|
Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On March 25 2018 05:26 A3th3r wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 05:21 zlefin wrote:On March 25 2018 05:01 A3th3r wrote:Thankfully, Trump signed off on the spending bill so there is some sense in the white house. Now there is just the issue of the free trade agreements & trying to make a change to those trade deficits. That's a difficult thing to do. If he is able to change that, great. He may or may not be able to do that in terms of how much the president is able to do. Generally that is a duty that is taken care of by the state department & isn't necessarily the president's job https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-signs-spending-bill-after-threatening-to-veto-it-1521810580 the president is responsible for overseeing and directing the state dept; so a failure at State (if any) is partly the fault of the president. and generally speaking, the president can do a lot on those topics. (i.e. he has the authority to do quite a lot in terms of trade and trade deals) Interesting! OK so that is a thing where he has some control. I just wish that he were a little more political in how he did things. Is it really mature for the PRESIDENT to dawdle around on Twitter & explain foreign & business policy matters to the public via social media? For Trump to explain anything he would have to know what he is talking about first.
He clearly has no idea about trade deficits, agreements or tariffs.
So no, its not mature for the President to spout random bullshit on twitter and pretend its foreign policy.
|
On March 25 2018 05:26 A3th3r wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 05:21 zlefin wrote:On March 25 2018 05:01 A3th3r wrote:Thankfully, Trump signed off on the spending bill so there is some sense in the white house. Now there is just the issue of the free trade agreements & trying to make a change to those trade deficits. That's a difficult thing to do. If he is able to change that, great. He may or may not be able to do that in terms of how much the president is able to do. Generally that is a duty that is taken care of by the state department & isn't necessarily the president's job https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-signs-spending-bill-after-threatening-to-veto-it-1521810580 the president is responsible for overseeing and directing the state dept; so a failure at State (if any) is partly the fault of the president. and generally speaking, the president can do a lot on those topics. (i.e. he has the authority to do quite a lot in terms of trade and trade deals) Interesting! OK so that is a thing where he has some control. I just wish that he were a little more political in how he did things. Is it really mature for the PRESIDENT to dawdle around on Twitter & explain foreign & business policy matters to the public via social media?
no, it's not mature for the president to dawdle on twitter so much; and it's non-standard for the president to have suhc a high level of social media presence.
explaining stuff to the american people is not unreasonable, and given the age, having a fair bit of social media presence makes sense. usually though the president would give addresses to the people to cover such things on a less frequent basis (e.g. every few months or so). typically the staff in the white communications department handles most of the social media presence to inform the public on topics on a routine and day-to-day basis.
as an example of a more typical approach: FDR had "fireside chats", occasional radio addresses covering the major topics of the day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireside_chats
|
On March 25 2018 04:38 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Maybe your religion tells you the sun is cold. I have no issue with that belief Danglars the man may hold (probably doesn't), but that doesn't mean Danglars the man is right. The sun is hot, even if your faith tells you otherwise. That is how I see the secularisation of marriage. It is secular, and has always been secular. The fact that it is and has always been secular has been hidden by the fact religion was at one point ubiquitous inside cultures that were mostly homogenous, and so only religious people of the same religion were having marriages in the same ways in the same places.
The moment society became more of a conglomerate and cultures meshed, the true, secular nature of marriage became clear. It didn't change, there has been no concrete alteration in the nature of marriage. It's just that people can now see what was already there and what was already true, and looked at historically has clearly always been true. This isn't revisionist history, this is "Look at this thing that has always been this way but nobody ever noticed before."
No more revisionist in character than the discovery of the earth going around the sun than the other way round, or the theory of evolution, or the ending of the theory that the world is flat.
But NONE of this stops you having your religious marriage, or invalidates it. It just means your marriage, at its bare bones, is a secular institution, and it always was, and always will be. You simply choose to build something extra onto the framework, and good for you. That's your right, and I'm the last person in the world who wants to prevent you doing so.
Thanks for that. I thought it was something like that. Do you know much about how it was historically? As in pre-1791?
|
On March 25 2018 06:10 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +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.
|
On March 25 2018 04:48 NewSunshine wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 04:46 Danglars wrote:On March 25 2018 04:38 Kyadytim wrote:
I didn't miss that post, I ignored it.
I really want your answer to this question, though, because it really clarifies the issue. If a baker is allowed to refuse to make a cake for a gay couple's wedding for religious reasons, the same protection would apply to a baker refusing to bake a cake for an interracial couple's wedding.
Therefore, do you support allowing discrimination based on sexual orientation race if the person doing the discrimination claims to be doing it because of their religious beliefs? Maybe then you do understand why I'm ignoring your edit until you either delete the rest of your post I responded to, or show an interest in responding to the post. I can't respond to 12 sentences and later discover the entire thing hinged on a future-added last 13th sentence with a question after I spend time responding to what was written. My time posting in this forum is not an unlimited quantity subject to any edits and tangents and side-questions people feel like typing. I don't think I'll need to post this disclaimer again. He's asking you a straightforward question, and would like an answer. This isn't an edit, it's a new post. And most of us are familiar with your attitude towards edits, whether they existed or not.
The post where he said he was ignoring my post? I'm showing it the same level of attention that he showed mine.
|
I think its important to distinct that the baker isn't interfering at all with the secular aspect of the marriage but instead with the traditional ceremony of the marriage. Talking about the legal aspect of what marriage is isn't relevant to the discussion.
|
This conversation makes me want to seek out homophobic bakers and trick them into making cakes for gay people then parade around saying how the bakers fully endorse gay marriage with pictures of their cake at the gay weddings.
Just to get them to try to sue me for slandering them by saying they support gay people getting married.
All so I can see that split second when they realize they are arguing that opening their business to more people caused them economic harm.
|
On March 25 2018 06:52 GreenHorizons wrote:
This conversation makes me want to seek out homophobic bakers and trick them into making cakes for gay people then parade around saying how the bakers fully endorse gay marriage with pictures of their cake at the gay weddings.
Just to get them to try to sue me for slandering them by saying they support gay people getting married.
All so I can see that split second when they realize they are arguing that opening their business to more people caused them economic harm.
I bet tricking Muslim people into serving pork or hindu people into serving beef would be hilarious to you as well. I'm sure they'd take it as the good matured fun that you're having. After all you're just opening their business to more people.
|
On March 25 2018 06:59 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 06:52 GreenHorizons wrote:
This conversation makes me want to seek out homophobic bakers and trick them into making cakes for gay people then parade around saying how the bakers fully endorse gay marriage with pictures of their cake at the gay weddings.
Just to get them to try to sue me for slandering them by saying they support gay people getting married.
All so I can see that split second when they realize they are arguing that opening their business to more people caused them economic harm. I bet tricking Muslim people into serving pork or hindu people into serving beef would be hilarious to you as well. I'm sure they'd take it as the good matured fun that you're having. After all you're just opening their business to more people.
I mean, sorta, except there's no underlying issue of Muslims/Hindus being part of a power structure implementing discrimination on a national level in this country so I wouldn't get the same kind of pleasure out of it. I guess I should also add that whether someone serves beef or pork at a restaurant isn't a choice they need to justify with their religion. They can just choose not to serve those meats for innumerable reasons.
I think most religious traditions are laughable though. I just find the whole thing to be fascinating. Wouldn't this same logic mean that hotel/land owners should be able to not rent single bed rooms to unmarried or gay couples?
|
On March 25 2018 03:29 Danglars wrote:This is a good step for the Trump administration. The Palestinian Authority rewards suicide bombers. They name streets after them. Their families get monthly cash stipends. A witness to the House Foreign Affairs Committee said the Palestinian Authority is investing $137.8 million in this enterprise, or roughly 10% of its annual budget. Their leader Abbas said "We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah." This stands as an impediment to peace in the Middle East and I support this move by Congress and the Trump Administration.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/us/politics/us-arms-sales-saudi-arabia-.html
I don't think Trump cutting aid to PA has anything to do with the administrations moral issues surrounding supporting agencies with terrorist ties.
|
On March 25 2018 06:19 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +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.
|
On March 25 2018 07:10 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 06:59 Sermokala wrote:On March 25 2018 06:52 GreenHorizons wrote:
This conversation makes me want to seek out homophobic bakers and trick them into making cakes for gay people then parade around saying how the bakers fully endorse gay marriage with pictures of their cake at the gay weddings.
Just to get them to try to sue me for slandering them by saying they support gay people getting married.
All so I can see that split second when they realize they are arguing that opening their business to more people caused them economic harm. I bet tricking Muslim people into serving pork or hindu people into serving beef would be hilarious to you as well. I'm sure they'd take it as the good matured fun that you're having. After all you're just opening their business to more people. I mean, sorta, except there's no underlying issue of Muslims/Hindus being part of a power structure implementing discrimination on a national level in this country so I wouldn't get the same kind of pleasure out of it. I guess I should also add that whether someone serves beef or pork at a restaurant isn't a choice they need to justify with their religion. They can just choose not to serve those meats for innumerable reasons. I think most religious traditions are laughable though. I just find the whole thing to be fascinating. Wouldn't this same logic mean that hotel/land owners should be able to not rent single bed rooms to unmarried or gay couples?
I agree with GH here, your analogy was a little off. The problem the baker has isn't making a wedding cake, it's who they're making it for. I'm pretty sure Islam and Judaism don't outright ban slaughtering pigs and serving their meat, it's just a ban on eating it. I'm not sure what a good analogy would be.
------------------Not a direct response to anybody------------------------
Also, I like that point about property owners possibly being able to refuse to sell/rent to unmarried or gay couples on the basis of "they refuse to possibly enable sex out of wedlock/gay sex."
Some of the people in this thread like talking about slippery slopes, right? It's not much of a jump from "Religious beliefs provide a discrimination exemption for artistic expression," to "Religious beliefs provide a discrimination exemption for aiding or enabling things that violate a person's 'religious conscience.'" Really, the more one examines the argument that it's acceptable, reasonable, and possible to carve out a narrow exception in anti-discrimination laws without seriously eroding the protections afforded by them, the more absurd the idea becomes.
|
I'm not sure about how laws for landlords work in the US but if you have to have a license to rent property then you may have to follow certain anti-discrimination guidelines that aren't there for bakers.
I don't know if this is the case but it seems likely.
|
On March 25 2018 07:38 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +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.
|
On March 25 2018 07:10 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 06:59 Sermokala wrote:On March 25 2018 06:52 GreenHorizons wrote:
This conversation makes me want to seek out homophobic bakers and trick them into making cakes for gay people then parade around saying how the bakers fully endorse gay marriage with pictures of their cake at the gay weddings.
Just to get them to try to sue me for slandering them by saying they support gay people getting married.
All so I can see that split second when they realize they are arguing that opening their business to more people caused them economic harm. I bet tricking Muslim people into serving pork or hindu people into serving beef would be hilarious to you as well. I'm sure they'd take it as the good matured fun that you're having. After all you're just opening their business to more people. I mean, sorta, except there's no underlying issue of Muslims/Hindus being part of a power structure implementing discrimination on a national level in this country so I wouldn't get the same kind of pleasure out of it. I guess I should also add that whether someone serves beef or pork at a restaurant isn't a choice they need to justify with their religion. They can just choose not to serve those meats for innumerable reasons. I think most religious traditions are laughable though. I just find the whole thing to be fascinating. Wouldn't this same logic mean that hotel/land owners should be able to not rent single bed rooms to unmarried or gay couples?
I think the part you missed in responding to the false equivalence was that not choosing to serve beef or pork period is not a discrimination against any specific group. They are serving it to no one. Not choosing to serve some people and not others.
Unless ofcourse one is concerned about the discrimination against slaughtered beef and pork itself. It wont cook itself.
|
On March 25 2018 08:18 Rebs wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 07:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2018 06:59 Sermokala wrote:On March 25 2018 06:52 GreenHorizons wrote:
This conversation makes me want to seek out homophobic bakers and trick them into making cakes for gay people then parade around saying how the bakers fully endorse gay marriage with pictures of their cake at the gay weddings.
Just to get them to try to sue me for slandering them by saying they support gay people getting married.
All so I can see that split second when they realize they are arguing that opening their business to more people caused them economic harm. I bet tricking Muslim people into serving pork or hindu people into serving beef would be hilarious to you as well. I'm sure they'd take it as the good matured fun that you're having. After all you're just opening their business to more people. I mean, sorta, except there's no underlying issue of Muslims/Hindus being part of a power structure implementing discrimination on a national level in this country so I wouldn't get the same kind of pleasure out of it. I guess I should also add that whether someone serves beef or pork at a restaurant isn't a choice they need to justify with their religion. They can just choose not to serve those meats for innumerable reasons. I think most religious traditions are laughable though. I just find the whole thing to be fascinating. Wouldn't this same logic mean that hotel/land owners should be able to not rent single bed rooms to unmarried or gay couples? I think the part you missed in responding to the false equivalence was that not choosing to serve beef or pork period is not a discrimination against any specific group. They are serving it to no one. Not choosing to serve some people and not others. Unless ofcourse one is concerned about the discrimination against slaughtered beef and pork itself. It wont cook itself.
Yes that too. I knew there was something.
@Jock I might have missed the part about believing there's some aspect of cake making vs housing that distinguishes in their mind why not providing one to a gay couple based on religious beliefs would be desirable and the other illegal as I can only stomach so much of this stuff. That's part of why it was in the form of a question, to give anyone that held that position the opportunity to clarify or tell me it's been explained and why the reasoning doesn't work that way.
|
Yeah it was more of a practical point, I wasn't addressing the wider issue.
Personally I think they should have made the cake, and that this seems like a really stupid place to dig an ideological trench, but that's just my opinion.
|
On March 25 2018 06:19 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Your argument is flawed, because everyone is required to engage in forced speech. Only Christians - and Muslims as well, let's not be unfair - claim special exemptions and start waving books around to say they shouldn't have to do this or that because their beliefs are so precious. Why should religious beliefs be treated differently to other beliefs?
Unless you have an incredible argument to demonstrate how fundamentally religious a cake-maker's day to day activities are, you have to acknowledge that it's special pleading for the religious owners to say they shouldn't have to serve customers who are perfectly reasonable save for the fact they are gay (it is of course reasonable to refuse service to rude, abrasive, abusive or unnecessarily awkward customers). Irrespective of how the courts ruled, the one and only exception 'justifying' the behaviour of the staff, is that they have religious objections.
Would you have supported them if they refused service to a black couple because they believed the black people have no souls? It's a reasonable objection if their religion says so, is it not? Reminding you that this was an argument made about black folks by religious people once upon a time. Your own logic means you should support this. It's an argument made for religious reasons, by religious people, not to have their amendment rights violated. If for any reason you don't think this is valid, you need to come up with a very good reason why, as it's built on the exact same foundations as the 'we won't make a cake for a gay wedding because religion' argument.
You raise a final good point, though: rights don't cease to exist because you don't acknowledge them; a fact that has been tripping the religious up where it concerns LGBT folks for an awful long time. And women. And African Americans. And basically every group that religious people have oppressed sequentially until the state decided they weren't allowed to anymore.
That's why very sympathetic individuals, such as the baker, will be kind and offer all there wares to gays and transgenders ...
I want to highlight this as well. I know that you mean this sincerely, but you don't appreciate how appalling it actually sounds. They are 'very sympathetic' and are willing to treat gays and transgenders almost like they're real people. They're oh so sorry about their condition. So terribly sorry.
|
On March 25 2018 08:47 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +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. Your argument is flawed, because everyone is required to engage in forced speech. Only Christians - and Muslims as well, let's not be unfair - claim special exemptions and start waving books around to say they shouldn't have to do this or that because their beliefs are so precious. Why should religious beliefs be treated differently to other beliefs? Unless you have an incredible argument to demonstrate how fundamentally religious a cake-maker's day to day activities are, you have to acknowledge that it's special pleading for the religious owners to say they shouldn't have to serve customers who are perfectly reasonable save for the fact they are gay (it is of course reasonable to refuse service to rude, abrasive, abusive or unnecessarily awkward customers). Irrespective of how the courts ruled, the one and only exception 'justifying' the behaviour of the staff, is that they have religious objections. Would you have supported them if they refused service to a black couple because they believed the black people have no souls? It's a reasonable objection if their religion says so, is it not? Reminding you that this was an argument made about black folks by religious people once upon a time. Your own logic means you should support this. It's an argument made for religious reasons, by religious people, not to have their amendment rights violated. You raise a final good point, though: rights don't cease to exist because you don't acknowledge them; a fact that has been tripping the religious up where it concerns LGBT folks for an awful long time. And women. And African Americans. And basically every group that religious people have oppressed sequentially until the state decided they weren't allowed to anymore. Show nested quote + That's why very sympathetic individuals, such as the baker, will be kind and offer all there wares to gays and transgenders ... I want to highlight this as well. I know that you mean this sincerely, but you don't appreciate how appalling it actually sounds. They are 'very sympathetic' and are willing to treat gays and transgenders almost like they're real people. They're oh so sorry about their condition. So terribly sorry.
You do a very bad job bringing evidence in to support your assertions. What is forced speech for you? Are you an artist that has recently been required to produce artwork with which you disagree?
Maybe then you’d understand why 500 artists brought a friend of the court brief worried that a defeat for artistic expression for a cake maker would mean other works of art would similarly be on the chopping block.
I still have not seen one iota of an argument defending your assertion that it’s entirely secular and nobody should pay attention. It’s again your assertions that secular marriages are all that should matter to religious people, and your profound disregard for the civil rights of groups you think have no business demanding rights. I was waiting for a response on my last posts’s points, but I see it’s just asides and chatter all the way through. And finally, you still haven’t come to terms with businesses that serve gay patrons but not their wedding ceremonies. I see no reason to continue such disregard for the situation at hand.
|
On March 25 2018 08:59 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2018 08:47 iamthedave 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. Your argument is flawed, because everyone is required to engage in forced speech. Only Christians - and Muslims as well, let's not be unfair - claim special exemptions and start waving books around to say they shouldn't have to do this or that because their beliefs are so precious. Why should religious beliefs be treated differently to other beliefs? Unless you have an incredible argument to demonstrate how fundamentally religious a cake-maker's day to day activities are, you have to acknowledge that it's special pleading for the religious owners to say they shouldn't have to serve customers who are perfectly reasonable save for the fact they are gay (it is of course reasonable to refuse service to rude, abrasive, abusive or unnecessarily awkward customers). Irrespective of how the courts ruled, the one and only exception 'justifying' the behaviour of the staff, is that they have religious objections. Would you have supported them if they refused service to a black couple because they believed the black people have no souls? It's a reasonable objection if their religion says so, is it not? Reminding you that this was an argument made about black folks by religious people once upon a time. Your own logic means you should support this. It's an argument made for religious reasons, by religious people, not to have their amendment rights violated. You raise a final good point, though: rights don't cease to exist because you don't acknowledge them; a fact that has been tripping the religious up where it concerns LGBT folks for an awful long time. And women. And African Americans. And basically every group that religious people have oppressed sequentially until the state decided they weren't allowed to anymore. That's why very sympathetic individuals, such as the baker, will be kind and offer all there wares to gays and transgenders ... I want to highlight this as well. I know that you mean this sincerely, but you don't appreciate how appalling it actually sounds. They are 'very sympathetic' and are willing to treat gays and transgenders almost like they're real people. They're oh so sorry about their condition. So terribly sorry. You do a very bad job bringing evidence in to support your assertions. What is forced speech for you? Are you an artist that has recently been required to produce artwork with which you disagree? Maybe then you’d understand why 500 artists brought a friend of the court brief worried that a defeat for artistic expression for a cake maker would mean other works of art would similarly be on the chopping block. I still have not seen one iota of an argument defending your assertion that it’s entirely secular and nobody should pay attention. It’s again your assertions that secular marriages are all that should matter to religious people, and your profound disregard for the civil rights of groups you think have no business demanding rights. I was waiting for a response on my last posts’s points, but I see it’s just asides and chatter all the way through. And finally, you still haven’t come to terms with businesses that serve gay patrons but not their wedding ceremonies. I see no reason to continue such disregard for the situation at hand.
Le sigh. Every discussion with you ends the same way. You start ignoring points, then claim the other side is doing it and use that as an excuse to squirm away before your positions can properly be challenged.
Expected, but disappointing.
You've yet to demonstrate that I disregard anybody's civil rights. You just say it over and over without a shred of evidence. Apparently you feel that religious people deserve the civil rights to encroach on other people's civil rights. I disagree with that, as I don't think anyone's civil rights should be held above anyone else's.
Do you or do you not stand by the 'black people have no souls' argument, given it is fundamentally the exact same as the one you do support? And if not, why not?
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
