremony to entangle religious people in conscience objections by its own nature. That's why very sympathetic individuals, such as the baker, will be kind and offer all there wares to gays and transgenders ... it's not participation in a religious ceremony. Your first problem is showing why your personal view that it is secular should trump the historical reality that it's intimately religious. Your second problem is showing where I said "religion is required for marriage." I said it very easily raises freedom of conscience objections because of its historical religious nature. I do not imply the reverse is true: all marriages must be religious or it's not a marriage. You haven't engaged with my arguments that you require religious persons to engage in forced speech (forced expression) and require them to violate their religious liberties (participate in ceremonies complying with their religious beliefs). I can't really help you. From what I gather, because you declare it secular, then no civil rights are violated, because they're secular ceremonies, and no religious person could object. ("I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular"). That's the only point you come back to and the only sense I can make of your argument. It's ludicrous. Rights don't cease to exist because you don't acknowledge them. The problem with your argument is that you try to imply that the religious aspect is inseparable from marriage due to the fact that marriage was historically co-opted by religion. What you don't do is acknowledge that marriage has pretty much universally been a legal/cultural institution that shaped the family dynamic, and religion has absolutely no right to uniquely claim it. To strengthen your argument, you would have to make a plausible argument as to why marriage is required to be religious. For example, why did my marriage that was strictly secular (not in a church, no involvement of religious ideas or practices) have some kind of religious component to it? What about the very nature of marriage makes it OK for religious people to discriminate based on it? This also brings up a larger question of why is religious belief ever an acceptable excuse to discriminate, but that's an entire discussion on its own. No requirement, just an extreme likelihood that someone religious would find the ceremony in direct conflict with his or her sincerely held religious views. I only bring it up because someone thought it was secular by nature and nobody’s civil rights were being violated. So really you’re falsely reducing my argument to points I never made. So then you have to justify why religion is an acceptable excuse to discriminate, because this is precisely what your argument is supporting. If he was truly discriminating against gays, he wouldn’t sell premade cakes to them either. The US has a rich history of weighing religious liberty concerns against others ... like unemployment benefits even though jobs were available that didn’t have sabbaths off .. or LGBT groups in a veterans parade. If we could return to a rational discussion of trade offs compared to the unilateral declaration that it’s discrimination ... that would be a good step one.
But what's the distinction between something you're selling on a shelf, and something you're doing on order? They're both things you're offering to sell to those who pay you money. What is the meaningful distinction? I don't see one. And you don't have to deny both to the gays for it to be discrimination, just one.
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On March 25 2018 13:12 NewSunshine wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 12:34 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 11:19 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 08:14 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 07:38 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 06:19 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 06:10 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 04:38 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 04:25 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 02:32 Danglars wrote:
It's interesting that you think this way. But you're really treating your own thoughts like your private religion. Iamthedave thinks it's secular enough and it's an obsolete institution, so he's going to restrict your civil rights to comport with his particular interpretation. That's very similar to forcing your religion on others ... you ought to believe what I believe, not whatever your beliefs are, leave me to practice according to my conscience.
See this is the slippery slope. You're also making Muslims unable to follow the tenets of their religion and stay in business. Basically, making art is for one religion that the state approves, and you can't create it based on non-state-approved religious beliefs. Because then your religious conscience might not be as liberal as the state conscience. The state doesn't consider it a religious ceremony, therefore you can't have any religious objections. I'm glad there's still nonprofits defending these civil rights from
No. The people that run a business have to leave all their religious liberties under the first amendment at the door. You can advocate for increased restrictions compared to not operating a business, but all this compelled speech just for seeking to earn a living also in accordance to your religion? Ugh. You operate your business containing custom expressive speech, and I'll operate mine. Sell your regular premade products in a listing to all takers, and save the custom art for messages that jive with your beliefs. This is getting pretty insane. This thread is getting to be a pain to chop up so I'm cutting it down again. How am I restricting anyone's civil rights? You can have any sort of marriage you want. But that doesn't make it an actual religious ceremony. It doesn't mean it ever has been. It's just an unjustified assumption that people have run with and never examined. In almost every culture everywhere in the world, churches need to go to the government and say 'may we perform marriages in our establishment?' And the government has the right to say 'no you may not'. And if the government does that, no 'marriage' performed in that establishment is legitimate. HOW is that a religious ceremony? That is a secular ceremony that people choose to apply religious overtones to. That's not my opinion, that is the objective facts of what actually happens. If it were a genuinely religious ceremony, the government would not be necessary. I'm guessed you're a Christian from some of your comments, apologies if I'm wrong. But I'll assume you're a church goer. Your church does not need anyone's permission to perform Sunday mass, and it sure as hell doesn't need the government to say 'your sunday mass is legitimate'. Because Mass is a religious ceremony and it's validation comes from all the trappings of its performance within the context in which it is performed. A wedding requires none of that. I could literally take my housemate to the registry office and be married tomorrow evening if I wanted, and that marriage would be as legitimate as a £10,000 marriage that takes place in the cathedral down the road. The trappings are entirely irrelevant, the meat and bones of a marriage is the secular, legal structure that supports and legitimises it, and it has always been so. That is why King Henry the 8th was able to say 'Actually... no,' when the church tried to force him to keep his wife. No amount of excommunications or wars were able to change the fact he had a divorce and then had another marriage and the child of one of his later marriages ended up King. It's also - not coincidentally - why the rich and powerful throughout history conveniently find their way into and out of marriages that are supposed to be unbreakable until death. Ain't no wealth getting someone around Mass, though. I don't care how you practice your faith. But you can't redefine reality with it. Marriage is still secular. Now I appreciate Christians believe that there is a spiritual component to marriage, and that is where much of the issue arises re: teh gayz. But that's your trappings. It's not real. And that is not my opinion, that's the state's opinion. The state doesn't care if you think you've married someone. It cares that you married someone in a place that it considers legitimate, and if the state doesn't think your marriage is legitimate you'll very quickly run into problems when you try to assert otherwise. As to your last point, compelled speech is a thing. It just is. Complaints about compelled speech are a far bigger slippery slope than 'let the public know that you're putting certain elements of your religious beliefs ahead of your business'. I mean, why SHOULD I be forced to let the public know all of my sliced ham includes uranium in it? They're trampling my first amendment rights and making me say things I don't wanna! Yes, it's a silly, extreme example, but compelled speech is a standard part of business. If you want to make your religion part of your business, you're damn skippy you should be expected to say up front that you're doing so. Religions do not deserve the special pleading and status they unduly get, not in your culture or mine (not that we're half as bad as your lot are on that front). 'Good' Christians are far too often content to hide behind the sort of Christians who don't give a fig about civil liberties for anyone but themselves, who believe gay people deserve no rights, who think Muslims should be thrown out of their 'Christian' nation, who would gladly outlaw any beliefs but their own and enforce those beliefs on anyone who disagreed and crush any speech that went against them. You know those people exist and so do I, and unfortunately for you, an awful lot of them get voted for by your good honest religious Christians. It is an utter embarrassment that Roy Moore came so close to being elected, even without the allegations that brought him down. Your lot are not content to keep their religion private. Far too many of you want to enforce it on everyone else, and damn the consequences. That is your slippery slope, and it's a far more dangerous, far more deadly one than being forced to tell people you aren't going to serve them if they're gay. I covered the trampling of civil in the unquoted part of my last post. You can read it there and respond to what I wrote if you still don't understand. As you haven't responded to it, I don't know what was less than clear. You're still really deep in the hole with a historically acknowledged religious ceremony. Religions all over the world call the union of a man and woman a central God-purposed event. God ordains this union. You act or don't act in accordance to his will in this union. Et cetera. You're taking a historical revisionist route, and frankly an unsupported assertion, that it should be a secular event because you think some people just happen to choose to put religious undertones on the event. It's a religious event that some people adopt secular attitudes towards, and that's precisely why it's a core feature of this case. None of this wordy mash justifies adopting your attitude. It is a religious ceremony for a huge number of Americans, and just because you think it shouldn't be the case does not diminish that it will involve religious objections if they're making you be part of the service. Will you force a pastor to officiate the event on grounds of discrimination, because after all it's just this secular event to you? The folly just stretches on and on. I understand your perspective in the last three paragraphs. I live in a country that recognizes the role religion plays in life and how government intrusion on core beliefs would destroy a society and cause it to trend authoritarian over time. To re-purpose a sentence of yours, you really don't give a damn about civil liberties for people who you don't think deserve them. You simply don't think they should exist, therefore they don't exist, therefore they should be done away with. Therefore, direct your attention to constitutional amendments because I'm definitely talking about interpreting laws on the books by judges ... the proper realm for judicial battles. Okay. I'd like to get you to directly engage with something you consistently are ignoring, as it seems you don't understand my actual argument. If religion is required for marriage and it is a God-purposed event, why is the marriage a) not legal unless the state recognises it and why b) can the state annul it irrespective of the wishes of religious leaders? I have yet to see you concretely point towards a group I think don't deserve civil liberties. I do think that no group has the liberty to oppress another, and I think that the religious hide behind their religion regularly and use it as a shield to permit them to discriminate. And I think that is wrong. I don't think I'm rocking the boat there. I think I've already answered the post you're directing me towards. I believe marriage is obsolete personally so I do not intend to get married. I have no issues with other people choosing to do so, or the methods and trappings they use to complete that union. But I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular, and that marriage being secular is the only way to reconcile the vast gulf between what people say marriage is and what it actually is, and which part of that union the state - which is required to legitimise the union in the first place - actually cares about. We entered into this when you thought religious objections shouldn't even be here in the first place: it's asserted to be a secular event in your eyes, case closed. History tells a different tale. It supports the side that says it's very likely for such a ceremony to entangle religious people in conscience objections by its own nature. That's why very sympathetic individuals, such as the baker, will be kind and offer all there wares to gays and transgenders ... it's not participation in a religious ceremony. Your first problem is showing why your personal view that it is secular should trump the historical reality that it's intimately religious. Your second problem is showing where I said "religion is required for marriage." I said it very easily raises freedom of conscience objections because of its historical religious nature. I do not imply the reverse is true: all marriages must be religious or it's not a marriage. You haven't engaged with my arguments that you require religious persons to engage in forced speech (forced expression) and require them to violate their religious liberties (participate in ceremonies complying with their religious beliefs). I can't really help you. From what I gather, because you declare it secular, then no civil rights are violated, because they're secular ceremonies, and no religious person could object. ("I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular"). That's the only point you come back to and the only sense I can make of your argument. It's ludicrous. Rights don't cease to exist because you don't acknowledge them. The problem with your argument is that you try to imply that the religious aspect is inseparable from marriage due to the fact that marriage was historically co-opted by religion. What you don't do is acknowledge that marriage has pretty much universally been a legal/cultural institution that shaped the family dynamic, and religion has absolutely no right to uniquely claim it. To strengthen your argument, you would have to make a plausible argument as to why marriage is required to be religious. For example, why did my marriage that was strictly secular (not in a church, no involvement of religious ideas or practices) have some kind of religious component to it? What about the very nature of marriage makes it OK for religious people to discriminate based on it? This also brings up a larger question of why is religious belief ever an acceptable excuse to discriminate, but that's an entire discussion on its own. No requirement, just an extreme likelihood that someone religious would find the ceremony in direct conflict with his or her sincerely held religious views. I only bring it up because someone thought it was secular by nature and nobody’s civil rights were being violated. So really you’re falsely reducing my argument to points I never made. So then you have to justify why religion is an acceptable excuse to discriminate, because this is precisely what your argument is supporting. If he was truly discriminating against gays, he wouldn’t sell premade cakes to them either. The US has a rich history of weighing religious liberty concerns against others ... like unemployment benefits even though jobs were available that didn’t have sabbaths off .. or LGBT groups in a veterans parade. If we could return to a rational discussion of trade offs compared to the unilateral declaration that it’s discrimination ... that would be a good step one. But what's the distinction between something you're selling on a shelf, and something you're doing on order? They're both things you're offering to sell to those who pay you money. What is the meaningful distinction? I don't see one. And you don't have to deny both to the gays for it to be discrimination, just one.
One is a service and the other is a product. The cake maker is being specifically asked to take a commission to make an artistic expression for a non legal ceremony. The cake maker refuses as they make these artistic expressions for specific non legal ceremonies. The person being refuses the service cites being discriminated against and wants to force the artist to make an artistic expression for all non legal ceremonies.
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I like how Danglars just subtly pushed the premise that refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding isn't truly discriminating, because discriminating is something else worse that includes not selling off the shelf cakes, too. It's a pretty nice rhetorical trick, but refusing to make a custom cake is still truly discriminating.
I'm pretty sure he's done the same sort of thing with racism when talking to GreenHorizons.
We can still talk about how we're weighing the harm of requiring bakers to make cakes against the harm of allowing bakers to opt of providing custom wedding cake services to gay couples. We can also talk about the larger harms set by the precedent of requiring people to provide services that in some way go against their religion or the precedent of allowing people to not provide services by claiming it's against their religion.
On the last of those subjects, allowing people to opt out of following non-discrimination laws by claiming it's against their religion is potentially going to open a floodgate of discrimination because religion has been a tremendously popular excuse for all sorts of terrible things throughout history, so anyone looking for a religious justification for discriminatory practices will probably be able to find one.
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Again guys, I must reiterate. Danglar is always going to be Danglar. The best ways to deal with his views is to not engage with them. If you find it ridiculous, then stop entertaining them. This thread is consistently derailed by one person and everyone who answers him.
User was warned for this post.
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On March 25 2018 13:12 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 12:34 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 11:19 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 08:14 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 07:38 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 06:19 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 06:10 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 04:38 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 04:25 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 02:32 Danglars wrote:
It's interesting that you think this way. But you're really treating your own thoughts like your private religion. Iamthedave thinks it's secular enough and it's an obsolete institution, so he's going to restrict your civil rights to comport with his particular interpretation. That's very similar to forcing your religion on others ... you ought to believe what I believe, not whatever your beliefs are, leave me to practice according to my conscience.
See this is the slippery slope. You're also making Muslims unable to follow the tenets of their religion and stay in business. Basically, making art is for one religion that the state approves, and you can't create it based on non-state-approved religious beliefs. Because then your religious conscience might not be as liberal as the state conscience. The state doesn't consider it a religious ceremony, therefore you can't have any religious objections. I'm glad there's still nonprofits defending these civil rights from
No. The people that run a business have to leave all their religious liberties under the first amendment at the door. You can advocate for increased restrictions compared to not operating a business, but all this compelled speech just for seeking to earn a living also in accordance to your religion? Ugh. You operate your business containing custom expressive speech, and I'll operate mine. Sell your regular premade products in a listing to all takers, and save the custom art for messages that jive with your beliefs. This is getting pretty insane. This thread is getting to be a pain to chop up so I'm cutting it down again. How am I restricting anyone's civil rights? You can have any sort of marriage you want. But that doesn't make it an actual religious ceremony. It doesn't mean it ever has been. It's just an unjustified assumption that people have run with and never examined. In almost every culture everywhere in the world, churches need to go to the government and say 'may we perform marriages in our establishment?' And the government has the right to say 'no you may not'. And if the government does that, no 'marriage' performed in that establishment is legitimate. HOW is that a religious ceremony? That is a secular ceremony that people choose to apply religious overtones to. That's not my opinion, that is the objective facts of what actually happens. If it were a genuinely religious ceremony, the government would not be necessary. I'm guessed you're a Christian from some of your comments, apologies if I'm wrong. But I'll assume you're a church goer. Your church does not need anyone's permission to perform Sunday mass, and it sure as hell doesn't need the government to say 'your sunday mass is legitimate'. Because Mass is a religious ceremony and it's validation comes from all the trappings of its performance within the context in which it is performed. A wedding requires none of that. I could literally take my housemate to the registry office and be married tomorrow evening if I wanted, and that marriage would be as legitimate as a £10,000 marriage that takes place in the cathedral down the road. The trappings are entirely irrelevant, the meat and bones of a marriage is the secular, legal structure that supports and legitimises it, and it has always been so. That is why King Henry the 8th was able to say 'Actually... no,' when the church tried to force him to keep his wife. No amount of excommunications or wars were able to change the fact he had a divorce and then had another marriage and the child of one of his later marriages ended up King. It's also - not coincidentally - why the rich and powerful throughout history conveniently find their way into and out of marriages that are supposed to be unbreakable until death. Ain't no wealth getting someone around Mass, though. I don't care how you practice your faith. But you can't redefine reality with it. Marriage is still secular. Now I appreciate Christians believe that there is a spiritual component to marriage, and that is where much of the issue arises re: teh gayz. But that's your trappings. It's not real. And that is not my opinion, that's the state's opinion. The state doesn't care if you think you've married someone. It cares that you married someone in a place that it considers legitimate, and if the state doesn't think your marriage is legitimate you'll very quickly run into problems when you try to assert otherwise. As to your last point, compelled speech is a thing. It just is. Complaints about compelled speech are a far bigger slippery slope than 'let the public know that you're putting certain elements of your religious beliefs ahead of your business'. I mean, why SHOULD I be forced to let the public know all of my sliced ham includes uranium in it? They're trampling my first amendment rights and making me say things I don't wanna! Yes, it's a silly, extreme example, but compelled speech is a standard part of business. If you want to make your religion part of your business, you're damn skippy you should be expected to say up front that you're doing so. Religions do not deserve the special pleading and status they unduly get, not in your culture or mine (not that we're half as bad as your lot are on that front). 'Good' Christians are far too often content to hide behind the sort of Christians who don't give a fig about civil liberties for anyone but themselves, who believe gay people deserve no rights, who think Muslims should be thrown out of their 'Christian' nation, who would gladly outlaw any beliefs but their own and enforce those beliefs on anyone who disagreed and crush any speech that went against them. You know those people exist and so do I, and unfortunately for you, an awful lot of them get voted for by your good honest religious Christians. It is an utter embarrassment that Roy Moore came so close to being elected, even without the allegations that brought him down. Your lot are not content to keep their religion private. Far too many of you want to enforce it on everyone else, and damn the consequences. That is your slippery slope, and it's a far more dangerous, far more deadly one than being forced to tell people you aren't going to serve them if they're gay. I covered the trampling of civil in the unquoted part of my last post. You can read it there and respond to what I wrote if you still don't understand. As you haven't responded to it, I don't know what was less than clear. You're still really deep in the hole with a historically acknowledged religious ceremony. Religions all over the world call the union of a man and woman a central God-purposed event. God ordains this union. You act or don't act in accordance to his will in this union. Et cetera. You're taking a historical revisionist route, and frankly an unsupported assertion, that it should be a secular event because you think some people just happen to choose to put religious undertones on the event. It's a religious event that some people adopt secular attitudes towards, and that's precisely why it's a core feature of this case. None of this wordy mash justifies adopting your attitude. It is a religious ceremony for a huge number of Americans, and just because you think it shouldn't be the case does not diminish that it will involve religious objections if they're making you be part of the service. Will you force a pastor to officiate the event on grounds of discrimination, because after all it's just this secular event to you? The folly just stretches on and on. I understand your perspective in the last three paragraphs. I live in a country that recognizes the role religion plays in life and how government intrusion on core beliefs would destroy a society and cause it to trend authoritarian over time. To re-purpose a sentence of yours, you really don't give a damn about civil liberties for people who you don't think deserve them. You simply don't think they should exist, therefore they don't exist, therefore they should be done away with. Therefore, direct your attention to constitutional amendments because I'm definitely talking about interpreting laws on the books by judges ... the proper realm for judicial battles. Okay. I'd like to get you to directly engage with something you consistently are ignoring, as it seems you don't understand my actual argument. If religion is required for marriage and it is a God-purposed event, why is the marriage a) not legal unless the state recognises it and why b) can the state annul it irrespective of the wishes of religious leaders? I have yet to see you concretely point towards a group I think don't deserve civil liberties. I do think that no group has the liberty to oppress another, and I think that the religious hide behind their religion regularly and use it as a shield to permit them to discriminate. And I think that is wrong. I don't think I'm rocking the boat there. I think I've already answered the post you're directing me towards. I believe marriage is obsolete personally so I do not intend to get married. I have no issues with other people choosing to do so, or the methods and trappings they use to complete that union. But I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular, and that marriage being secular is the only way to reconcile the vast gulf between what people say marriage is and what it actually is, and which part of that union the state - which is required to legitimise the union in the first place - actually cares about. We entered into this when you thought religious objections shouldn't even be here in the first place: it's asserted to be a secular event in your eyes, case closed. History tells a different tale. It supports the side that says it's very likely for such a ceremony to entangle religious people in conscience objections by its own nature. That's why very sympathetic individuals, such as the baker, will be kind and offer all there wares to gays and transgenders ... it's not participation in a religious ceremony. Your first problem is showing why your personal view that it is secular should trump the historical reality that it's intimately religious. Your second problem is showing where I said "religion is required for marriage." I said it very easily raises freedom of conscience objections because of its historical religious nature. I do not imply the reverse is true: all marriages must be religious or it's not a marriage. You haven't engaged with my arguments that you require religious persons to engage in forced speech (forced expression) and require them to violate their religious liberties (participate in ceremonies complying with their religious beliefs). I can't really help you. From what I gather, because you declare it secular, then no civil rights are violated, because they're secular ceremonies, and no religious person could object. ("I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular"). That's the only point you come back to and the only sense I can make of your argument. It's ludicrous. Rights don't cease to exist because you don't acknowledge them. The problem with your argument is that you try to imply that the religious aspect is inseparable from marriage due to the fact that marriage was historically co-opted by religion. What you don't do is acknowledge that marriage has pretty much universally been a legal/cultural institution that shaped the family dynamic, and religion has absolutely no right to uniquely claim it. To strengthen your argument, you would have to make a plausible argument as to why marriage is required to be religious. For example, why did my marriage that was strictly secular (not in a church, no involvement of religious ideas or practices) have some kind of religious component to it? What about the very nature of marriage makes it OK for religious people to discriminate based on it? This also brings up a larger question of why is religious belief ever an acceptable excuse to discriminate, but that's an entire discussion on its own. No requirement, just an extreme likelihood that someone religious would find the ceremony in direct conflict with his or her sincerely held religious views. I only bring it up because someone thought it was secular by nature and nobody’s civil rights were being violated. So really you’re falsely reducing my argument to points I never made. So then you have to justify why religion is an acceptable excuse to discriminate, because this is precisely what your argument is supporting. If he was truly discriminating against gays, he wouldn’t sell premade cakes to them either. The US has a rich history of weighing religious liberty concerns against others ... like unemployment benefits even though jobs were available that didn’t have sabbaths off .. or LGBT groups in a veterans parade. If we could return to a rational discussion of trade offs compared to the unilateral declaration that it’s discrimination ... that would be a good step one. It's the definition of discrimination. You can be triggered by the word "discrimination" since it seems to be a buzz word, but this isn't a debate. It is the very definition of discrimination. He is refusing service to an individual based on a particular trait of that individual. It doesn't matter if it's only a single service, it's still discrimination. There are different situations in which different institutions are allowed to discriminate. This is easily shown by many examples. However, there is always a reason or justification under the law; as you said, a trade-off. There are two different facets to the discrimination that is in question here; the basis for it (religion) and the reason for it (homosexuality, specifically a perceived endorsement of homosexuality). If you really want to justify this instance of discrimination, then you have to tell us why religion is an acceptable reason to allow discrimination, because that is the argument that you are constantly throwing your support behind.
You will have to open your mind to alternative looks if you want to truly understand this issue. When you call it discrimination and leave it at that, you can’t progress to see what rights the other party has. That’s one of the reasons this is such a cantankerous issue in general: too many people are willing to cry discrimination and leave apart whether artists have the ability to be in business and still reject messages and whether or not that applies here.
One easy reason why the uniform view of discrimination does not bear out is why the Supreme Court actually took up the case. According to some of the people in here, they should never has issued a writ of certiorari, just a one word rejection “Discrimination is not ok!” In real life, this is a balance of rights and responsibilities.
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On March 25 2018 15:17 Kyadytim wrote:
I like how Danglars just subtly pushed the premise that refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding isn't truly discriminating, because discriminating is something else worse that includes not selling off the shelf cakes, too. It's a pretty nice rhetorical trick, but refusing to make a custom cake is still truly discriminating.
I'm pretty sure he's done the same sort of thing with racism when talking to GreenHorizons.
We can still talk about how we're weighing the harm of requiring bakers to make cakes against the harm of allowing bakers to opt of providing custom wedding cake services to gay couples. We can also talk about the larger harms set by the precedent of requiring people to provide services that in some way go against their religion or the precedent of allowing people to not provide services by claiming it's against their religion.
On the last of those subjects, allowing people to opt out of following non-discrimination laws by claiming it's against their religion is potentially going to open a floodgate of discrimination because religion has been a tremendously popular excuse for all sorts of terrible things throughout history, so anyone looking for a religious justification for discriminatory practices will probably be able to find one.
And alternatively, passing blanket anti-discrimination laws is going to catch up religious objectors and lead judges to misapply them to Christians only and not to other religious/creeds (as happened in Colorado and as discussed in oral arguments).
The harm done to the gay couple is they had to walk another block to another business offering the same service without religious objection. The harm done to the cake makers is that they no longer have the smallest freedom of religious conscience when it comes to their art. The state now owns their expression and can force whatever message at all.
But you do show significant progress if you’re moving on to weighing harms. That’s where a big part of this lies, along with where artistic expression ends for types of businesses.
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On March 25 2018 23:59 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 15:17 Kyadytim wrote:
I like how Danglars just subtly pushed the premise that refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding isn't truly discriminating, because discriminating is something else worse that includes not selling off the shelf cakes, too. It's a pretty nice rhetorical trick, but refusing to make a custom cake is still truly discriminating.
I'm pretty sure he's done the same sort of thing with racism when talking to GreenHorizons.
We can still talk about how we're weighing the harm of requiring bakers to make cakes against the harm of allowing bakers to opt of providing custom wedding cake services to gay couples. We can also talk about the larger harms set by the precedent of requiring people to provide services that in some way go against their religion or the precedent of allowing people to not provide services by claiming it's against their religion.
On the last of those subjects, allowing people to opt out of following non-discrimination laws by claiming it's against their religion is potentially going to open a floodgate of discrimination because religion has been a tremendously popular excuse for all sorts of terrible things throughout history, so anyone looking for a religious justification for discriminatory practices will probably be able to find one. And alternatively, passing blanket anti-discrimination laws is going to catch up religious objectors and lead judges to misapply them to Christians only and not to other religious/creeds (as happened in Colorado and as discussed in oral arguments). The harm done to the gay couple is they had to walk another block to another business offering the same service without religious objection. The harm done to the cake makers is that they no longer have the smallest freedom of religious conscience when it comes to their art. The state now owns their expression and can force whatever message at all. But you do show significant progress if you’re moving on to weighing harms. That’s where a big part of this lies, along with where artistic expression ends for types of businesses.
Do you think the law would have prevented them from just saying they refuse to serve them and pointing to the sign that says "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" and kindly asking them to leave?
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On March 25 2018 13:17 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 13:12 NewSunshine wrote:On March 25 2018 12:34 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 11:19 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 08:14 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 07:38 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 06:19 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 06:10 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 04:38 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 04:25 iamthedave wrote:
[quote]
This thread is getting to be a pain to chop up so I'm cutting it down again.
How am I restricting anyone's civil rights? You can have any sort of marriage you want. But that doesn't make it an actual religious ceremony. It doesn't mean it ever has been. It's just an unjustified assumption that people have run with and never examined. In almost every culture everywhere in the world, churches need to go to the government and say 'may we perform marriages in our establishment?' And the government has the right to say 'no you may not'. And if the government does that, no 'marriage' performed in that establishment is legitimate.
HOW is that a religious ceremony? That is a secular ceremony that people choose to apply religious overtones to. That's not my opinion, that is the objective facts of what actually happens. If it were a genuinely religious ceremony, the government would not be necessary.
I'm guessed you're a Christian from some of your comments, apologies if I'm wrong. But I'll assume you're a church goer. Your church does not need anyone's permission to perform Sunday mass, and it sure as hell doesn't need the government to say 'your sunday mass is legitimate'. Because Mass is a religious ceremony and it's validation comes from all the trappings of its performance within the context in which it is performed.
A wedding requires none of that. I could literally take my housemate to the registry office and be married tomorrow evening if I wanted, and that marriage would be as legitimate as a £10,000 marriage that takes place in the cathedral down the road. The trappings are entirely irrelevant, the meat and bones of a marriage is the secular, legal structure that supports and legitimises it, and it has always been so. That is why King Henry the 8th was able to say 'Actually... no,' when the church tried to force him to keep his wife. No amount of excommunications or wars were able to change the fact he had a divorce and then had another marriage and the child of one of his later marriages ended up King.
It's also - not coincidentally - why the rich and powerful throughout history conveniently find their way into and out of marriages that are supposed to be unbreakable until death. Ain't no wealth getting someone around Mass, though.
I don't care how you practice your faith. But you can't redefine reality with it. Marriage is still secular. Now I appreciate Christians believe that there is a spiritual component to marriage, and that is where much of the issue arises re: teh gayz. But that's your trappings. It's not real. And that is not my opinion, that's the state's opinion. The state doesn't care if you think you've married someone. It cares that you married someone in a place that it considers legitimate, and if the state doesn't think your marriage is legitimate you'll very quickly run into problems when you try to assert otherwise.
As to your last point, compelled speech is a thing. It just is. Complaints about compelled speech are a far bigger slippery slope than 'let the public know that you're putting certain elements of your religious beliefs ahead of your business'. I mean, why SHOULD I be forced to let the public know all of my sliced ham includes uranium in it? They're trampling my first amendment rights and making me say things I don't wanna!
Yes, it's a silly, extreme example, but compelled speech is a standard part of business. If you want to make your religion part of your business, you're damn skippy you should be expected to say up front that you're doing so.
Religions do not deserve the special pleading and status they unduly get, not in your culture or mine (not that we're half as bad as your lot are on that front). 'Good' Christians are far too often content to hide behind the sort of Christians who don't give a fig about civil liberties for anyone but themselves, who believe gay people deserve no rights, who think Muslims should be thrown out of their 'Christian' nation, who would gladly outlaw any beliefs but their own and enforce those beliefs on anyone who disagreed and crush any speech that went against them. You know those people exist and so do I, and unfortunately for you, an awful lot of them get voted for by your good honest religious Christians. It is an utter embarrassment that Roy Moore came so close to being elected, even without the allegations that brought him down.
Your lot are not content to keep their religion private. Far too many of you want to enforce it on everyone else, and damn the consequences. That is your slippery slope, and it's a far more dangerous, far more deadly one than being forced to tell people you aren't going to serve them if they're gay. I covered the trampling of civil in the unquoted part of my last post. You can read it there and respond to what I wrote if you still don't understand. As you haven't responded to it, I don't know what was less than clear. You're still really deep in the hole with a historically acknowledged religious ceremony. Religions all over the world call the union of a man and woman a central God-purposed event. God ordains this union. You act or don't act in accordance to his will in this union. Et cetera. You're taking a historical revisionist route, and frankly an unsupported assertion, that it should be a secular event because you think some people just happen to choose to put religious undertones on the event. It's a religious event that some people adopt secular attitudes towards, and that's precisely why it's a core feature of this case. None of this wordy mash justifies adopting your attitude. It is a religious ceremony for a huge number of Americans, and just because you think it shouldn't be the case does not diminish that it will involve religious objections if they're making you be part of the service. Will you force a pastor to officiate the event on grounds of discrimination, because after all it's just this secular event to you? The folly just stretches on and on. I understand your perspective in the last three paragraphs. I live in a country that recognizes the role religion plays in life and how government intrusion on core beliefs would destroy a society and cause it to trend authoritarian over time. To re-purpose a sentence of yours, you really don't give a damn about civil liberties for people who you don't think deserve them. You simply don't think they should exist, therefore they don't exist, therefore they should be done away with. Therefore, direct your attention to constitutional amendments because I'm definitely talking about interpreting laws on the books by judges ... the proper realm for judicial battles. Okay. I'd like to get you to directly engage with something you consistently are ignoring, as it seems you don't understand my actual argument. If religion is required for marriage and it is a God-purposed event, why is the marriage a) not legal unless the state recognises it and why b) can the state annul it irrespective of the wishes of religious leaders? I have yet to see you concretely point towards a group I think don't deserve civil liberties. I do think that no group has the liberty to oppress another, and I think that the religious hide behind their religion regularly and use it as a shield to permit them to discriminate. And I think that is wrong. I don't think I'm rocking the boat there. I think I've already answered the post you're directing me towards. I believe marriage is obsolete personally so I do not intend to get married. I have no issues with other people choosing to do so, or the methods and trappings they use to complete that union. But I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular, and that marriage being secular is the only way to reconcile the vast gulf between what people say marriage is and what it actually is, and which part of that union the state - which is required to legitimise the union in the first place - actually cares about. We entered into this when you thought religious objections shouldn't even be here in the first place: it's asserted to be a secular event in your eyes, case closed. History tells a different tale. It supports the side that says it's very likely for such a ceremony to entangle religious people in conscience objections by its own nature. That's why very sympathetic individuals, such as the baker, will be kind and offer all there wares to gays and transgenders ... it's not participation in a religious ceremony. Your first problem is showing why your personal view that it is secular should trump the historical reality that it's intimately religious. Your second problem is showing where I said "religion is required for marriage." I said it very easily raises freedom of conscience objections because of its historical religious nature. I do not imply the reverse is true: all marriages must be religious or it's not a marriage. You haven't engaged with my arguments that you require religious persons to engage in forced speech (forced expression) and require them to violate their religious liberties (participate in ceremonies complying with their religious beliefs). I can't really help you. From what I gather, because you declare it secular, then no civil rights are violated, because they're secular ceremonies, and no religious person could object. ("I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular"). That's the only point you come back to and the only sense I can make of your argument. It's ludicrous. Rights don't cease to exist because you don't acknowledge them. The problem with your argument is that you try to imply that the religious aspect is inseparable from marriage due to the fact that marriage was historically co-opted by religion. What you don't do is acknowledge that marriage has pretty much universally been a legal/cultural institution that shaped the family dynamic, and religion has absolutely no right to uniquely claim it. To strengthen your argument, you would have to make a plausible argument as to why marriage is required to be religious. For example, why did my marriage that was strictly secular (not in a church, no involvement of religious ideas or practices) have some kind of religious component to it? What about the very nature of marriage makes it OK for religious people to discriminate based on it? This also brings up a larger question of why is religious belief ever an acceptable excuse to discriminate, but that's an entire discussion on its own. No requirement, just an extreme likelihood that someone religious would find the ceremony in direct conflict with his or her sincerely held religious views. I only bring it up because someone thought it was secular by nature and nobody’s civil rights were being violated. So really you’re falsely reducing my argument to points I never made. So then you have to justify why religion is an acceptable excuse to discriminate, because this is precisely what your argument is supporting. If he was truly discriminating against gays, he wouldn’t sell premade cakes to them either. The US has a rich history of weighing religious liberty concerns against others ... like unemployment benefits even though jobs were available that didn’t have sabbaths off .. or LGBT groups in a veterans parade. If we could return to a rational discussion of trade offs compared to the unilateral declaration that it’s discrimination ... that would be a good step one. But what's the distinction between something you're selling on a shelf, and something you're doing on order? They're both things you're offering to sell to those who pay you money. What is the meaningful distinction? I don't see one. And you don't have to deny both to the gays for it to be discrimination, just one. One is a service and the other is a product. The cake maker is being specifically asked to take a commission to make an artistic expression for a non legal ceremony. The cake maker refuses as they make these artistic expressions for specific non legal ceremonies. The person being refuses the service cites being discriminated against and wants to force the artist to make an artistic expression for all non legal ceremonies.
Is the service vs product thing what's the deciding factor here or the artistic nature of the service?
Would you argue that likewise someone who is trying to sell software is okay to refuse when approached with either some completly original request or a custom alteration to some code to make it fit better for the specific customer at hand?
Or are you arguing that because it's artistic in nature he get's a pass on denying service? In that case, who looks at what counts as artistic and what doesn't?
Or to give a more down to earth example, would you argue that someone working as a designer for websites being asked to make one can refuse that, because he doesn't like that it has pictures of a gay wedding on it? Does that work for everyone in the process? Just front-end because that's perceived to be the more "artistic" part or back-end as well?
Let's say you've got some mmorpg that let's people marry ingame. Let's continue by saying that it was coded so that you are only able to marry a character of the opposite sex in the game and they want to change that. Would you be okay refusing to make that change as a programmer?
Would you ultimately be okay to turn someone down for a credit at a bank because that's a service?
Just curious since I'm not really getting which of the two is what's important to you in that distinction.
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On March 25 2018 23:51 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 13:12 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 12:34 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 11:19 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 08:14 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 07:38 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 06:19 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 06:10 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 04:38 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 04:25 iamthedave wrote:
[quote]
This thread is getting to be a pain to chop up so I'm cutting it down again.
How am I restricting anyone's civil rights? You can have any sort of marriage you want. But that doesn't make it an actual religious ceremony. It doesn't mean it ever has been. It's just an unjustified assumption that people have run with and never examined. In almost every culture everywhere in the world, churches need to go to the government and say 'may we perform marriages in our establishment?' And the government has the right to say 'no you may not'. And if the government does that, no 'marriage' performed in that establishment is legitimate.
HOW is that a religious ceremony? That is a secular ceremony that people choose to apply religious overtones to. That's not my opinion, that is the objective facts of what actually happens. If it were a genuinely religious ceremony, the government would not be necessary.
I'm guessed you're a Christian from some of your comments, apologies if I'm wrong. But I'll assume you're a church goer. Your church does not need anyone's permission to perform Sunday mass, and it sure as hell doesn't need the government to say 'your sunday mass is legitimate'. Because Mass is a religious ceremony and it's validation comes from all the trappings of its performance within the context in which it is performed.
A wedding requires none of that. I could literally take my housemate to the registry office and be married tomorrow evening if I wanted, and that marriage would be as legitimate as a £10,000 marriage that takes place in the cathedral down the road. The trappings are entirely irrelevant, the meat and bones of a marriage is the secular, legal structure that supports and legitimises it, and it has always been so. That is why King Henry the 8th was able to say 'Actually... no,' when the church tried to force him to keep his wife. No amount of excommunications or wars were able to change the fact he had a divorce and then had another marriage and the child of one of his later marriages ended up King.
It's also - not coincidentally - why the rich and powerful throughout history conveniently find their way into and out of marriages that are supposed to be unbreakable until death. Ain't no wealth getting someone around Mass, though.
I don't care how you practice your faith. But you can't redefine reality with it. Marriage is still secular. Now I appreciate Christians believe that there is a spiritual component to marriage, and that is where much of the issue arises re: teh gayz. But that's your trappings. It's not real. And that is not my opinion, that's the state's opinion. The state doesn't care if you think you've married someone. It cares that you married someone in a place that it considers legitimate, and if the state doesn't think your marriage is legitimate you'll very quickly run into problems when you try to assert otherwise.
As to your last point, compelled speech is a thing. It just is. Complaints about compelled speech are a far bigger slippery slope than 'let the public know that you're putting certain elements of your religious beliefs ahead of your business'. I mean, why SHOULD I be forced to let the public know all of my sliced ham includes uranium in it? They're trampling my first amendment rights and making me say things I don't wanna!
Yes, it's a silly, extreme example, but compelled speech is a standard part of business. If you want to make your religion part of your business, you're damn skippy you should be expected to say up front that you're doing so.
Religions do not deserve the special pleading and status they unduly get, not in your culture or mine (not that we're half as bad as your lot are on that front). 'Good' Christians are far too often content to hide behind the sort of Christians who don't give a fig about civil liberties for anyone but themselves, who believe gay people deserve no rights, who think Muslims should be thrown out of their 'Christian' nation, who would gladly outlaw any beliefs but their own and enforce those beliefs on anyone who disagreed and crush any speech that went against them. You know those people exist and so do I, and unfortunately for you, an awful lot of them get voted for by your good honest religious Christians. It is an utter embarrassment that Roy Moore came so close to being elected, even without the allegations that brought him down.
Your lot are not content to keep their religion private. Far too many of you want to enforce it on everyone else, and damn the consequences. That is your slippery slope, and it's a far more dangerous, far more deadly one than being forced to tell people you aren't going to serve them if they're gay. I covered the trampling of civil in the unquoted part of my last post. You can read it there and respond to what I wrote if you still don't understand. As you haven't responded to it, I don't know what was less than clear. You're still really deep in the hole with a historically acknowledged religious ceremony. Religions all over the world call the union of a man and woman a central God-purposed event. God ordains this union. You act or don't act in accordance to his will in this union. Et cetera. You're taking a historical revisionist route, and frankly an unsupported assertion, that it should be a secular event because you think some people just happen to choose to put religious undertones on the event. It's a religious event that some people adopt secular attitudes towards, and that's precisely why it's a core feature of this case. None of this wordy mash justifies adopting your attitude. It is a religious ceremony for a huge number of Americans, and just because you think it shouldn't be the case does not diminish that it will involve religious objections if they're making you be part of the service. Will you force a pastor to officiate the event on grounds of discrimination, because after all it's just this secular event to you? The folly just stretches on and on. I understand your perspective in the last three paragraphs. I live in a country that recognizes the role religion plays in life and how government intrusion on core beliefs would destroy a society and cause it to trend authoritarian over time. To re-purpose a sentence of yours, you really don't give a damn about civil liberties for people who you don't think deserve them. You simply don't think they should exist, therefore they don't exist, therefore they should be done away with. Therefore, direct your attention to constitutional amendments because I'm definitely talking about interpreting laws on the books by judges ... the proper realm for judicial battles. Okay. I'd like to get you to directly engage with something you consistently are ignoring, as it seems you don't understand my actual argument. If religion is required for marriage and it is a God-purposed event, why is the marriage a) not legal unless the state recognises it and why b) can the state annul it irrespective of the wishes of religious leaders? I have yet to see you concretely point towards a group I think don't deserve civil liberties. I do think that no group has the liberty to oppress another, and I think that the religious hide behind their religion regularly and use it as a shield to permit them to discriminate. And I think that is wrong. I don't think I'm rocking the boat there. I think I've already answered the post you're directing me towards. I believe marriage is obsolete personally so I do not intend to get married. I have no issues with other people choosing to do so, or the methods and trappings they use to complete that union. But I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular, and that marriage being secular is the only way to reconcile the vast gulf between what people say marriage is and what it actually is, and which part of that union the state - which is required to legitimise the union in the first place - actually cares about. We entered into this when you thought religious objections shouldn't even be here in the first place: it's asserted to be a secular event in your eyes, case closed. History tells a different tale. It supports the side that says it's very likely for such a ceremony to entangle religious people in conscience objections by its own nature. That's why very sympathetic individuals, such as the baker, will be kind and offer all there wares to gays and transgenders ... it's not participation in a religious ceremony. Your first problem is showing why your personal view that it is secular should trump the historical reality that it's intimately religious. Your second problem is showing where I said "religion is required for marriage." I said it very easily raises freedom of conscience objections because of its historical religious nature. I do not imply the reverse is true: all marriages must be religious or it's not a marriage. You haven't engaged with my arguments that you require religious persons to engage in forced speech (forced expression) and require them to violate their religious liberties (participate in ceremonies complying with their religious beliefs). I can't really help you. From what I gather, because you declare it secular, then no civil rights are violated, because they're secular ceremonies, and no religious person could object. ("I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular"). That's the only point you come back to and the only sense I can make of your argument. It's ludicrous. Rights don't cease to exist because you don't acknowledge them. The problem with your argument is that you try to imply that the religious aspect is inseparable from marriage due to the fact that marriage was historically co-opted by religion. What you don't do is acknowledge that marriage has pretty much universally been a legal/cultural institution that shaped the family dynamic, and religion has absolutely no right to uniquely claim it. To strengthen your argument, you would have to make a plausible argument as to why marriage is required to be religious. For example, why did my marriage that was strictly secular (not in a church, no involvement of religious ideas or practices) have some kind of religious component to it? What about the very nature of marriage makes it OK for religious people to discriminate based on it? This also brings up a larger question of why is religious belief ever an acceptable excuse to discriminate, but that's an entire discussion on its own. No requirement, just an extreme likelihood that someone religious would find the ceremony in direct conflict with his or her sincerely held religious views. I only bring it up because someone thought it was secular by nature and nobody’s civil rights were being violated. So really you’re falsely reducing my argument to points I never made. So then you have to justify why religion is an acceptable excuse to discriminate, because this is precisely what your argument is supporting. If he was truly discriminating against gays, he wouldn’t sell premade cakes to them either. The US has a rich history of weighing religious liberty concerns against others ... like unemployment benefits even though jobs were available that didn’t have sabbaths off .. or LGBT groups in a veterans parade. If we could return to a rational discussion of trade offs compared to the unilateral declaration that it’s discrimination ... that would be a good step one. It's the definition of discrimination. You can be triggered by the word "discrimination" since it seems to be a buzz word, but this isn't a debate. It is the very definition of discrimination. He is refusing service to an individual based on a particular trait of that individual. It doesn't matter if it's only a single service, it's still discrimination. There are different situations in which different institutions are allowed to discriminate. This is easily shown by many examples. However, there is always a reason or justification under the law; as you said, a trade-off. There are two different facets to the discrimination that is in question here; the basis for it (religion) and the reason for it (homosexuality, specifically a perceived endorsement of homosexuality). If you really want to justify this instance of discrimination, then you have to tell us why religion is an acceptable reason to allow discrimination, because that is the argument that you are constantly throwing your support behind. You will have to open your mind to alternative looks if you want to truly understand this issue. When you call it discrimination and leave it at that, you can’t progress to see what rights the other party has. That’s one of the reasons this is such a cantankerous issue in general: too many people are willing to cry discrimination and leave apart whether artists have the ability to be in business and still reject messages and whether or not that applies here. One easy reason why the uniform view of discrimination does not bear out is why the Supreme Court actually took up the case. According to some of the people in here, they should never has issued a writ of certiorari, just a one word rejection “Discrimination is not ok!” In real life, this is a balance of rights and responsibilities.
That's because it's discrimination. I don't know why you're so afraid of admitting it. You're not dealing with an artist who puts his service up for commission, and then randomly was asked to do something he didn't want to do, you're dealing with a cake maker who specifically offers services for weddings. That's pretty narrowly focused. The artist knows what he's in for. It was only when the customer was gay that he had a problem. That's discrimination. Growing up your whole life being told that discrimination is ok doesn't change that.
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I don't buy the service vs. product distinction in the cake scenario. Whether the cake was produced before or after the couple came in, the baker could still argue the same point that he would be endorsing a gay couple if he sold them something for their wedding.
I also really like Stratos's explanation of why this is still 100% discrimination- so it's not a misnomer to call it what it is- and that the important conversation is whether or not this discrimination is justified for some reason. Disagreeing with the premise of whether or not this is defined as discrimination is just revealing that one is resistant to admitting the reality of the situation.
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On March 26 2018 00:19 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 23:59 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 15:17 Kyadytim wrote:
I like how Danglars just subtly pushed the premise that refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding isn't truly discriminating, because discriminating is something else worse that includes not selling off the shelf cakes, too. It's a pretty nice rhetorical trick, but refusing to make a custom cake is still truly discriminating.
I'm pretty sure he's done the same sort of thing with racism when talking to GreenHorizons.
We can still talk about how we're weighing the harm of requiring bakers to make cakes against the harm of allowing bakers to opt of providing custom wedding cake services to gay couples. We can also talk about the larger harms set by the precedent of requiring people to provide services that in some way go against their religion or the precedent of allowing people to not provide services by claiming it's against their religion.
On the last of those subjects, allowing people to opt out of following non-discrimination laws by claiming it's against their religion is potentially going to open a floodgate of discrimination because religion has been a tremendously popular excuse for all sorts of terrible things throughout history, so anyone looking for a religious justification for discriminatory practices will probably be able to find one. And alternatively, passing blanket anti-discrimination laws is going to catch up religious objectors and lead judges to misapply them to Christians only and not to other religious/creeds (as happened in Colorado and as discussed in oral arguments). The harm done to the gay couple is they had to walk another block to another business offering the same service without religious objection. The harm done to the cake makers is that they no longer have the smallest freedom of religious conscience when it comes to their art. The state now owns their expression and can force whatever message at all. But you do show significant progress if you’re moving on to weighing harms. That’s where a big part of this lies, along with where artistic expression ends for types of businesses. Do you think the law would have prevented them from just saying they refuse to serve them and pointing to the sign that says "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" and kindly asking them to leave?
Maybe other religious people would’ve used that dodge, but the owner is not ashamed of his religious beliefs. Neither should he try and dodge the Colorado law: it is unjust in present form and should be limited quickly.
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On March 26 2018 01:02 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2018 00:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2018 23:59 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 15:17 Kyadytim wrote:
I like how Danglars just subtly pushed the premise that refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding isn't truly discriminating, because discriminating is something else worse that includes not selling off the shelf cakes, too. It's a pretty nice rhetorical trick, but refusing to make a custom cake is still truly discriminating.
I'm pretty sure he's done the same sort of thing with racism when talking to GreenHorizons.
We can still talk about how we're weighing the harm of requiring bakers to make cakes against the harm of allowing bakers to opt of providing custom wedding cake services to gay couples. We can also talk about the larger harms set by the precedent of requiring people to provide services that in some way go against their religion or the precedent of allowing people to not provide services by claiming it's against their religion.
On the last of those subjects, allowing people to opt out of following non-discrimination laws by claiming it's against their religion is potentially going to open a floodgate of discrimination because religion has been a tremendously popular excuse for all sorts of terrible things throughout history, so anyone looking for a religious justification for discriminatory practices will probably be able to find one. And alternatively, passing blanket anti-discrimination laws is going to catch up religious objectors and lead judges to misapply them to Christians only and not to other religious/creeds (as happened in Colorado and as discussed in oral arguments). The harm done to the gay couple is they had to walk another block to another business offering the same service without religious objection. The harm done to the cake makers is that they no longer have the smallest freedom of religious conscience when it comes to their art. The state now owns their expression and can force whatever message at all. But you do show significant progress if you’re moving on to weighing harms. That’s where a big part of this lies, along with where artistic expression ends for types of businesses. Do you think the law would have prevented them from just saying they refuse to serve them and pointing to the sign that says "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" and kindly asking them to leave? Maybe other religious people would’ve used that dodge, but the owner is not ashamed of his religious beliefs. Neither should he try and dodge the Colorado law: it is unjust in present form and should be limited quickly.
His religious beliefs that tell him gays don't deserve equal rights, you mean. And you seem perfectly okay supporting that. Given I'm not going to change your mind, because that's not why you're here, answer me this: why is even a disclaimer too much? Why is the only person that doesn't have to make any effort or question anything about what they're doing the religious person? Why does belonging to a religion grant you these privileges?
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On March 25 2018 23:59 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 15:17 Kyadytim wrote:
I like how Danglars just subtly pushed the premise that refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding isn't truly discriminating, because discriminating is something else worse that includes not selling off the shelf cakes, too. It's a pretty nice rhetorical trick, but refusing to make a custom cake is still truly discriminating.
I'm pretty sure he's done the same sort of thing with racism when talking to GreenHorizons.
We can still talk about how we're weighing the harm of requiring bakers to make cakes against the harm of allowing bakers to opt of providing custom wedding cake services to gay couples. We can also talk about the larger harms set by the precedent of requiring people to provide services that in some way go against their religion or the precedent of allowing people to not provide services by claiming it's against their religion.
On the last of those subjects, allowing people to opt out of following non-discrimination laws by claiming it's against their religion is potentially going to open a floodgate of discrimination because religion has been a tremendously popular excuse for all sorts of terrible things throughout history, so anyone looking for a religious justification for discriminatory practices will probably be able to find one. And alternatively, passing blanket anti-discrimination laws is going to catch up religious objectors and lead judges to misapply them to Christians only and not to other religious/creeds (as happened in Colorado and as discussed in oral arguments). The harm done to the gay couple is they had to walk another block to another business offering the same service without religious objection. The harm done to the cake makers is that they no longer have the smallest freedom of religious conscience when it comes to their art. The state now owns their expression and can force whatever message at all. But you do show significant progress if you’re moving on to weighing harms. That’s where a big part of this lies, along with where artistic expression ends for types of businesses.
I suppose that's one way to analyze the two kinds of harms experienced, but I'd imagine others might interpret them differently. For example:
The harm done to the gay couple is that they had to experience yet another individual perpetuating an ignorant and discriminatory belief that unfairly judges them as inferior. The harm done to the cake maker is that he got called out on his bullshit and is now being forced to address the issue of whether or not his freedom to prejudge others is morally acceptable.
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On March 26 2018 01:02 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2018 00:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2018 23:59 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 15:17 Kyadytim wrote:
I like how Danglars just subtly pushed the premise that refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding isn't truly discriminating, because discriminating is something else worse that includes not selling off the shelf cakes, too. It's a pretty nice rhetorical trick, but refusing to make a custom cake is still truly discriminating.
I'm pretty sure he's done the same sort of thing with racism when talking to GreenHorizons.
We can still talk about how we're weighing the harm of requiring bakers to make cakes against the harm of allowing bakers to opt of providing custom wedding cake services to gay couples. We can also talk about the larger harms set by the precedent of requiring people to provide services that in some way go against their religion or the precedent of allowing people to not provide services by claiming it's against their religion.
On the last of those subjects, allowing people to opt out of following non-discrimination laws by claiming it's against their religion is potentially going to open a floodgate of discrimination because religion has been a tremendously popular excuse for all sorts of terrible things throughout history, so anyone looking for a religious justification for discriminatory practices will probably be able to find one. And alternatively, passing blanket anti-discrimination laws is going to catch up religious objectors and lead judges to misapply them to Christians only and not to other religious/creeds (as happened in Colorado and as discussed in oral arguments). The harm done to the gay couple is they had to walk another block to another business offering the same service without religious objection. The harm done to the cake makers is that they no longer have the smallest freedom of religious conscience when it comes to their art. The state now owns their expression and can force whatever message at all. But you do show significant progress if you’re moving on to weighing harms. That’s where a big part of this lies, along with where artistic expression ends for types of businesses. Do you think the law would have prevented them from just saying they refuse to serve them and pointing to the sign that says "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" and kindly asking them to leave? Maybe other religious people would’ve used that dodge, but the owner is not ashamed of his religious beliefs. Neither should he try and dodge the Colorado law: it is unjust in present form and should be limited quickly.
So no. The person was perfectly capable of refusing to provide the cake for the ceremony. What you're arguing about is in fact NOT whether or not he has to make the cake for a ceremony he disagrees with based on his religious beliefs.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
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On March 25 2018 23:51 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 13:12 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 12:34 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 11:19 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 08:14 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 07:38 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 25 2018 06:19 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 06:10 iamthedave wrote:On March 25 2018 04:38 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 04:25 iamthedave wrote:
[quote]
This thread is getting to be a pain to chop up so I'm cutting it down again.
How am I restricting anyone's civil rights? You can have any sort of marriage you want. But that doesn't make it an actual religious ceremony. It doesn't mean it ever has been. It's just an unjustified assumption that people have run with and never examined. In almost every culture everywhere in the world, churches need to go to the government and say 'may we perform marriages in our establishment?' And the government has the right to say 'no you may not'. And if the government does that, no 'marriage' performed in that establishment is legitimate.
HOW is that a religious ceremony? That is a secular ceremony that people choose to apply religious overtones to. That's not my opinion, that is the objective facts of what actually happens. If it were a genuinely religious ceremony, the government would not be necessary.
I'm guessed you're a Christian from some of your comments, apologies if I'm wrong. But I'll assume you're a church goer. Your church does not need anyone's permission to perform Sunday mass, and it sure as hell doesn't need the government to say 'your sunday mass is legitimate'. Because Mass is a religious ceremony and it's validation comes from all the trappings of its performance within the context in which it is performed.
A wedding requires none of that. I could literally take my housemate to the registry office and be married tomorrow evening if I wanted, and that marriage would be as legitimate as a £10,000 marriage that takes place in the cathedral down the road. The trappings are entirely irrelevant, the meat and bones of a marriage is the secular, legal structure that supports and legitimises it, and it has always been so. That is why King Henry the 8th was able to say 'Actually... no,' when the church tried to force him to keep his wife. No amount of excommunications or wars were able to change the fact he had a divorce and then had another marriage and the child of one of his later marriages ended up King.
It's also - not coincidentally - why the rich and powerful throughout history conveniently find their way into and out of marriages that are supposed to be unbreakable until death. Ain't no wealth getting someone around Mass, though.
I don't care how you practice your faith. But you can't redefine reality with it. Marriage is still secular. Now I appreciate Christians believe that there is a spiritual component to marriage, and that is where much of the issue arises re: teh gayz. But that's your trappings. It's not real. And that is not my opinion, that's the state's opinion. The state doesn't care if you think you've married someone. It cares that you married someone in a place that it considers legitimate, and if the state doesn't think your marriage is legitimate you'll very quickly run into problems when you try to assert otherwise.
As to your last point, compelled speech is a thing. It just is. Complaints about compelled speech are a far bigger slippery slope than 'let the public know that you're putting certain elements of your religious beliefs ahead of your business'. I mean, why SHOULD I be forced to let the public know all of my sliced ham includes uranium in it? They're trampling my first amendment rights and making me say things I don't wanna!
Yes, it's a silly, extreme example, but compelled speech is a standard part of business. If you want to make your religion part of your business, you're damn skippy you should be expected to say up front that you're doing so.
Religions do not deserve the special pleading and status they unduly get, not in your culture or mine (not that we're half as bad as your lot are on that front). 'Good' Christians are far too often content to hide behind the sort of Christians who don't give a fig about civil liberties for anyone but themselves, who believe gay people deserve no rights, who think Muslims should be thrown out of their 'Christian' nation, who would gladly outlaw any beliefs but their own and enforce those beliefs on anyone who disagreed and crush any speech that went against them. You know those people exist and so do I, and unfortunately for you, an awful lot of them get voted for by your good honest religious Christians. It is an utter embarrassment that Roy Moore came so close to being elected, even without the allegations that brought him down.
Your lot are not content to keep their religion private. Far too many of you want to enforce it on everyone else, and damn the consequences. That is your slippery slope, and it's a far more dangerous, far more deadly one than being forced to tell people you aren't going to serve them if they're gay. I covered the trampling of civil in the unquoted part of my last post. You can read it there and respond to what I wrote if you still don't understand. As you haven't responded to it, I don't know what was less than clear. You're still really deep in the hole with a historically acknowledged religious ceremony. Religions all over the world call the union of a man and woman a central God-purposed event. God ordains this union. You act or don't act in accordance to his will in this union. Et cetera. You're taking a historical revisionist route, and frankly an unsupported assertion, that it should be a secular event because you think some people just happen to choose to put religious undertones on the event. It's a religious event that some people adopt secular attitudes towards, and that's precisely why it's a core feature of this case. None of this wordy mash justifies adopting your attitude. It is a religious ceremony for a huge number of Americans, and just because you think it shouldn't be the case does not diminish that it will involve religious objections if they're making you be part of the service. Will you force a pastor to officiate the event on grounds of discrimination, because after all it's just this secular event to you? The folly just stretches on and on. I understand your perspective in the last three paragraphs. I live in a country that recognizes the role religion plays in life and how government intrusion on core beliefs would destroy a society and cause it to trend authoritarian over time. To re-purpose a sentence of yours, you really don't give a damn about civil liberties for people who you don't think deserve them. You simply don't think they should exist, therefore they don't exist, therefore they should be done away with. Therefore, direct your attention to constitutional amendments because I'm definitely talking about interpreting laws on the books by judges ... the proper realm for judicial battles. Okay. I'd like to get you to directly engage with something you consistently are ignoring, as it seems you don't understand my actual argument. If religion is required for marriage and it is a God-purposed event, why is the marriage a) not legal unless the state recognises it and why b) can the state annul it irrespective of the wishes of religious leaders? I have yet to see you concretely point towards a group I think don't deserve civil liberties. I do think that no group has the liberty to oppress another, and I think that the religious hide behind their religion regularly and use it as a shield to permit them to discriminate. And I think that is wrong. I don't think I'm rocking the boat there. I think I've already answered the post you're directing me towards. I believe marriage is obsolete personally so I do not intend to get married. I have no issues with other people choosing to do so, or the methods and trappings they use to complete that union. But I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular, and that marriage being secular is the only way to reconcile the vast gulf between what people say marriage is and what it actually is, and which part of that union the state - which is required to legitimise the union in the first place - actually cares about. We entered into this when you thought religious objections shouldn't even be here in the first place: it's asserted to be a secular event in your eyes, case closed. History tells a different tale. It supports the side that says it's very likely for such a ceremony to entangle religious people in conscience objections by its own nature. That's why very sympathetic individuals, such as the baker, will be kind and offer all there wares to gays and transgenders ... it's not participation in a religious ceremony. Your first problem is showing why your personal view that it is secular should trump the historical reality that it's intimately religious. Your second problem is showing where I said "religion is required for marriage." I said it very easily raises freedom of conscience objections because of its historical religious nature. I do not imply the reverse is true: all marriages must be religious or it's not a marriage. You haven't engaged with my arguments that you require religious persons to engage in forced speech (forced expression) and require them to violate their religious liberties (participate in ceremonies complying with their religious beliefs). I can't really help you. From what I gather, because you declare it secular, then no civil rights are violated, because they're secular ceremonies, and no religious person could object. ("I believe it is objective fact that marriage is secular"). That's the only point you come back to and the only sense I can make of your argument. It's ludicrous. Rights don't cease to exist because you don't acknowledge them. The problem with your argument is that you try to imply that the religious aspect is inseparable from marriage due to the fact that marriage was historically co-opted by religion. What you don't do is acknowledge that marriage has pretty much universally been a legal/cultural institution that shaped the family dynamic, and religion has absolutely no right to uniquely claim it. To strengthen your argument, you would have to make a plausible argument as to why marriage is required to be religious. For example, why did my marriage that was strictly secular (not in a church, no involvement of religious ideas or practices) have some kind of religious component to it? What about the very nature of marriage makes it OK for religious people to discriminate based on it? This also brings up a larger question of why is religious belief ever an acceptable excuse to discriminate, but that's an entire discussion on its own. No requirement, just an extreme likelihood that someone religious would find the ceremony in direct conflict with his or her sincerely held religious views. I only bring it up because someone thought it was secular by nature and nobody’s civil rights were being violated. So really you’re falsely reducing my argument to points I never made. So then you have to justify why religion is an acceptable excuse to discriminate, because this is precisely what your argument is supporting. If he was truly discriminating against gays, he wouldn’t sell premade cakes to them either. The US has a rich history of weighing religious liberty concerns against others ... like unemployment benefits even though jobs were available that didn’t have sabbaths off .. or LGBT groups in a veterans parade. If we could return to a rational discussion of trade offs compared to the unilateral declaration that it’s discrimination ... that would be a good step one. It's the definition of discrimination. You can be triggered by the word "discrimination" since it seems to be a buzz word, but this isn't a debate. It is the very definition of discrimination. He is refusing service to an individual based on a particular trait of that individual. It doesn't matter if it's only a single service, it's still discrimination. There are different situations in which different institutions are allowed to discriminate. This is easily shown by many examples. However, there is always a reason or justification under the law; as you said, a trade-off. There are two different facets to the discrimination that is in question here; the basis for it (religion) and the reason for it (homosexuality, specifically a perceived endorsement of homosexuality). If you really want to justify this instance of discrimination, then you have to tell us why religion is an acceptable reason to allow discrimination, because that is the argument that you are constantly throwing your support behind. You will have to open your mind to alternative looks if you want to truly understand this issue. When you call it discrimination and leave it at that, you can’t progress to see what rights the other party has. That’s one of the reasons this is such a cantankerous issue in general: too many people are willing to cry discrimination and leave apart whether artists have the ability to be in business and still reject messages and whether or not that applies here. One easy reason why the uniform view of discrimination does not bear out is why the Supreme Court actually took up the case. According to some of the people in here, they should never has issued a writ of certiorari, just a one word rejection “Discrimination is not ok!” In real life, this is a balance of rights and responsibilities.
I am sorry, but this seems like a (maybe unintentional) dodge I have to call you out on it.
You accuse Stratos_speAr of just "call it discrimination and leaving it at that" while in reality the whole second half of his post is about how there are different cases, tradeoffs that can be justified, etc.
With a serious question: Why do you think that religion is an acceptable reason to allow discrimination? (especially based on a trait for which the individual has no control over such as sexuality? I might add)
Not meant to dig on you too much, but I was seriously hoping for a clarifying answer after reading Stratos_speAr 's comment.
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